Talk:Bihari languages

Abt Nepalese languages
Maithili and Bhojpuri are spoken in Nepal as well. These languages constitute a mojor portion of Nepal. So, if there is no official organization which classifies the langauges as Bihari, I think that it would be better to list them separately. --Eukesh 12:08, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Districts not discussed
The districts speaking the particular languages have not been mentioned. Need information on the same.  Maquahuitl talk! 06:34, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Problems in "Speakers" section
"'most educated speakers of the language name Hindi as their language because [...] of unawareness.'" Although a reference is given for this, I still think it comes of as a bit too much from a POV. Perhaps it should be attributed to the author of the source? In other words; "According to Dhanesh Jain and George Cardona, most educated speakers...".

"'But Maithili has been the only one among them which has been trying to constantly deny superimposition of Hindi over her identity. The other two have given up their claims and have resigned to accept the status of dialects of Hindi.'" I think it's a bit strange to write as if languages have intention, I would write the paragraph more like:

"'The movement to give Maithili official recognition in India has historically been stronger than analogous movements for Bhojpuri and Magahi. This resulted in Maithili's addition to the 8th Schedule of the Indian Constitution, as one of India's 22 officially recognized regional languages.'"

While Maithili activists have obviously been more successful, I don't think Bhojpuri has "resigned" to be a dialect of Hindi. I've read news articles suggesting that Bhojpuri is next in line to become a language of the 8th schedule. saɪm duʃan Talk|Contribs 21:59, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the problem with that statement - another problem is that the text seems to be directly copied from the cited source with no quotation marks, which we should never do for a copyrighted source. john k (talk) 05:02, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Bihari language materials
A Comparative dictionary of the Bihārī language (1885)

https://archive.org/details/acomparativedic00griegoog

Seven grammars of the dialects and subdialects of the Bihári language spoken in the province of Bihár, in the eastern portion of the North-western Provinces, and in the northern portion of the Central Provinces... (1883)

https://archive.org/details/cu31924073062535

https://archive.org/details/cu31924073062519

https://archive.org/details/cu31924073062527

https://archive.org/details/sevengrammarsofd02grie

https://archive.org/details/sevengrammarsofd04grie

https://archive.org/details/sevengrammarsofd06grie

https://archive.org/details/sevengrammarsofd07grie

Bihar peasant life, being a discursive catalogue of the surroundings of the people of that province (1885)

https://archive.org/details/cu31924072688025

Rajmaan (talk) 23:45, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

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 * Link seems useful. Dhtwiki (talk) 12:37, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Not sure why this article is needed
This whole "Bihari languages" category doesn't make much sense in my opinion. Many of these so called related languages have much more in common with neighbouring languages/dialects. For example Bhojpuri is generally considered to be closer to Awadhi then to Maithili. And Maithili shares a lot of common features with Nepali etc. The whole notion of a Bihari language group is a remnant of the colonial period. Even the map given is inherently wrong for example it groups the Bihari languages with Hindi despite Maithili being recognised by the constitution as a distinct language.

Can we have a discussion on the map and the article itself? Thanks Damien2016 (talk) 14:20, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
 * If there are any issues with "Bihari" as a genetic or even an areal unit, these should be explained in the article. Bihari does feature as a sub-group of Indo-Aryan in many classifications, and even if it turns out to be a colonial remnant, it's still pretty widely used and known. As for the map, which one do you have in mind, the one in the article? – Uanfala (talk) 14:44, 19 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Hi, thanks for replying. The idea of a Bihari language group is based purely of the works of Grierson to my knowledge. Grierson was writing in the early 20th century and I believe that it's wrong to create articles based of the work of one linguist. Perhaps a single article should be created that incorporates the works of all notable linguists in the area as opposed to separate articles for "Central Zone", "Western zone", "Bihari" etc.


 * And actually the map in this particular article is correct, I incorrectly confused it with the one on the Indo-Aryan languages article which I have issue with. Thanks. Damien2016 (talk) 22:19, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

In my opinion, this article should be kept as majority of native speakers of these languages live in the Indian state of Bihar. There is a huge amount of similarity among these languages like the use of "हम" for "I". All these languages have been regarded as one group of languages for at least a century. Thanks. Ind akash (talk) 06:13, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * This article should be kept because "Bihari" is part of a standard (ISO 639, in parts 1 and 2) and in the ISO 639-3 annex (that adds properties to ISO 639-2 codes) it is is regarded as a "collection" of languages (not strictly a linguistic family, but still not a macrolanguage as you seem to state by saying they are "closely related". It's a fact that they are not mutually intelligible and that's why it was not added in ISO 639-3, not even as a macrolanguage).
 * It could be argued that this should also apply to Quechua [qu], which is hardly seen as a "macrolanguage" but more like a "collection" and also not strictly a linguistic family (but various experts seem to treat Quechua either as a true family suitable for ISO 639-5 or as a macrolanguage suitable for ISO 639-3; there's no real agreement there too).
 * Anyway the article itself is not qualifiable as "original research", it is based on existing standards (even if they are not perfect and the delimitations of Bihari is not clear).
 * Also it is a fact that Wikimedia used the code [bh] for its wikis not for "Bihari", but for "Bhojpuri" only (and this was an error, which leaves in the legacy abused codes that Wikimedia used before the language commitee was in place). Those wikis should be moved to the appropriate code [bho], and there should remain no "bh.*" wikis.
 * And even if this error was originately based on old works made by an early linguist at the begining of hte 20th century, this work has a proven history and we should have the article to explain his initial point of view and why this view is no longer seen correct for today's usage of these languages (including "Hindi Fiji", which is not even "Hindi" or "Hindustani" but based on Maithili; and "Caribbean Hindustani" which is also not related to "Hindustani", i.e. "Hindi" and "Urdu"). verdy_p (talk) 01:56, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Lead (3rd paragraph)
Do we actually need paragraph 3 here? It is essentially about the official language situation in the state of Bihar, not about the Bihari languages as a linguistic construct (i.e. a classificatory subgroup), which latter is the topic of this article. I suggest to move the information to Languages of Bihar (currently redirected to Demographics_of_Bihar). –Austronesier (talk) 13:34, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that para falls kind off outside the topic of the article. Atleast, it should not be in the lead. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 16:52, 23 September 2020 (UTC)