Culture
The Many Languages of India: 22 Official Languages and Counting
India has 22 officially recognized languages and hundreds more spoken every day. Here's a friendly guide to the languages of India and where they're spoken.
A country of many voices
India's Constitution recognizes 22 'scheduled' languages, and the census records hundreds of mother tongues. Few countries on Earth carry so many living languages so gracefully — many Indians speak two, three or more in daily life.
Hindi and English are used by the central government. There is no single 'national language'; each state uses its own official language too.
The big language families
- Indo-Aryan languages in the north and west: Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Odia and others, all related to ancient Sanskrit.
- Dravidian languages in the south: Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. Tamil is one of the world's oldest living classical languages, with poetry more than 2,000 years old.
- Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic languages in the northeast and central hills, such as Manipuri (Meitei), Bodo and Santali.
Many scripts, too
Hindi and Marathi use Devanagari; Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati and Gurmukhi (Punjabi) each have their own beautiful script. Indian rupee notes print their value in 15 languages besides Hindi and English.
This variety is why India has so many film industries, and why a trip from Kolkata to Chennai can feel like visiting several countries in one — all of them proudly Indian.