Azamgarhi is an underdescribed Indo-Aryan (Eastern Hindi / Awadhic) language spoken in the Purvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh, India. It is closely related to Awadhi and has developed under sustained contact with Urdu and Bhojpuri, resulting in distinctive phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical patterns. Within the local sociolinguistic ecology, Azamgarhi is often referred to as Musalmān bolī, in contrast to neighbouring Bhojpuri-speaking Hindu communities.
Despite its widespread everyday use in parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Azamgarhi lacks official recognition and remains largely absent from formal education and institutional domains.
The map below illustrates the approximate geographic extent of Azamgarhi and its major dialectal areas. The Southern variety is often regarded by speakers as the most representative or widely intelligible form.
My work on Azamgarhi focuses on language documentation and description, with particular attention to morphosyntax and verbal morphology. The project aims to create a durable, accessible documentary record of the language based on naturalistic data.
All materials are archived with the Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL) at the University of North Texas Digital Library.
The collection can be accessed here:
Azamgarhi Language Resources (CoRSAL)
Primary data were collected in Azamgarh district, supplemented by recordings with speakers residing in Mumbai. As a heritage speaker with long-term community ties, I combine insider knowledge with standard documentary and analytical methods. While the existing corpus dates mainly from late 2019 onwards, further documentation remains a long-term goal.
The archived collection includes multiple genres, such as narratives, conversations, and elicited materials. Descriptive metadata and annotations are provided in Urdu and Hindi where possible, in line with community preferences and accessibility.
Alongside academic documentation, I engage in modest community-facing activities aimed at increasing awareness and accessibility of Azamgarhi, especially for younger speakers and learners. These include curated storytelling materials and informal dissemination of language-related content through online platforms. These efforts are intended as supplementary outreach rather than as primary documentation outputs.
My M.Phil. thesis,
Verb morphology in Awadhi of Azamgarh,
completed at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, is the first detailed grammatical study devoted specifically to Azamgarhi verbal morphology.
The study provides a systematic analysis of derivational and inflectional morphology in the finite verb, based primarily on data from the Southern variety. Particular attention is paid to theme formation, aspect–mood interactions, and the role of realis–irrealis distinctions within the broader Eastern Hindi context.