ctrl.altered.mind

I frequently get asked questions about India, ranging from the current state of the economy to whether I actually rode my pet elephant to school (seriously). Quite often, people around me are intrigued by Indian languages, and the sheer number of them. Truly, the numbers are awe-inspiring when one thinks about them, even for Indians who are generally accustomed to the multilingual environment in any part of the country.

As large and linguistically diverse as the country is, India does not have a single official language. Instead, states have more or less been linguistically divided, and each state has its own official language - in addition to the nationally recognized official languages, Hindi and English. The establishment of official languages has been quite the process itself, and makes for an interesting read on Wikipedia. The official figure of mother tongues spoken in India is 1683, of which an estimated 850 are in daily use.

The Central Institute of Indian Languages has published this map indicating the dominant Indian language families.

Returning to the list of languages spoken, English is a common second language spoken by about 100 million Indians. A third of the country (337 million) primarily speaks Hindi, clearly making it the dominant native language. Telugu, Tamil, and Marathi (the official language of my home state) close in respectively, with between 70 and 80 million native speakers each. Konkani, my mother tongue, is a much more localized language and (according to the 1991 census) has about 1.76 million native speakers (Konkani itself is a collective of dialects of numerous flavors). That comprises about 0.21% of the country’s population, and ranks 15th in the list of Scheduled Languages as per strength. This count, however, is highly skewed by the fact that a very large number of Konkani speakers stay outside India, either as expatriates or NRIs, and determining this number is difficult. The Ethnologue, however, puts the number of Konkani speakers at an estimated 7.6 million - over four times the 1991 census figure (2001 census data is not yet public).

Konkani has a rich history, and has come close to drifting into oblivion due to its territorial confines, especially during the Portuguese rule in Goa, circa 1684. Migration over the centuries, however, has helped the language bounce back to its current state of popularity.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 17th, 2007 at 2:55 am and is filed under India.