Fiji Hindi

Fiji Hindi (Devanagari: फ़िजी हिंदी) is a vernacular Eastern Hindi language spoken by Indo-Fijians. It is the mother tongue and indigenous language of Indo-Fijians. It is also looked at as a creole or koine language based on Awadhi that has also been subject to considerable influence by other Eastern Hindi languages such as Bagheli and Chhattisgarhi, by Eastern Indo-Aryan languages such as Bhojpuri and Maithili, and has also been partially influenced by many other languages such as English, iTaukei, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Assamese, Punjabi, Standard Hindi, Standard Urdu, Marathi, Gujarati, Arabic, and Malayalam. Many words unique to Fiji Hindi have been created to cater for the new environment that Indo-Fijians now live in. First-generation Indo-Fijians in Fiji, who used the language as a lingua franca in Fiji, referred to it as Fiji Baat, "Fiji talk". While Fiji Hindi is mutually intelligible with various Eastern Hindi languages, it is also closely related to other variants of Hindustani spoken in the Caribbean (such as Sarnami) and Africa (especially in the countries of Mauritius and South Africa).