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Indian Languages
It
has been said that India is a living Tower of Babel!
There are fifteen national languages recognized by the
Indian constitution and these are spoken in over 1600
dialects. Add to this a population of over 900 million
today, and the remark would seem to be true.
India's official language is Hindi in the Devnagri script.
However, English continues to be the official working
language. For many educated Indian people, English is virtually
their first language, and for a great number of Indian people
who are multi-lingual, it will probably be the second.
The country has a wide variety of local languages and
in many cases the State boundaries have been drawn on
linguistic lines. Besides Hindi and English, the other
popular languages are Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada,
Kashmiri, Konkani, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Malayalam,
Marathi, Punjabi, Oriya, Telugu and Urdu.
Some Indian languages have evolved from the Indo-European
group of languages. This set is known as the Indic group
of languages. The other set of languages are Dravidian
and are native to South India, though a distinct influence
of Sanskrit and Hindi is evident in these languages.
Most of the Indian languages have their own script and
are spoken in the respective states along with English.
Languages used all over India:
Hindi is
spoken as a mother tongue by about 40.22 percent of
the population, mainly in the area known as the Hindi
belt comprising Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and
Uttar Pradesh. It is the official language of the Indian
Union, of the four states mentioned above, and of two
other states namely, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.
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Assamese
is the state language of Assam and is spoken by nearly
60 percent of the State's population. The origin of
this language dates back to the 13th century.
Bengali
is spoken by nearly 200 million people in the world-
in West Bengal and in Bangladesh. It developed as a
language in the 13th century and is the official state
language of the eastern state of West Bengal.
Gujarati
is the state language of Gujarat and is spoken by 70
percent of the State's population. It is Indic in origin
and branched out from the Indo-European group of languages.
Kannada
is the State language of Karnataka and is spoken by
65 percent of the state's population.
Kashmiri
is a language written in both Persio-Arabic and Devnagri
script and is spoken by 55 percent of the population
of Jammu and Kashmir.
Konkani,
principally based on classical Sanskrit, belongs to
the southwestern branch of Indo-Aryan languages. It
is spoken in the Konkan region covering Goa and parts
of the coastal regions of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra.
Malayalam
is a Dravidian language, spoken by the people of Kerala.
It is an ancient language and is thousands of years
old.
Marathi
is an Indic language dating back to the 13th century.
It is the official language of the western state of
Maharashtra.
Oriya,
the state language of Orissa is spoken by nearly 87
percent of its population.
Punjabi
is an Indic language and is spoken in the state of Punjab.
Although based on the Devnagri script, it is written
in a 16th century script called Gurumukhi, created by
the Sikh Guru, Angad.
Sanskrit
is one of the oldest languages of the world and also
the language of classical India. All the classical literature
and the Indian epics have been written in this language.
Sindhi
is spoken by a great number of people in the North-west
frontier of the Indian sub-continent comprising parts
of India and Pakistan. In Pakistan, the language is
written in the Perso-Arabic script, while in India it
uses the Devnagri script.
Tamil,
an ancient Dravidian language is at least 1997-2000
years old. It is the state language of Tamil Nadu and
is spoken by at least 65 million people.
Telugu
is also a Dravidian language and is the spoken by the
people of Andhra Pradesh.
Urdu
is the state language of Jammu and Kashmir and it evolved
with Hindi in the capital of India, Delhi. Urdu is the
language adopted by the majority of the Muslims in India.
Urdu is written in the Persio-Arabic script and contains
many words from the Persian language
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