India - a land as large as a sub continent
is bound to have many languages and the number of languages in India
justifies its size. There are 15 official languages and hundreds of local
dialects. Such a plethora of languages make an average Indian a linguist. On
an average, every Indian speaks two languages and in cosmopolitan cities
like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore people can speak up to three languages.
Indian languages are grouped under two families - Dravidian and
Indo-European. All the south Indian languages are grouped under Dravidian
family. Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada are spoken in the states of
Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka respectively. The languages
are different but resemble in having rounded alphabets. They have many
Sanskrit words in their vocabulary, but their grammar is entirely different.
On the other hand Hindi, the language spoken all over north India and in
some parts of east India, belongs to the Indo European family of languages.
It has evolved from various transitional forms of Sanskrit over a long
period of time. Being the national language it is widely spoken all over
India, but it is more prominent in the northern parts of the country. Other
languages like Punjabi, Gujarati, Garhwali, etc are modified forms of Hindi,
which are evolved by mixing the local dialects.
Apart from the widely spoken Indo-European and Dravidian languages there
are lesser-spoken Mon-Khmer and Sino-Tibetan languages, which account for 2%
of the total population. These are mostly spoken in the Northeastern India.
One will be surprised to see so many languages existing together. More
surprising are the common factors in these languages. Many languages not
only share vocabulary with each other but also share the script. Hindi and
Marathi (spoken in Maharashtra) have a common script. Bengali and Assamese
too share a common script.
All the Indian languages are written left to right except those written in
Persian scripts (Urdu & Kashmiri).
A list of languages as spoken in the respective States -
| Andhra Pradesh |
Telugu & Urdu (in Hyderabad) |
| Assam |
Assamese |
| Bihar |
Hindi, Bhojpuri, Maithili, Santhali & Bengali |
| Delhi |
Hindi, Punjabi & English |
| Goa |
Konkani, Marathi , Hindi, English & Portuguese |
| Gujarat |
Gujarati |
| Punjab & Haryana |
Hindi, Punjabi, Haryanvi & Urdu |
| Himachal Pradesh |
Hindi & Pahari |
| Jammu & Kashmir |
Dogri, Kashmiri, Ladakhi, Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi &
Tibetan |
| Karnataka |
Kannada |
| Kerala |
Malayalam |
| Madhya Pradesh |
Hindi & Urdu |
| Maharashtra |
Marathi, Gujarati & Hindi |
| Orissa |
Oriya |
| Rajasthan |
Hindi, Rajasthani, Marwari & Urdu |
| Sikkim |
Sikkimese, Nepalese |
| Tamil Nadu |
Tamil |
| Uttar Pradesh |
Hindi, Brijbhasha, Avadhi, Bhojpuri & Urdu |
| Uttaranchal |
Garhwali, Kumaoni & Hindi |
| West Bengal |
Bengali, Urdu & Nepalese |
