Caribbean Hindustani

Caribbean Hindustani
कैरिबियन हिन्दुस्तानी • ہندوستانی کیریبین
Native to	Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, Jamaica, Barbados, and other places in the Caribbean
Native speakers	(150,000 in Suriname cited 1986) 16,000 in Trinidad (1996); a few elders in Guyana
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Central Group Eastern Hindi Hindustani Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Braj Bhasha, Bihari Caribbean Hindustani
Dialects	Trinidadian Hindustani Guyanese Hindustani (Aili Gaili) Sarnami Hindoestani
Writing system	Devanagari, Kaithi, Latin script, Perso-Arabic script, Devanagari Braille, Urdu Braille, English Braille
Signed forms	Signed Hindustani
Official status
Official language in	Trinidad and Tobago Guyana Suriname
Language codes
ISO 639-3	hns
Glottolog	cari1275

Caribbean Hindustani is a form of the Bhojpuri dialect of Hindustani spoken in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, Jamaica, Barbados, and the rest of the Caribbean region with significant Indian influence. The language is spoken by the Indo-Caribbean descendants of emigrants from the Hindi Belt (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh in India, and Madhesh in Nepal). Because a majority of people came from the Bhojpuri region of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Caribbean Hindustani is most influenced by Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Braj Bhasha, and other Bihari varieties of the Hindustani language.

Dialects

The Caribbean Hindustani of Guyana, is known as Aili Gaili or Guyanese Hindustani, is spoken by some members within a community of 300,000 Indo-Guyanese.

The variant spoken in Trinidad and Tobago is known as Trinidadian Hindustani. After Trinidadian English it is the second most widely spoken language of Trinidad and Tobago. In 1996, it was spoken by 15,633 people.

After Dutch and Sranan Tongo, Sarnami Hindoestani is the most widely spoken language of Suriname.