India is the home of different languages, due to its cultural & geographical diversity. In this section, we deal with the major languages spoken in India.

Languages of India

Languages of India
Assamese A language of Assam that's spoken by nearly 60 percent of the State's population.
Bengali An official language of West Bengal, now spoken by nearly 200 million people in West Bengal and in Bangladesh.
Bodo It is the language spoken by the Bodo people of Assam and comes under the Assam-Burmese group of languages
Dogri Mainly spoken by the people of Jammu region
Gujarati It is the official language of Gujarat. 70 percent of the State's population speak Gujrathi but it the most spread language not only in India but also abroad.
Hindi The official language of India, accent and dialect differs with different regions but almost every Indian has a working knowledge of Hindi. It is written in a Devanagiri script.
Kannada A language of Karnataka and is spoken by 65 percent of the state's population. It belongs to the Dravidian family.
Kashmiri Though the language is mistaken as a state language of Kashmir only 55 per cent of the state's population speak Kashmiri.
Konkani Spoken in the Konkan region stretched across Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka.
Maithili Mostly spoken in the parts of Bihar and the eastern Terai region of Nepal
Malayalam The state language of Kerala. It is the youngest of all developed languages in the Dravidian family.
Manipuri/Meitei official language of state of Manipur.
Marathi An official language of Maharashtra. It has a fully developed literature of the modern type.
Nepali The official language of Nepal, it is also spoken in some north eastern parts of India
Oriya A branch of the Indo-Aryan family, is the official language of the State of Orissa.
Punjabi The official language of the State of Punjab. It is written in Gurmukhi script, created by the Sikh Guru, Angad.
Sanskrit The classical language of India that has lost it's value in the modern world. It is also one of the oldest languages in the world- perhaps the oldest to be recorded. All the ancient scripts are found to be written in the same language.
Santhali Santhal tribals of the Chota Nagpur Plateau (comprising the states of Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa)
Sindhi Is spoken by a great number of people in the Northwest frontier of the Indian sub-continent comprising parts of India and Pakistan.
Tamil The State language of Tamil Nadu. Tamil literature goes back to Centuries before the Christian era and is spoken by more than 73 million people. It belongs to the Dravidian language family.
Telugu A language of Andhra Pradesh. It is numerically the biggest linguistic unit in India.
Urdu The state language of Jammu and Kashmir and is spoken by more than 28 million people in India. Urdu and Hindi have proceeded from the same source. Urdu is written in the Persio - Arabic script and contains many words from the Persian language.

India is a vast country, with lot of cultural and geographical diversities. This has resulted in a number of different languages spoken across the country. Some of these languages are accepted nationally, while others are accepted as dialects of particular regions. All these languages originated from the great languages of the past, with most of them belonging to several major linguistic families, like Indo-Aryan (spoken by 70% Indians), Dravidian languages (spoken by 22% Indians), Austro-Asiatic languages and Tibeto-Burman linguistic languages.

The Indian Constitution (Article 343) declares Hindi to be the official language of the Union. Hindi is also the mother tongue of about 20% of the Indian population, living in the area known as the 'Hindi-belt' or the 'cow-belt' of northern India. This includes the states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttaranchal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. Haryana and Himachal Pradesh also have Hindi as their official language.

English language is the commonly used official language of India. It enjoys a special status and remains the additional official language of India. It is also the authoritative legislative and judicial language. Apart from the more widely spoken English and Hindi, there are the various regional languages as well. In fact, each state of India has its own official language, apart from the numerous dialects. However, the 8th schedule of the Constitution of India lists 22 such regional languages only, giving them official status.