India has a very large linguistic diversity, 29 languages have more than a million native speakers, 60 have more than 100,000, and 122 have more than 10,000 native speakers.
1. In 1961, the Census recorded a total of 1652 languages. Of course, many languages have disappeared since then, and some are spoken by a very small number of people, but the country’s multilingualism is still impressive today.
2. Due to a large number of different languages, scientists grouped them into language families. The Indian languages belong to four language families: Indo-European, Dravidian, Mon-Khmer, and Sino-Tibetan.
3. English and Hindi are the two main languages used by the Central Government. But even when you include people who speak English as a second language, only 12% of India’s population speaks it.
4. Hindi is widely spoken in Pakistan, Indonesia, Nepal, and even the Caribbean.
5. Hindi Day is an annual day observed on 14 September in North India to celebrate the adoption of Hindi as one of the official languages of India.
6. Hindi was known by different names at different stages of its evolution in different eras. It was known as Apabhramsa at its earliest stage.
7. India has 22 official languages, namely Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Telugu, and Urdu.
8. All the major Indian epics are written in Sanskrit.
9. Sanskrit is quite popular in Germany. More than 10 universities in Germany offer Sanskrit as a subject.
10. Hindi is one of the most popular languages in the world, despite the fact that only about 40% of Indians consider it their native language.
11. The Bengali language is the second most popular language in India, which according to various estimates is spoken by about 200 million people worldwide. This language is one of the ten most popular languages in the world.
12. Tamil (5000 years old) – oldest living language in India. Part of the Dravidian family, which comprises of some native southern and eastern Indian languages, Tamil is the most widely spoken language in the state of Tamil Nadu.
