The Constitution of India designates the official languages of India as Hindi and English. [1] The number of bilingual speakers in India is 314.9 million, which is 26% of the population in 2011. [2]
Hindi is one of the official languages of India and had 528 million native speakers as of the 2011 Census. About 139 million Indians speak Hindi as a second language and 24 million speak it as their third language.
Language | First language speakers [5] | First language speakers as a percentage of total population | Second language speakers [6] | Third language speakers [6] | Total speakers | Total speakers as a percentage of total population |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hindi | 528,347,193 | 43.63 | 139,000,000 | 24,000,000 | 692,000,000 | 57.1 |
English | 259,678 | 0.02 | 83,000,000 | 46,000,000 | 129,000,000 | 10.6 |
Bengali | 97,237,669 | 8.3 | 9,000,000 | 1,000,000 | 107,000,000 | 8.9 |
Marathi | 83,026,680 | 7.09 | 13,000,000 | 3,000,000 | 99,000,000 | 8.2 |
Telugu | 81,127,740 | 6.93 | 12,000,000 | 1,000,000 | 95,000,000 | 7.8 |
Tamil | 69,026,881 | 5.89 | 7,000,000 | 1,000,000 | 77,000,000 | 6.3 |
Gujarati | 55,492,554 | 4.74 | 4,000,000 | 1,000,000 | 60,000,000 | 5 |
Urdu | 50,772,631 | 4.34 | 11,000,000 | 1,000,000 | 63,000,000 | 5.2 |
Kannada | 43,706,512 | 3.73 | 14,000,000 | 1,000,000 | 59,000,000 | 4.94 |
Odia | 37,521,324 | 3.2 | 5,000,000 | 390,000 | 43,000,000 | 3.56 |
Malayalam | 34,838,819 | 2.97 | 500,000 | 210,000 | 36,000,000 | 2.9 |
Punjabi | 33,124,726 | 2.83 | 2,230,000 | 720,000 | 36,600,000 | 3 |
Assamese | 15,311,351 | 1.26 | 7,488,153 | 740,402 | 23,539,906 | 1.94 |
Sanskrit | 0 [7] [8] [9] | 0 | 1,230,000 | 1,960,000 | 3,190,000 | 0.19 |
Combined percentages of first, second and third language speakers of Hindi and English in India from the 2011 Census. [10]
State or union territory | Hindi | English |
---|---|---|
India | 57.11% | 10.62% |
Andaman and Nicobar Islands | 79.87% | 21.94% |
Andhra Pradesh (incl. Telangana) | 12.59% | 13.06% |
Arunachal Pradesh | 62.76% | 23.08% |
Assam | 25.24% | 8.05% |
Bihar | 89.37% | 2.72% |
Chandigarh | 94.05% | 41.62% |
Chhattisgarh | 93.64% | 2.29% |
Dadra and Nagar Haveli | 57.50% | 10.34% |
Daman and Diu | 76.19% | 15.38% |
Delhi | 96.75% | 31.72% |
Goa | 53.34% | 41.80% |
Gujarat | 43.63% | 12.44% |
Haryana | 95.34% | 15.59% |
Himachal Pradesh | 96.57% | 10.64% |
Jammu and Kashmir (incl. Ladakh) | 38.00% | 15.98% |
Jharkhand | 85.43% | 5.15% |
Karnataka | 12.27% | 11.83% |
Kerala | 9.12% | 20.15% |
Lakshadweep | 17.87% | 19.30% |
Madhya Pradesh | 95.74% | 5.44% |
Maharashtra | 52.09% | 14.32% |
Manipur | 18.44% | 31.62% |
Meghalaya | 13.95% | 15.61% |
Mizoram | 7.01% | 15.50% |
Nagaland | 15.89% | 32.57% |
Odisha | 18.76% | 17.23% |
Puducherry | 3.87% | 28.10% |
Punjab | 51.04% | 30.05% |
Rajasthan | 95.04% | 4.55% |
Sikkim | 47.96% | 27.69% |
Tamil Nadu | 2.11% | 18.49% |
Tripura | 9.95% | 7.53% |
Uttar Pradesh | 97.40% | 6.42% |
Uttarakhand | 97.19% | 8.36% |
West Bengal | 13.83% | 6.70% |
Modern Standard Hindi, commonly referred to as Hindi, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in North India, and serves as the lingua franca of the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been described as a standardised and Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language, which itself is based primarily on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi and neighbouring areas of North India. Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, is one of the two official languages of the Government of India, along with English. It is an official language in nine states and three union territories and an additional official language in three other states. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India.
