Principal Languages of India
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 |