Like many other Indo-Aryan languages, Bundeli has often been subject to a designation as a dialect, instead of a language. Furthermore, as is the case with other Hindi languages, Bundeli speakers have been conflated with those of Standard Hindi in censuses.
Grierson divided Bundeli into four dialect groups:[3]
Sanskrit final, initial, and surplus medial vowels are frequently lost in ways much common to Hindi.[4]:45
Nouns
Two genders – masculine and feminine – are taken by all nouns in Bundeli, indiscriminate of their animacy.[4]:74 Masculine nouns tend to take the a-declension, as do feminine ones, but feminine nouns exhibit more variation in termination, with a number of ī-nouns existing. Masculines also take ē- and ō- declensions "not very rarely". Masculine nouns converted to feminines take the terminations -(ā)ni, -na, -iyā.
The numbers are singular and plural alone.
Pronouns
Informal forms of address predominate among speakers of Bundelkhandi, owing to their rural location and their use of Hindi forms in formal speech.[4]:76 The first person pronoun is declined below in a table.
First-person singular
First-person plural
Nom.
maī, hama
hama
Agentive
maīnē
hamanē (in ergative past tense exclusively)
Obl.
mō-
hama- (with postposition); hamārē (dat.)
Gen. and possessive
mōrō (masc. sing.), mōrē (masc. pl.), mōrī (fem.)
hamār- (declined for gender as mōr-)
History
Early examples of Bundelkhandi literature are the verses of the Alha-Khand epic. It is still preserved by bards in the Banaphari region. The epic is about heroes who lived in the 12th century CE. Formal literary works in Bundeli dates from the reign of Emperor Akbar. Notable figures are the poet Kesab Das of the 16th century, while Padmakar Bhatt and Prajnes wrote several works during the 19th century. Prannath and Lal Kabi, produced many works in Bundeli language at the court of Chhatrasal of Panna.[5]
↑Grierson, George A. (1916). Linguistic Survey of India. Vol.IX Indo-Aryan family. Central group, Part 1, Specimens of western Hindi and Pañjābī. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India.