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language predominantly spoken by Marathi people in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the official language of Maharashtra, and an additional official language in the state of Goa. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India, with 83 million speakers as of 2011. Marathi ranks 13th in the list of languages with most native speakers in the world. Marathi has the third largest number of native speakers in India, after Hindi and Bengali. The language has some of the oldest literature of all modern Indian languages. The major dialects of Marathi are Standard Marathi and the Varhadi dialect.
Punjabi, sometimes spelled Panjabi, is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Punjab region of Pakistan and India. It has approximately 113 million native speakers.
Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, where it is also an official language alongside English. In India, Urdu is an Eighth Schedule language whose status and cultural heritage is recognized by the Constitution of India; it also has an official status in several Indian states. In Nepal, Urdu is a registered regional dialect and in South Africa it is a protected language in the constitution. It is also spoken as a minority language in Afghanistan and Bangladesh, with no official status.
Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Deccan, Northern India and Pakistan, and used as a lingua franca in both countries. Hindustani is a pluricentric language with two standard registers, known as Hindi and Urdu. Thus, it is also called Hindi–Urdu. Colloquial registers of the language fall on a spectrum between these standards.
Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Indian state of Gujarat and spoken predominantly by the Gujarati people. Gujarati is descended from Old Gujarati. In India, it is one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Union. It is also the official language in the state of Gujarat, as well as an official language in the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. As of 2011, Gujarati is the 6th most widely spoken language in India by number of native speakers, spoken by 55.5 million speakers which amounts to about 4.5% of the total Indian population. It is the 26th most widely spoken language in the world by number of native speakers as of 2007.
Indian English (IE) is a group of English dialects spoken in the Republic of India and among the Indian diaspora. English is used by the Indian government for communication, along with Hindi, as enshrined in the Constitution of India. English is also an official language in seven states and seven union territories of India, and the additional official language in seven other states and one union territory. Furthermore, English is the sole official language of the Indian Judiciary, unless the state governor or legislature mandates the use of a regional language, or if the President of India has given approval for the use of regional languages in courts.
Languages spoken in the Republic of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by 78.05% of Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians; both families together are sometimes known as Indic languages. Languages spoken by the remaining 2.31% of the population belong to the Austroasiatic, Sino–Tibetan, Tai–Kadai, and a few other minor language families and isolates. According to the People's Linguistic Survey of India, India has the second highest number of languages (780), after Papua New Guinea (840). Ethnologue lists a lower number of 456.
Pakistan is a multilingual country with dozens of languages spoken as first languages. The majority of Pakistan's languages belong to the Indo-Iranian group of the Indo-European language family.
Kashmiri or Koshur is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by around 7 million Kashmiris of the Kashmir region, primarily in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Kashmiri has split ergativity and the unusual verb-second word order.
There is no national language in India. However, article 343(1) of the Indian constitution specifically mentions that "The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script. The form of numerals to be used for the official purposes of the Union shall be the international form of Indian numerals," while clause 3 of the Official Languages Act, 1963 mentions the "Continuation of English Language for official purposes of the Union and for use in Parliament". Hence Indian English and Modern Standard Hindi are the Official Languages of the Government of India.
The Hindi Belt, also known as the Hindi Heartland, is a linguistic region encompassing parts of northern, central and eastern India where various Northern, Western, Eastern and Central Indo-Aryan languages subsumed under the term 'Hindi' are spoken. The term “Hindi belt” is sometimes also used to refer to the nine Indian states whose official language is Modern Standard Hindi, namely Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, as well as to the union territory of Chandigarh and the National Capital Territory of Delhi. It is also sometimes broadly referred to as the Hindi–Urdu Belt or Hindustani Belt.
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