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Languages of India
India a land as large as a sub continent has many languages
and the number of languages of India justifies its size. There
are 15 official languages and many as local dialects. Such a
plethora of languages make an average Indian a linguist. On
an average every Indian speaks two languages. In Cosmopolitan
cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore people can speak up
to three languages.
Indian languages are grouped under two families, i.e. Dravidian
and Indo-European. Dravidian family comprises of all the southern
India languages like, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada .
All these languages 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 national language, is 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. Other
languages like Punjabi, Gujarati, Garhwali, etc are modified
forms of Hindi which 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 North-Eastern part of India.
One will be surprised to see so many languages existing together.
Many languages not only share vocabulary with each other but
also share the script. All the Indian languages are written
lefts to right except those written in Persian scripts (Urdu
& Kashmiri). |
languages
spoken in the respective States
| Andhra Pradesh |
Telugu & Urdu (in Hyderabad) |
| Assam |
Assamese |
| Bihar |
Hindi, Bhojpuri, Maithili, Santhali & Bengali
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| 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 |
ikkimese, Nepalese |
| Tamil Nadu |
Tamil |
| Uttar Pradesh |
Hindi, Brijbhasha, Avadhi, Bhojpuri & Urdu
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| Uttaranchal |
Garhwali, Kumaoni & Hindi |
| West Bengal |
Bengali, Urdu & Nepalese |
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