Indian Languages History
The languages of Southern India are from the Dravidian family. The Indian subcontinent is indigenous to the Dravidian languages. Four classes classify the Dravidian languages: North, Central, South-Central, and South Dravidian. Utilizing the Middle Indic Prakrit languages and Apabhra’s of the Middle Ages, the Northern Indian languages from the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family developed Old Indic.
Persian, or Farsi, was brought into India by the Ghaznavids and other Turko-Afghan dynasties as the court language. Culturally Persianized, they dominated the region’s art, history, and literature for more than 500 years in tandem with the later Mughal dynasty, resulting in the Persianisation, primarily lexically, of many Indian languages.
There were numerous influences on each of the northern Indian languages. For instance, Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian were strongly influenced by Hindustani, leading to Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu as Hindustani language registers. On the other hand, Bangla preserved its Sanskritic origins while expanding its vocabulary substantially with Persian, English, French, and other foreign languages.
What are the 22 official languages in India?
Of the hundreds of languages spoken in India, 22 are referred to in the Indian Constitution: Assamese, Bengali (Bangladesh), Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, and Urdu all belong to the Indo-Aryan group of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European branch; Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu belongs to the Dravidian language family; and Santali is known as a language of Munda. The other languages of the Austronesian family are spoken in Southeast Asia, except for the Khasian languages spoken in Meghalaya, northeastern India, and the Nicobar languages, spoken in the Nicobar Islands in the Andaman Sea just to the northwest of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, all of which are categorized within the Mon-Khmer subfamily of Austroasiatic.
There are also hundreds of other less prominent languages like Tulu, Bhojpuri, and Ladakhi, which are the primary spoken language of some places.
Few Prominent Languages
Bengali
Bengali is the sixth most spoken language in the world. It is native to the Bengal region, comprising the nation of Bangladesh and the states of West Bengal, Tripura, and Barak Valley region of Assam. There is a large number of Bengali-speaking people in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Bengali developed from Abahatta, a derivative of Apabhramsha, itself derived from Magadhi Prakrit.
Marathi
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language. It is the official language of Maharashtra and the co-official language in Goa. There were 83 million speakers of the language in 2011. Marathi Language Day is celebrated on 27 February every year in Maharashtra and Goa, regulated by the state government. The major dialects of Marathi are Standard Marathi and the Varhadi dialect. It contains loanwords from Persian, Arabic, English, and a little from French & Portuguese languages.
Telugu
Telugu is the most widely spoken Dravidian language in India and around the world. It is an official language in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Yanam. Telugu ranks fourth by the number of native speakers in India (81 million in the 2011 Census). It is one of six languages with classical status in India.
Tamil
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and many parts of Sri Lanka. Large minorities also speak it in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, and worldwide. Tamil was the first Indian language to be declared a classical language by India’s Government in 2004.
Urdu
Hindustani was made the second language of the British Indian Empire after English. Modern Standard Urdu, the Persianised register of Hindustani, became the national language of Pakistan. Urdu had 70 million speakers in India in 2001.
Gujarati
Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the west Indian region of Gujarat. According to the CIA, 4.5% of India’s population (1.21 billion according to the 2011 census) speaks Gujarati.
Kannada
The Kannada language is a Dravidian language that branched off from the Kannada-Tamil subgroup around 500 B.C.E. The earliest written records are from the 5th century, and literature in the rich manuscript is from c. 850. It has the second oldest written tradition of all languages of India.
Punjabi
With about 32 million speakers, Punjabi, written in India’s Gurmukhi script, is one of India’s popular languages. It is spoken by over 80 million individuals in Pakistan and is written in the Shahmukhi alphabet. In Punjab, but also in neighboring regions, it is primarily spoken. It is the official language of Punjab and Delhi.
By nature, lots of Indians are bilingual. As per the 2001 Census, about 255 million Indians spoke at least two languages, more than a quarter of the total population, while 87.5 million spoke at least three. By nature, our multicultural culture can be made multilingual by design if the necessary interventions are taken at the state’s level and the non-state. However, the current attempts of the Centre to concentrate excessively on the Sanskrit version of Hindi will only help to fuel greater insecurity among local people in regions where the language is not spoken.
