Indian Language

Languages of India

The languages of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by 73% of Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 24% of Indians. Other languages spoken in India belong to the Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman, and a few minor language families and isolates.

The Republic of India does not have a national language. However, the official languages of the Union Government of Republic of India are Hindi in the Devanagari script and English. The constitution of India states that "The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script." a position supported by a High Court ruling. However, languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian constitution are sometimes referred to, without legal standing, as the national languages of India. In addition, some individual states legislate their own official languages, depending on their linguistic demographics.

Individual native languages in India number several hundreds; the 1961 census recognized 1,652, and the 2011 census recognized 1,635. (SIL Ethnologue lists 415). According to Census of India of 2001, 30 languages are spoken by more than a million native speakers, 122 by more than 10,000. More than three millennia of language contact has led to significant mutual influence among the four language families in India and South Asia. Two contact languages have played an important role in the history of India: Persian and English.

History

The northern Indian languages from the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family evolved from Old Indic by way of the Middle Indic Prakrit languages and Apabhraṃśa of the Middle Ages. There is no consensus for a specific time where the modern north Indian languages such as Hindustani, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Sindhi and Oriya emerged, but AD 1000 is commonly accepted. Each language had different influences, with Hindustani strongly influenced by Sanskrit and Persian.

Official Language

The official languages of the Union Government (not the entire country) are Hindi and English. According to the article 343 (1) of the Constitution of India, "The Official Language of the Union government shall be Hindi in Devanagari script." The individual states can legislate their own official languages, depending on their linguistic demographics. For example, the state of Andhra Pradesh has Telugu as its official language, the state of Karnataka has Kannada as its sole official language, the state of Maharashtra has Marathi as its sole official language, the state of Punjab has Punjabi as its sole official language, the state of Odisha has Oriya as its sole official language, the state of Tamil Nadu has Tamil as its sole official language, while the state of Kerala has Malayalam and English as its official languages, the state of Jammu and Kashmir has Kashmiri, Urdu, and Dogri as its official languages.

Language	Family	Speakers (in millions, 2001)	State(s)
Assamese	Indo-Aryan, North Eastern	13	Assam, Arunachal Pradesh
Bengali	Indo-Aryan, Eastern	83	West Bengal, Tripura, Assam, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Jharkhand
Bodo	Tibeto-Burman	1.4	Assam
Dogri	Indo-Aryan, Northwestern	2.3	Jammu and Kashmir
English	West Germanic	350	All over India
French	Romance	unknown	Puducherry
Gujarati	Indo-Aryan, Western	46	Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Gujarat
Hindi	Indo-Aryan, Central	258–422	Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, the National capital territory of Delhi, Himachal Pradesh,Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand
Kannada	Dravidian	40	Karnataka
Kashmiri	Indo-Aryan, Dardic	5.5	Jammu and Kashmir
Konkani	Indo-Aryan, Southern	2.5–7.6	Goa, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala
Maithili	Indo-Aryan, Eastern	12–32	Bihar
Malayalam	Dravidian	33	Kerala, Lakshadweep, Puducherry
Manipuri (also Meiteior Meithei)	Tibeto-Burman	1.5	Manipur
Marathi	Indo-Aryan, Southern	72	Maharashtra, Goa, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu
Nepali	Indo-Aryan, Northern	2.9	Sikkim, West Bengal
Oriya	Indo-Aryan, Eastern	33	Odisha
Punjabi	Indo-Aryan, Northwestern	34	Chandigarh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand
Sanskrit	Indo-Aryan	0.01	non-regional
Santali	Munda	6.5	Santhal tribals of the Chota Nagpur Plateau (comprising the states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha)
Sindhi	Indo-Aryan, Northwestern	2.5	non-regional
Tamil	Dravidian	61	Tamil Nadu, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Puducherry
Telugu	Dravidian	74	Andhra Pradesh, Puducherry, Andaman & Nicobar Islands
Urdu	Indo-Aryan, Central	52	Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh

Other  Local Languages & Dialects

In addition, the 2001 census identified the following native languages (i.e. languages and dialects) having more than one million speakers. All were grouped under Hindi or Oriya.

Languages	No. of native speakers
Bhojpuri	33,099,497
Rajasthani	18,355,613
Magadh/Magahi	13,978,565
Chhattisgarhi	13,260,186
Haryanvi	7,997,192
Marwari	7,936,183
Malvi	5,565,167
Mewari	5,091,697
Khorth/Khotta	4,725,927
Bundeli/Bundelkhan	3,072,147
Bagheli/Baghel Khan	2,865,011
Pahari	2,832,825
Laman/Lambadi	2,707,562
Awadhi	2,529,308
Harauti	2,462,867
Garhwali	2,267,314
Nimadi	2,148,146
Sadan/Sadri	2,044,776
Kumauni	2,003,783
Dhundhari	1,871,130
Surgujia	1,458,533
Bagri Rajasthani	1,434,123
Banjari	1,259,821
Nagpuria (Varhadi)	1,242,586
Surjapuri	1,217,019
Kangri	1,122,843

Writing Languages

Various Indian languages have corresponding scripts for them. The Hindi, Marathi and Angika languages are all written using the Devanagari script. Most languages are written using a script specific to them, such as Assamese with Assamese/Axomiya, Bengali with Bengali, Punjabi with Gurmukhi, Oriya with Utkal Lipi, Gujarati with Gujarati, etc. Urdu and sometimes Kashmiri, Saraiki and Sindhi are written in modified versions of the Perso-Arabic script. With this one exception, the scripts of Indian languages are native to India. (See ISO 15919 regarding Romanization of Indian languages.)