What languages are spoken in India?
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What is the language spoken in India? It's a more important issue than it seems! India is home to incredible linguistic diversity. How many languages are spoken in India? Hundreds ! In India, our linguistic expertise covers a wide range of official languages, which we explore below.
Among these are two official languages: Hindi and English.
There are also 22 official languages of India at the level of States and / or regions, all of which are recognized by the Constitution. Of these 22 languages, the number of native speakers varies from 528 million (for Hindi) to 24 821 for the Sanskrit (all figures we used in this article are drawn from the 2011 India census and refer to At native speakers, unless otherwise indicated).
In total, India has 447 living languages, while the 2011 census indicates that there are 270 identifiable mother tongues each with 10,000 speakers or more.
The 22 official languages of India
The 22 official languages of India are technically known as "Linked languages", which means that they are recognized at the regional level and in the Indian Constitution.
Hindi is one of those official languages of India, but not English, although it is used (in the same way as Hindi) for parliamentary work and other legal and political procedures.
Assamese
Assamese is an official language of the state of Assam, making it the most eastern Indo-European language. She counts more than 15 millions of native speakers And is widely spoken throughout the Assam, serving as Lingua Franca for the local region. The Assamese has been spoken for at least the 7th century of our era.
The language has four distinct dialects, the standard Assamese based on the oriental group (the others are central, kamrupi and goalpariya).
Bengali
Bengali (Also called Bangla) is one of the most spoken languages in India. With 97 millions of native speakersThis is the second language after Hindi in terms of the number of speakers in the country.
As its use being widespread, customers often use translators to provide translation services in Bengali, both for professional and personal purposes.
In Bangladesh, Bengali is the most spoken language, with 98% of the Bangladeshi that speak fluently. He is also spoken to Western Bengal, Tripura and the region of the Barak Valley in Assam.
There are also a significant number of speakers in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Uttarakhand.
Bodle
Also called Boro, bodle is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken mainly in the north-east of India, Nepal and Bengal, as well as in Assam and in the autonomous region of Bodoland.
Language counts 1.4 million speakers and is written with the devanagari script, which she has been using since 1963. Before that, she used Latin and Assamese, although some specialists think she had previously his own writing - Deodhai - who was lost in the sand sands.
Dogri
With near 2.6 millions of native speakers, Dogri is mainly spoken in the Jammu and Kashmir region, as well as in northern Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. Several varieties of this language are spoken.
Dogri has been considered at some point as a dialect of Punjabi, but it is now classified as a language in its own right. It has been added to the Constitution in 2001.
Gujarati
The Indian state of Gujarat is the cradle of the language gujariatwho counts some 55 millions of native speakers. Indo-European language, it is not only an official language of Gujarat, but also from Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.
Gujarati is the sixth of India's primary languages in terms of the number of native speakers, with about 4.5% of the population indicating as a mother tongue.
Hindi
Hindi is not only the main language of India, it is also the fourth most used mother tongue on the planet.
Hindi is an official language in nine states and is spoken in the "Hindi belt", which extends over northern parts, center, east and west of India. It is also used as a Lingua Franca in other parts of India, with many dialects and pidgin versions of Hindi in use in the country.
The standard Hindi is mutually intelligible with the standard Urdu, which increases its usefulness as Lingua Franca in India.
Kannada
With about 44 millions of native speakers, known as Kannadigas, Kannada has been designated as one of the classic languages of India.
It has an uninterrupted literary history that extends over more than a millennium. Dravidian language, it is mainly spoken in Karnataka, in southwestern India, where it is an official language of the state, as well as in some regions of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, of the Telangana, Kerala and Goa.
Cashmere
The Kashmirie language counts about 6.7 millions of speakers, most of whom reside in the territory of Jammu and Kashmir, where it is recognized as an official regional language.
In the Kashmir Valley, Cashmere is a language whose learning is mandatory in schools up to high school since 2008.
Kashmir is an interesting language to learn for anglophones, because of its unusual order of words (verb-second). It also has three writing systems: Sharada, Devanagari and Perso-Arab scripts.
In addition, Kashmir speakers sometimes use Roman writing when writing informally, especially online.
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Konkani
Konkani is a language spoken along the west coast of India. It counts about 2.2 millions of native speakers and is the official language of the state of Goa.
It is also a minority language in other regions (including Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala, Gujarat, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu). In addition to the standard konkani, the tongue has a number of dialects, some of which are only partially mutually intelligible.
The Maithili
The Indo-Aryan language maithili count about 13.5 millions of speakers In India, mainly in the states of the Bihar and Jharkhand. The Maithili is also the second most spoken language in Nepal.
Malayalam
Widespread in Kerala, as well as in LAKSHADWEEP and PUDUCERRY, Malayalam is spoken by about 2.8% of the total Indian population, or some 34.8 millions of speakers.
It is also widely used in the Gulf countries, thanks to the large number of Malay expatriates who have taken away the language with them.
It is interesting to note that the origins of Malayalam are debated among academics, some arguing that it is a branching of the average Tamil, others believing that it has developed to from the protodravid and prototamoul-malayalam.
Manipuring
ManipuringAlso known as Meiti, is a Sino-Tibetan tonal language spoken mainly in northeastern India, in the states of Assam and Tripura.
