The Indian population displays a high degree of diversity in its language and dialects. This diversity has resulted through the age due to the various ethnic groups and races that immigrated into India. The various Indian language of today have evolved from the various language families that correspond approximately to the various racial elements that have come into India. Over the centuries the various parental language has interacted with each other to produce the various language and dialects of modern India.
India never had a common language which could be understood by all her people. For many years in the past, Sanskrit remained a common medium. However, it was the language of the learned classes and not of the masses. Under the British regime English became the lingua franca, again only of the literate. After independence, when the question of a common language came up, Hindi won the casting vote. However, as it was restricted to only a few states and union territories it did not gain sufficient importance. In free India, the distribution pattern of major language groups was considered as a satisfactory
basis for the formation of states. Thus, this policy gave of the political meaning to the geographical patterns of then recognized Hindi as the official language of the union and at the same time recognized the regional language as the official language of the union and at the same time recognized the regional languages as the official languages of the states concerned. English although foreign, was retained as the authoritative legislative and judicial language. The 8th schedule of the constitution of India recognizes statutorily the following languages, out of which only are not official languages of any States. (1) Assamese, (2) Bengali, (3) Gujarati, (4) Hindi, (5) Kannada, (6) Kashmiri, (7) Konkani, (8) Malayalam, (9) Manipuri, (10) Marathi, (11) Nepali, (12) Oriya, (13) Punjabi, (14) Sanskrit, (15) Sindhi, (16) Tamil, (17) Telugu, (18) Urdu (19) Bodo, (20) Santhali, (21) Maithili and (22) Dogri.
Classification of Indian Languages:
Broadly speaking one may classify the language spoken by the people of India into the following four languages families:
- 1. Indo-European Family (Arya)
- 2. Dravidian Family (Dravida)
- 3. Austric Family (Nishada)
- 4. Sino-Tibetan Family (Kirata)
It is interesting to note that the strength of the four families is very uneven, Indo-Aryan languages are spoken by about 73% of the population and the Dravidian language by about 25% of the population. The Austric languages are spoken by a more 1.3% of the population while the Sino-Tibetan languages by a meagre 0.7%.
Indo-Aryan Languages:
A substantive proportion of the Indian population (73%) speaks one or other forms of the Indo-Aryan languages. They are generally divided into twomain branches: (a) Dardic and (b) Indo-Aryan.
(a) The Dardic group includes Dardi, Shina, Kohistani and Kashmiri. With the only exception of Kashmiri, whose speakers have a strength of above two million, one of these speeches are spoken by a population of more than 7000.
(b) The Indo-Aryan branches are divided into six groups: North-Western, Southern, Eastern, East-Central, Central and Northern groups.
- The North-Western groups include Lhanda, Kachchi and Sindhi.
- The Southern group comprises Marathi and Konkani.
- The Eastern group includes Oriya, Bihari, Bengali and Assamese. Among the dialects of Bihar may be included Maithili, Bhojpuri and Magadhi.
- The East-Central group consists of these main groups, namely Avadhi, Baghaili and Chattisgarhi.
- The Central group includes Western Hindi, Punjabi, Rajasthani and Gujarati. The dialects that come under this Hindi group are Khariboli, Brajbhasha, Bangaru, Kanauji, Bundeli. The Rajasthani group also includes several speeches such as Marwari, Mewari and Malawi.
- The speeches that fail in the Northern group consists of one or other variety of Pahari language. They include Nepali, Central Pahari and Western Pahari.
Dravidian Languages:
The Dravidian languages may be broadly divided into three groups: South-Dravidian, Central-Dravidian and North-Dravidian.
The South-Dravidian group comprises of major languages such as Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada and some minor languages such as Tulu, Coorgi and perhaps Yerukala.
The Central-Dravidian group includes the major language of Telugu. Gondi is one of the minor languages that comes under this group. Kui, Khond and Parji are other speeches that may be included in this category.
The North-Dravidian group is very small in comparison with the above two groups and comprises only minor languages like Kurukh (Oraon) and Malti
It should be noted that the Dravidian group as a whole is less diverse than the other language families of India. The four major languages of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam themselves account for 96% of the total population of Dravidian speakers.
Austric Languages:
The Austric languages of India belong to the Austro-Asiatic sub-family of languages. This sub-family divided into two main branches: Munda and Mon-Khmer.
The Mon-Khmer branch consists of two language groups, namely the Khasi and the Nicobari.
The Munda branch is the largest of the Austric language family and consists of tribal language groups. The Austro-Asiatic languages are spoken by about 6.2 million people in India. The largest single group is that of Santali speakers, who alone account for more than half of this total.
There are seven groups within the Austric family having a population of more than a lakh person each. On the whole, one may say that the Austric languages belong mainly to central tribal belt of India.
