Languages In India
India is a land of a variety of linguistic communities, each of which share a common language and culture. 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. Though there could be eighteen principal languages there are hundreds of thousands dialects that add to the vividness of 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.
18 languages are officially recognized in India of which Sanskrit and Tamil share a long history of more than 5,000 and 3,000 years respectively. The population of people speaking each language varies drastically. For example Hindi has 250 million speakers, while Andamanese is spoken by relatively fewer people. 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.
Tribal or Aboriginal language speaking population in India may be more than some of the European languages. For instance Bhili and Santali both tribal languages have more than 4 million speakers. The vividness can be ascertained by the fact that schools in India teach more than 50 different languages; there are Films in 15 languages, Newspapers in 90 or more languages and radio programmes in 71 languages!
Indian languages come from four distinct families, which are: Indo-European, Dravidian, Mon-Khmer, and Sino-Tibetan. Majority of Indian population uses Indo-European and Dravidian languages. The language families divide India geographically too.
Indo-European languages dominate the northern and central India while in south India; mainly languages of Dravidian origin are spoken. In eastern India languages of Mon-Khmer group is popular. Sino Tibetan languages are spoken in the northern Himalayas and close to Burmese border. In terms of percentage, 75% of Indian population speaks languages of Indo-European family, 23% speak languages of Dravidian origin and about 2% of the population speaks Mon-Khmer languages and Sino-Tibetan languages.
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.