She counts more than 1.7 million native speakers And is recognized in the Indian Constitution since 1992. UNESCO has classified it among vulnerable languages.
The marathi
Official language of Maharashtra and Goa, in western India, the marathi count 83 millions of native speakers, making it the third most spoken language of the country.
Spoken language in India For more than a millennium, the Marathi has some of the oldest literary works of all Indian languages still used today.
Nepalese
With only 2.9 millions of speakersNépali is not one of the main languages of India. However, the state of Sikkim and the subdivision of Darjeeling Sadar, as well as the Kalimpong district in Western Bengal, all house important people speaking Nepalese.
ODIA
Another classical language designated in India, thanks to its vast literary history, ODIA is widely spoken in the state of Odisha. Indo-Aryan language, it counts about 37.5 millions of native speakers82% of the inhabitants of Odisha, as well as Indians living in some areas of Western Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh.
Punjabi
Punjabi is a spoken language in India and in neighboring countries. She counts more than 33 millions of native speakers in IndiaWhat makes it the most spoken language of the country, and it is also the most spoken language in Pakistan.
Spoken in the Pendjab region, northwest of India (and east of Pakistan), Punjabi is an Indo-European language that stands out within its linguistic group by using lexical tone.
Sanskrit
With a little more than 24,000 native speakersThe Sanskrit is the least widespread language in India, but that does not mean it is not important. Indeed, the Sanskrit is the main liturgical language of Hinduism and its history extends over 3.5 millennia.
Lingua Franca of ancient and medieval India, Sanskrit remains a living language to date, and has the honor to be one of the oldest indo-European documented languages.
Its influence is visible in a number of girls' daughters of today, including Hindi, Bengali and Gujarati.
Santhali
Santhali (Also called Santali) was an essentially oral language to the development of the Alphabet Ol Chiki of Pandit Raghunath murmu in 1925, which is now widely used to write Santhali in India.
This language counts about 7.3 millions of native speakers In India, mainly distributed in the following regions: Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Mizoram, Odisha, Tripura and Western Bengal.
Sindhi
Sindhi is spoken natively by more than 2.7 million Indians. It is an Indo-Aryan language used in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent.
Sindhi is interesting in terms of status because, although it is one of the 22 languages listed in India, it is an official language in no Indian state.
However, it is entered in the legislation as a means of study in India and constitutes a third optional language in the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.
Tamil
One of the main languages of India, Tamil is spoken in the mother tongue by more than 69 million Indians. Dravidian language, it is officially spoken in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, and is a minority language in Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and in the Andaman Islands and Nicobar.
One of the oldest classic languages in the world, Tamil has an incredible literary history that goes back more than two millennia.
Telugu
In India, 81 million people Talk Telugu as a mother tongue. The speakers are distributed in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Puducherry and Andaman Islands and Nicobar.
It is the fourth language most spoken in the country and one of the rare primary languages of India to be an official language in more than one state. Telugu is also one of the classic languages of India.
Urgent
UrduAlso called Lashkari, is a Persian Standard Registry of the Hindustani language. He counts 50.7 millions of native speakers In India, with an official status in the states of Telangana, the Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Western Bengal, as well as Delhi.
How many languages are really spoken in India?
What languages spoken in India? More than the 22 languages listed! The 2011 Indian census identified 270 mother tongues Counting each 10,000 speakers or more.
Among these:
- 23 mother tongues grouped in the languages listed
- 147 mother tongues grouped in unlisted languages
These unlisted languages go from those who relatively few speakers, like the 16,000 people who speak gang in the mother tongue, to major languages with more than 10 millions of speakers, like Bhili.
To find out how many languages in India can be considered primary languages, it may be useful to look at what percentage of the population speaks each of them. Hindi comes in mind, with 43.63% of Indians who speak it natively.
What are the most spoken languages after Hindi?
Some languages, other than Hindi, are also spoken by a very large number of people. Here are the 6 most spoken languages behind Hindi in descending order:
- 8.03% speaks Bengali
- 6.86% speaks the marathi
- 6.70% speaks Telugou
- 5.70% speaks Tamil
- 4.58% speaks Gujarati
- 4.19% speaks the Urdu
All other Indian languages are spoken by less than 4% of the country's population each. In total, India has 60 languages with more than one million speakers each.
The main languages spoken according to the regions
96.71% of the Indian population speaks one of the 22 official languages natively. Languages vary by region of India.
Languages spoken in northern India
What are Indians talking about in the north of the country? Hindi, the punjabi and the cachemiri Are the three most spoken languages in northern India.
Languages spoken in northeastern India
What language are we talking about in northeastern India? The northeastern country houses a set of languages, including the Nepalese, Assamese, the manipuring, the Bengali, the nissi, the khasi, the mizo and AO.
Languages spoken in South India
What language do Indians speak in the south of the country? When you head south of India, it's the telly, the kannada, the tamil and the malayalam that you are most likely to hear.
Languages spoken in Western India
Along the west coast of India, these are languages such as the Konkani, the Gujariat, the Marathi and the Billy which are the most spoken.
As we have seen in this article, India is a rich linguistic heritage country, making it a fascinating study for those interested in languages!
