What are some of the popular Indian languages?

 

Languages are always an important part of any culture. As language is the primary way of communication between the people residing in a particular region/country. It is also considered as a primary factor that makes Indian culture as a whole so diverse and rich. Unlike any country in the world India has the most amount of diversity in terms of religions, landscapes, customs and all these factors combined with the vast area of our country leads to different languages being spoken in the same country. 

You must have got the gist of our blog's topic for today, which is the five most widely spoken languages in India- 

1. Hindi: Hindi is mostly spoken in the Hindi Belt region, which includes sections of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language.

• It has been said that Hindi is a Sanskritized standardisation of the Hindustani language, which is principally based on the Khariboli dialect spoken in Delhi and the surrounding regions of North India. 
• One of the two official languages of the Indian government is English, and Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, is the other. In nine states, three union territories, and three further states, it is an additional official language. 
   
• The Republic of India has 22 official languages, with Hindi being one of them. After Mandarin, Spanish, and English, Hindi is the fourth most widely spoken first language worldwide.

2. Bengali: Bengali, an Indo-Aryan language, is more well-known by its endonym, Bangla, and it has its roots in the Bengal region of South Asia.

• It is the official, national, and most extensively spoken language of Bangladesh and the second most widely spoken of the 22 scheduled languages of India. 
  
  
• With around 300 million native speakers, Bengali is the fifth most widely spoken native language and the seventh most widely spoken language overall. Bengali is the fifth-most-used Indo-European language.
• Bengali is the official language of Bangladesh and is spoken as a first language by 98% of the population.
  
  
• Bengali is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, and the Barak Valley region of Assam. Since September 2011, the Indian state of Jharkhand has recognised it as a second official language. It is the most extensively used language in the Bay of Bengal's Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

3. Telugu: Telugu is a Dravidian language that is mostly spoken by Telugu people in the Indian states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, where it is also the official language. 

• It is one of the twenty-two scheduled languages of the Republic of India and the most widely spoken member of the Dravidian language family. 
  
  
• Along with Hindi and Bengali, it is one of the few languages that has primary official status in more than one Indian state. One of the six languages recognised by the Indian government as a classical language is Telugu. 
• Telugu is the 15th most spoken language in the world according to the Ethnologue list of languages by number of native speakers, with about 81 million native speakers as of the 2011 census, making it the fourth most spoken language in India. 
  
  
• Additionally, it is the fastest-growing language in the United States, where Telugu is widely spoken.

4. Marathi: Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language that is mostly spoken by Marathi people in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It serves as both the official language of Maharashtra and the state of Goa. With 83 million native speakers as of 2011, it is one of India's 22 scheduled languages. 

• On the list of languages with the greatest number of native speakers worldwide, Marathi comes in at number 11. After Bengali and Hindi, Marathi has the third-highest native speaker population in India.
•  Of all the modern Indian languages, the language possesses some of the oldest literature. Standard Marathi and the Varhadi dialect are the two main varieties of the language.
• Marathi has a three-way gender system that includes the neuter in addition to the masculine and feminine and distinguishes between inclusive and exclusive forms of the word "we." 
  
  
• With the growth of the Maratha Empire beginning with Shivaji's rule, Marathi became more well-known. Persian, the regional standard for courtly language, was replaced in Shivaji's court by Marathi. Additionally, the persianization of the Marathi used in administrative papers decreased. By 1677, only 37% of the lexicon was Persian, down from 80% in 1630.

5. Tamil: Tamil is a Dravidian language belonging to South Asia's Tamil people. Singapore, Sri Lanka, the Indian enclave of Puducherry, and the Indian state of Tamil Nadu all have Tamil as one of their official languages. 

• The four other South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana, as well as the Union Territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, also have sizable Tamil-speaking populations. The Tamil diaspora, which is present in various nations like Malaysia, Myanmar, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Mauritius, also speaks it. 
• Moors from Sri Lanka also speak Tamil as their mother tongue. Tamil was the first language to be categorised as an Indian classical language. It is also one of the 22 scheduled languages in the Indian Constitution.