Principal Languages of India

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Principal Languages of India

India has 22 languages which have been given the grade of National Languages.

Assamese :

• It is an Indo – Aryan language and is the official language of Assam.

Bengali :

• It is one of the leading Indo – Aryan language and is die official language of West Bengal – Gujarati.
• It is an Indo – Aryan language and is the official language of Gujarat.

Hindi :

• The largest spoken Indo – Aryan language.
• It is the official language of the Government of India.
• Various dialects of Hindi are Khariboli, Brajbhasha, Bundeli, Awadhi, Marwari, Maithili and Bhojpuri.
• In 6 States and UTs, Hindi is the official language.

Kannada :

• It belongs to the Dravidian family & is the official langauge of Karnataka.

Kashmiri :

• It is an Indo – Aryan language.
• It is often mistaken as the official language of Jammu and Kashmir.

Konkani :

• It is the official language of Goa and is spoken by thousands of Konkanis in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala.
• It was added in 1992 by 71st Amendment.

Malayalam :

• Belong to the Dravidian family and is the official language of Kerala.

Manipuri :

• It is the official language of Manipur.
• It was added in 1992 by 71st Amendment.

Marathi :

• It is an Indo – Aryan language and is the official language of Maharashtra.

Nepali :

• It is spoken in parts of UP, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, etc.
• It was added in 1992 by 71st Amendment.

Oriya :

• It is an Indo – Aryan language and is the official language of Orissa.

Punjabi :

• It is an Indo – Aryan language and is the official language of Punjab.

Sanskrit :

• It is one of the earliest languages of the world.
• Early Sanksrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit and covers the period between 2000 and 500 BC.

Sindhi :

• It is an Indo – Aryan language.
• It was added in 1967 by 21st Amendment.

Tamil :

• It is the oldest of the Dravidian languages and is the official language of Tamil Nadu.

Telegu :

• It is numerically the biggest of the Dravidian languages and is the official language of Andhra Pradesh.

Urdu :

• It is die offiical langauge of Jammu and Kashmir.
• Modern Urdu developed due to the efforts of Sir Sayyed Ahmed Khan (1817 – 1898).

Dogri :

• It is generally spoken in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu.
• It is a combination of ancient Sanskrit and Pahari Dogri languages.
• It has been added by the 92nd Constitutional Amendment act, 2003.

Maithili :

• It is chiefly spoken in the Maithilianchal region of Bihar.
• It is the second State language of Bihar.
• It has been added by the 92nd Constitutional Amendment act, 2003.

Santhali :

• It is chiefly spoken in the area of Chhotanagpur Plateau in Jharkhand and Bihar.
• It has been added by the 92nd Constitutional Amendment act, 2003.

Bodo :

• It is chiefly spoken in Assam and its adjoining North – East States.
• It has been added by the 92nd Constitutional Amendment act, 2003.

Comparative Strengths of Scheduled Languages (Census 2001) :

A Million Mutinies Now	V.S. Naipaul
A Midsummer Night's Dream	William Shakespeare
A Passage to England	Nirad C. Choudhari
A Passage to India	E.M. Foster
A Prisoner's Scrapbook	L.K. Advani
A Sense of Time	H.S. Vatsyayan
A Strange and Sublime Address	Amit Chaudhary
A Streetcar Named Desire	Tennesse Williams
A Study of History Arnold	J. Toynbee
A Suitable Boy	Vikram Seth
A Tale of Two Cities	Charles Dickens
A Thousand Days	Arthur M. Schlesinger
A Thousand Suns	Dominique Lappierre
A Village by the Sea	Anita Desai
A Voice for Freedom	Nayantara Sehgal
A Week with Gandhi	Louis Fischer
A Woman's Life	Guy de Maupassant
Absolute Power	David Baldacci
Adam Bede	George Eliot
Adonis	P.B. Shelley
Adventures of Tom Sawyer	Mark Twain
Afternoon Raag	Amit Chaudhari
Agni Veena	Kazi Nazrul Islam
Akbarnama	Abdul Fazal
Alice in Wonderland	Lewis Carroll
All Quiet on the Western Front	Erick Maria Remarque
All the King's Men	Robert Penn Warren
All the President's Men	Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward
All Things Bright and Beautiful	James Herriot
All's Well that Ends Well	William Shakespeare
Amar Kosh	Amar Singh
An American Dilemma	Gunnar Myrdal
An American Tragedy	Theodore Dreiser
An Area of Darkness	V.S. Naipaul
An Autobiography	Jawaharlal Nehru
An Equal Music	Vikram Seth
An Idealist View of Life	Dr. S. Radhakrishnan
Anandmath	Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
And Quiet Flows the Don	Mikhail Sholokhov
Angels in America	Tony Kushner
Animal Farm	George Orwell
Anna Karenina	Leo Tolstoy
Antony and Cleopatra	William Shakespeare
Ape and Essence	Aldous Huxley
Around the World in Eighty Days	Jules Verne
Arrowsmith	Sinclair Lewis
As You Like It	William Shakespeare
Asia and Western Dominance	K.M. Panikkar
Asian Drama	Gunnar Myrdal
August 1914	Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Autobiography of an Unknown Indian	Nirad C. Choudhuri