India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

is home to several hundred

languages Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

. Most Indians speak a language belonging to the families of the Indo-Aryan branch of

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...

(c. 77%), the Dravidian (c. 20.61%), the

Austroasiatic The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...

( Munda) (c. 1.2%), or the

Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

(c. 0.8%), with some languages of the

Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 10 ...

still unclassified. The

SIL Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensi ...

lists 415 living languages for India.

Overview

India does not have a national language. However, Rule 1976 (As Amended, 1987) of the

Constitution of India The Constitution of India ( IAST: ) is the supreme law of India. The document lays down the framework that demarcates fundamental political code, structure, procedures, powers, and duties of government institutions and sets out fundamental ...

, mandates Hindi and English as the "Official Languages" required "for Official Purpose of the Union." Business in the Indian parliament is transacted in either Hindi or in English. English is allowed for official purposes such as parliamentary proceedings, judiciary, communications between the

Central Government A central government is the government that is a controlling power over a unitary state. Another distinct but sovereign political entity is a federal government, which may have distinct powers at various levels of government, authorized or del ...

and a State Government. States within India have the liberty and powers to select their own official language(s) through legislation. In addition to the two Official Languages, the constitution recognizes 22 regional languages, named in a specific list as " Scheduled Languages". (Hindi is a listed Scheduled Language but English is not.) India's Constitution includes provisions detailing the languages used for the official purposes of the union, the languages used for the official purposes of each state and union territory and the languages used for communication between the union and the states.

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

is the most widely spoken language in the northern parts of India. The Indian census takes the widest possible definition of "Hindi" as a broad variety of the "

Hindi Belt The Hindi Belt, also known as the Hindi Heartland, is a linguistic region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern and western India where various Central Indo-Aryan languages subsumed under the term 'Hindi' (for example, by the ...

". According to 2001 Census, 53.6% of the Indian population declared that they speak Hindi as either their first or second language, in which 41% of them have declared it as their native language. 12% of Indians declared that they can speak

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

as a second language. Thirteen languages account for more than 1% of Indian population each, and between themselves for over 95%; all of them are " scheduled languages of the constitution". Scheduled languages spoken by fewer than 1% of Indians are Santali (0.63%),

Kashmiri Kashmiri may refer to: * People or things related to the Kashmir Valley or the broader region of Kashmir * Kashmiris, an ethnic group native to the Kashmir Valley * Kashmiri language, their language People with the name * Kashmiri Saikia Baruah ...

(0.54%),

Nepali Nepali or Nepalese may refer to : Concerning Nepal * Anything of, from, or related to Nepal * Nepali people, citizens of Nepal * Nepali language, an Indo-Aryan language found in Nepal, the current official national language and a language spoken ...

(0.28%),

Sindhi Sindhi may refer to: *something from, or related to Sindh, a province of Pakistan * Sindhi people, an ethnic group from the Sindh region * Sindhi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them People with the name * Sarkash Sindhi (1940–2012 ...

(0.25%), Konkani (0.24%),

Dogri Dogri ( Name Dogra Akkhar: ; Devanagari: डोगरी; Nastaliq: ; ) is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir, India, with smaller groups of speakers in adjoining regions of western Himachal Prad ...

(0.22%), Meitei (0.14%),

Bodo Bodo may refer to: Ethnicity * Boro people, an ethno-linguistic group mainly from Northwest Assam, India * Bodo-Kachari people, an umbrella group from Nepal, India and Bangladesh that includes the Bodo people Culture and language * Boro cu ...

(0.13%) and

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...

(In the 2001

census of India The decennial Census of India has been conducted 16 times, as of 2021. While it has been undertaken every 10 years, beginning in 1872 under British Viceroy Lord Mayo, the first complete census was taken in 1881. Post 1949, it has been conducted by ...

, 14,135 people reported Sanskrit as their

native language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother to ...

). The largest language that is not "scheduled" is

Bhili Bhili (Bhili: ), , is a Western Indo-Aryan language spoken in west-central India, in the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh. Other names for the language include Bhagoria and Bhilboli; several varieties are called Gara ...

(0.95%), followed by Gondi (0.27%),

Khandeshi Khandeshi is a language spoken in the Maharashtra state of India. It is spoken in the Khandesh region (Districts Dhule, Jalgaon and Nandurbar ��ुळे, जळगाव आणि नंदुरबार wedged between the territory of Bhi ...

(0.21%),

Tulu Tulu may refer to: People *Derartu Tulu (born 1972), Ethiopian long-distance runner *Walid Yacoubou (born 1997), Togolese footballer nicknamed "Tulu" India *Tulu calendar, traditional solar calendar generally used in the regions of southwest Kar ...

(0.17%) and Kurukh (0.10%). As per 2011 census, 26% of Indians are

bilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all ...

and 7% are

trilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...

. India has a Greenberg's diversity index of 0.914—i.e. two people selected at random from the country will have different native languages in 91.4% of cases. As per the

2011 Census of India The 2011 Census of India or the 15th Indian Census was conducted in two phases, house listing and population enumeration. The House listing phase began on 1 April 2010 and involved the collection of information about all buildings. Informatio ...

, languages by highest number of speakers are as follows:

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

, Marathi,

Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode ...

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, na ...

Gujarati Gujarati may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India * Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat * Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them * Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub- ...

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

Odia Odia, also spelled Oriya or Odiya, may refer to: * Odia people in Odisha, India * Odia language, an Indian language, belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family * Odia alphabet, a writing system used for the Odia languag ...

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry ( Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam wa ...

.Statement 4 : Scheduled Languages in descending order of speakers' strength – 2011
/ref>

List of languages by number of native speakers

Ordered by number of speakers as first language.

More than one million speakers

The 2011 census recorded 31 individual languages as having more than 1 million native speakers (0.1% of total population). The languages in bold are scheduled languages (the only scheduled language with less than 1 million native speakers is

). The first table is restricted to only speaking populations for scheduled languages. * Excludes figures of Paomata, Mao-Maram and Purul sub-divisions of Senapati district of Manipur for 2001.
** The percentage of speakers of each language for 2001 has been worked out on the total population of India excluding the population of Mao-Maram, Paomata and Purul subdivisions of Senapati district of Manipur due to cancellation of census results.

100,000 to one million speakers

List of mother tongues by number of speakers

Each of the ''languages'' of the 2001 census subsumes one or more ''mother tongues''. Speaker numbers are available for these mother tongues and they are also included in the speaker numbers for their respective language. For example, the ''language'' Telugu (with a total of 81,127,740 speakers) includes the ''mother tongues'' of Telugu (with 80,912,459 speakers), Vadari (198,020 speakers) and "Others" (17,261 speakers). The General Notes from the 2001 census define "mother tongue" as "the language spoken in childhood by the person's mother to the person. If the mother died in infancy, the language mainly spoken in the person's home in childhood will be the mother tongue." The following table lists those mother tongues that have more than one million speakers according to the 2011 census:

Notes

References

General references

Data table of Census of India, 2001

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20081118143215/http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/Statement6.htm Comparative ranking of scheduled languages in descending order of speaker's strength-1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001]
Census data on Languages

External links

* * https://web.archive.org/web/20050109084200/http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=India Ethnologue report
">Central Institute of Indian Languages {{DEFAULTSORT:Languages by number of native speakers in India
Indian culture-related lists Lists of languages, India, number of native speakers