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Languages of India

India is a land of a diversity of linguistic communities, each of which shares a ordinary language and culture. Though there can be fifteen principal languages there are hundreds of thousands dialects that add to the brightness of the country.

18 languages are officially familiar 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 radically. For example Hindi has 250 million speakers, while in Andaman comparatively fewer people speak Hindi.

Tribal or Aboriginal language speaking inhabitants in India might be more than some of the European languages. For example Bhili and Santali both tribal languages have more than 4 million speakers. The brightness could 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 program in 71 languages!

Indian languages come from four separate families, which are: Indo-European, Dravidian, Mon-Khmer, and Sino-Tibetan. Majority of Indian population uses Indo-European and Dravidian languages. The language families split India geographically too.

Indo-European languages rule the northern and central India while in south India, mainly languages of Dravidian source are spoken. In eastern India languages of Mon-Khmer set is popular. Sino Tibetan languages are spoken in the northern Himalayas and shut to Burmese border. In terms of percentage, 75% of Indian population speaks languages of Indo-European family, 23% speak languages of Dravidian source and about 2% of the population speaks Mon-Khmer languages and Sino-Tibetan languages.