Sino-Tibetan Languages:
The speakers of the Sino-Tibetan language family in India fall into three main branches: Tibeto-Himalayan, North-Assam and Assam-Burmese.
- The Tibeto-Himalayan branch consists of the following two major groups: The Bhutia group and the Himalayan group.
- The Bhutia group includes Tibetan, Balti, Ladakhi, Sherpa and Sikkim Bhutia.
- The Himalayan group consists of Chamba, Kanauri and Lepcha. Ladakhi has the largest number of speakers followed by Sikkim Bhutia and the Tibetan. In the Himalayan group, the speakers of Kanauri have the highest numerical strength.
- The North-Assam or Arunachal branch includes the following six speeches: Aka, Dafla, Abor, Miri, Mishmi and Mishing. In this group the Miri’s have the largest number of speakers.
- The Assam-Burmese branch of the Sino-Tibetan family is divided into the following five major groups: Bodo (or Boro), Naga, Kachin, Kukichin and Burma group. Each of these group consists of several speeches. Among them the Naga group displays the highest number. The numerical strength of different groups varies greatly. There are as many as six speeches having a total strength varying between one and seven lakhs. Manipuri has the largest number of speakers exceeding six lakhs. Other speeches falling in this category include Garo, Tripuri, Mikir and Lushai (Mizo).
Geographical Distribution of India Languages:
The languages belonging to the four families described above have a peculiar geographical distribution.
Languages of the Indo-Aryan family are concentrated in the plains of India. The domain of Indo-Aryan languages, however, extended over the peninsular plateau also, reaching as far south as the Konkan coast. The central part of the above said geographical region has Hindi as the principal language. It is spoken by the majority of people in India. Hindi is spoken in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and the Union Territory of Delhi. Urdu is closely akin to Hindi and is Widely distributed in this belt.
The speeches belonging to the North-Western groups, such as Kachhi and Sindhi are mainly concentrated in western India. Marathi is the most important language of the southern group of the Indo-Aryan family. The languages of the eastern group, such as Oriya, Bengali and Assamese are spoken in the eastern India.
The languages of the central group are confined to Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat. The Himalayan and the sub Himalayan areas are inhabited by the speakers of the various forms of Pahari and Nepali which belong to the northern group of the Indo-Aryan languages.
Languages of the Dravidian family are concentrated in the Plateau region and the adjoining coastal plains. Telugu is spoken in Andhra; Tamil in Tamil Nadu; Kannada in Karnataka and Malayalam in Kerala. The speeches of the Dravidian family are also spoken by a large number of tribal groups living in the eastern and the north-eastern and the north-eastern parts of the peninsular plateau. These groups included the Gonds of Madhya Pradesh, Central India and the Oraons of Chota Nagpur Plateau.
The speeches of the Austric family are spoken by the tribal groups in the Khasi and Jaintia hills of Meghalaya and tribal districts of Santal Paraganas, Mayurbhanj, Ranchi, East Nimar, Betul and Boadh Khondmahals. Of the two speeches of Mon-Khmer, Khasi is confined to the Khasi and Jaintia Hills while Nicobari to the Nicobar Island. The Mundari speakers are concentrated in the other districts mentioned above.
The languages and the dialects belonging to the Sino-Tibetan family are spoken by the tribal groups of northeast and of the Himalayan and sub Himalayan regions of the north and north-west. The speeches of the Tibeto-Himalayan branch are in Ladakh and parts of Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim. The Assam-Burmese branch is concentrated in the Indo-Burmese border. Among these, Naga dialects are spoken in Nagaland, Kushar is concentrated in the Mizo hills, Garo in Garo hills and Meithei in Manipur.
Linguistic Regions:
The geographical distribution of the major languages in India neatly fits into a scheme of linguistic regions. Based on the principle of numerical strength about a dozen major languages constitute the principal linguistic regions. However, the tribal languages do not fit into this scheme of regions as the tribal groups are concentrated in enclaves in central, eastern and north-eastern parts of the country. The regional mosaic of the tribal languages is highly complex and does not lend itself to a simplified scheme of regions.
Broadly speaking, the principal languages of India constitute the following linguistic regions: (1) Kashmiri, (2) Punjabi, (3) Hindi/Urdu, (4) Bengali, (5) Assamese, (6) Oriya, (7) Gujarati, (8) Marathi, (9) Kannada, (10) Telugu, (11) Tamil, (12) Malayalam.
The tribal languages are so distributed that either they have their own small clusters or they overlap the regions of major languages. In the north-east, however, the tribal speeches such as those of minor groups in Arunachal have almost knife-edged boundaries of their own. The twelve linguistic regions identified before generally correspond with the states of the Indian Union. But the state boundaries do not always correspond with the linguistic boundaries. In fact, the linguistic boundary in itself is not a line, it is a zone of transition over which one language gradually loses its dominance and gives way