Source: Times of India
ALLAHABAD, INDIA, January 14, 2002: According to Professor Theo Damsteegt of Leiden University in the Netherlands, the dialect of Bhojpuri spoken by the country’s immigrants from Suriname should be considered a distinct language, “Sarnami.” The immigrants from Suriname originally came from the “Bhojpuri Belt” in Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Western Bihar in India. Bhojpuri is a regional dialect of Hindi. Sarnami, explains the professor, has many features in common with Bhojpuri but also contains many words from Dutch. It has now stabilized into a distinct language with its own literature. Many Indians came to the Netherlands from Suriname when the latter was granted independence in 1975.