How many languages are spoken in india
India contains a
variety of languages, with 78.05% of Indians speaking those that belong to the
Indo-Aryan family of languages. This is followed by Dravidian languages
comprising 19.64% of the population. The remaining 2.31% speak languages
belonging to a variety of other language families, including Tai-Kadai and
Austroasiatic.
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Hindi is the most
commonly spoken language in India and serves as somewhat of a lingua
franca throughout its northern and central parts. Bengali is
the 2nd most spoken, having a majority of its speakers in the
eastern and north-eastern parts of India.
In recent times, there
has been turmoil over Hindi being forced upon parts of India
that do not natively speak it, such as Tamil Nadu.
The total number of
languages spoken in India is widely disputed, however, the general consensus is
that there are 780, putting India in 2nd place for
most languages spoken within a single country, after Papua New Guinea.
India has two official
languages: Hindi (Devanagari script) and English. With that being
said, this does not mean Hindi is India’s national language, as the Indian constitution does not permit
any language such status.
The Indian constitution refers to 22 languages
by name, which are called scheduled languages. These are the languages that
have been given official acknowledgment and support.
These are:
- Assamese
- Bengali
- Gujarati
- Hindi
- Kannada
- Kashmiri
- Konkani
- Malayalam
- Manipuri
- Marathi
- Nepali
- Oriya
- Punjabi
- Sanskrit
- Sindhi
- Tamil
- Telugu
- Urdu
- Bodo
- Santhali
- Maithili
- Dogri
Of these, 14 were in
the constitution from the start, with the others being added through time.
The other languages
spoken in India have not received recognition from the government due to one of
three reasons:
1.
Having less than 10,000 speakers within India.
2.
There not being enough data to adequately differentiate them as
a language in their own right.
3.
Linguistic consensus on whether they are additional languages or
merely dialects of existing ones not being reached.
Besides this, there are 6 classical languages
within India:
- Kannada
- Malayalam
- Odia
- Sanskrit
- Tamil
- Telugu
The Tamil language is
one of the oldest languages in the world. The language was found in records
that are even more than 5,000 years old. The status of a classical language is
given to those languages that have been deemed to have a deep heritage and be of
independent nature.
96.71% of Indians speak one of the scheduled
languages, with the other 3.29% speaking a wide variety of others. In India, it
is reasonably common to not speak the same language as the rest of your
household.
This linguistic variety has been achieved due
to multiple causes:
1.
The lack of centralization – India has been disunited for most of human existence,
leading to a variety of different cultures forming in the land we now refer to
as India.
2.
Mass migrations throughout history have left their mark, creating 6–7 different
language families within the same area.
3.
The British colonization of India lead to English becoming an extremely
important language in it. Even today, it is being used by many institutions of
higher education and even certain areas of the government.
4.
Persian was the dominant language in India during the Mughal period,
which let it become the court language until the British colonized it.
All of this has led to
the situation we have today, the highest figure for Indian languages outside of
the scheduled languages being 1599. This has sparked a debate among
linguists, which continues to this day, over the distinction between language
and dialect.
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