The languages of India

Q. So, how many are there

A. India is, after China, the second most populous country in the world, and the languages of the sub-continent are spoken by well over 1,000 million people in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and members of the Indian diaspora in south-east Asia, Europe, North America, east and South Africa and the Caribbean. It is not possible to give the definitive answer to the actual number of languages they speak, however, as it rather depends on the criteria you apply.

�

Q. Meaning

A. What some would classify as a dialect others would see as a language in its own right. However, there are 14 official languages mentioned in the Indian constitution, and the various states in the country are largely organised around (majority) linguistic lines.

�

Q. And the languages are

A. Hindi (the 'official' official�language of India), Urdu (the Muslim cousin of Hindi, written in a modified Arabic script, and one of the official languages of Pakistan, along with Sindhi and Punjabi), Punjabi (in the Punjab and Pakistan), Bengali (in Bengal and Bangladesh), Oriya (in Orissa), Marathi (in Maharashtra), Gujarati (in Gujarat), Sanskrit (the classical language of northern India, spoken these days only by some Hindu scholars, although it does have a small modern literature) and Assamese (in Assam). All these belong to the Indo-Aryan group of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages - which includes almost all of the languages of Europe, including English.

�

Q. Indo-Aryan

A. With Iranian and Greek, the Indo-Aryan languages have the longest unbroken traditions in the Indo-European language family. Their earliest speakers originated outside India, probably migrating from the north-west into the Indo-Gangetic plain in the late second millennium BC. Sanskrit developed in the second millennium BC and has one of the longest written traditions in the world. There are some 638m speakers of Indo-Aryan languages, including the Sinhalese of Sri Lanka.

�

Q. What about the other five

A. There's the Indo-Iranian language Kashmiri, spoken in Kashmir, but as for the rest, nearly a quarter of all Indians speak languages belonging to the indigenous Dravidian family, among which Kannada (in Karnataka), Malayalam (in Kerala), Tamil (in Tamil Nadu) and Telugu (in Andhra Pradesh) have official status. This family of languages is spoken principally in the south of the sub-continent as well as northern Sri Lanka, although a lone Dravidian dialect, Brahui, is located in Pakistan. There are some 110m speakers of Dravidian languages.

�

Q. And others

A. Hundreds of additional languages, grouped in several families, account for less than 5 per cent of the population. The Munda languages - in particular Santhali and Khasi - are spoken by over 5 million people in the north and east of the country. Some Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken by communities in the north-east and along the northern border of India. The best-known of these are Garo, Khasi and Naga.

�

Other than that, there are the 'immigrant' languages, such as the languages of the various European colonial powers, French, Dutch and, most importantly, English, which has an auxiliary official-language status and serves as an all-Indian lingua franca, often much more useful in Dravidian-speaking areas than Hindi.

�

Q. So, how do you say 'hello' in the various different states

A. You'll probably get by with variations on 'namaste' or 'namaskar' or even 'hello' pretty much everywhere. 'Salaam alaikam' will be understood in Muslim areas. However, for more specific greetings:

�

Andhra Pradesh: namaskaram

Assam: namaskaara

Bengal: namoskaar

Gujarat: kem cho

Karnataka: heggidira

Kashmir: salam

Kerala: namaskaram

Maharashtra: namaste

Orissa: kemitee choo

Punjab: namaste (Hindu); asalam alaikam (Muslims); set siri akal (Sikhs)

Tamil Nadu: vanakkam

�

Hindi: namaste; namaskaar; shudh dhin

Urdu: adaab; salaam aleekam

Sanskrit: namo namah

�

To find out how to say 'hello' in hundreds of languages go to http://www.elite.net/~runner/jennifers/hello.htm

�

For more on Phrases & Sayings click here

�

By Simon Smith