| Caribbean Hindustani | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago |
| Native speakers | 165,000 (date missing) |
| Language family | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | hns |
Caribbean Hindustani is a dialect of Bhojpuri spoken in Suriname, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago. These three countries put an adjective before the name of the language, so that the local language variant is known for instance as "Sarnami Hindoestani" in Suriname. Most people still call the language "Hindustani".
After Dutch, Sarnami Hindustani is the most widely spoken language of Suriname. The language is spoken by the descendants of emigrants from the current Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, they are in Suriname and the Netherlands known as the Hindoestanen. Because the predominance of Bhojpuri speaking emigrants, the Caribbean Hindustani and Sarnami Hindoestani are most influenced by Bhojpuri and other Bihari varieties. The Hindoestanen are the largest ethnic group in Suriname, and Indian culture in general has a major role.
The Caribbean Hindustani of neighboring Guyana, also known as the Aili Gaili, is spoken only by a few older members within a community of more than 300,000 Indo-Guyanese.
The variant spoken in Trinidad and Tobago is known as Trinidad Bhojpuri. In 1996, this was spoken by 15,633 people.[1]