Languages of India

India is the home of many languages. 75% of the languages are Indo-Aryan and 20% are Dravidian. In addition to Hindi and English, many other languages are spoken.

India now recognizes 22 official regional languages. They are the following:

Assamese
Bengali
Dogri
Gujarati
Hindi
Kannada
Kashmiri
Konkani
Maithili
Malayalam
Meitei
Marathi
Nepali
Odia
Punjabi
Sanskrit
Santali
Sindhi
Tamil
Telugu
Urdu

Few Indians speak Sanskrit as a first language. It is the liturgical language of Hinduism.

Languages with more than 25 million speakers include Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu are Dravidian languages. Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi and Urdu are Indo-Aryan.

India is a country with many languages. Urdu is also spoken in Pakistan, Bengali in Bangladesh and Nepali in Nepal. Of the languages spoken in India, Hindi has the most first-language speakers.