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
| 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.
