Which subcontinent has the largest number of languages

Of the total population of India, There are total identifiable mother tongues which have returned 10, or more speakers each at the all-India level, comprising mother tongues grouped under the scheduled languages and mother tongues grouped under the non-scheduled languages. Those mother tongues which have returned less than 10, speakers each and which have been classified under a particular language, are included in "others" under that language.

Of these languages, 14 were initially included in the Constitution. Sindhi language was added in Thereafter three more languages, Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali were included in You can manage them any time by clicking on the notification icon. This section is about Living in UAE and essential information you cannot live without.

By clicking below to sign up, you're agreeing to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Friday, November 12, Asia India. India Pakistan Philippines. All Sections. Taj Mahal Image Credit: Supplied More than 19, languages or dialects are spoken in India as mother tongues, according to the latest analysis of a census released this week. The methodology For assessing the correlation between the mother tongue and designations of the census and for presenting the numerous raw returns in terms of their linguistic affiliation to actual languages and dialects, 19, raw returns were subjected to thorough linguistic scrutiny, edit and rationalisation.

What are the findings? The non-scheduled languages are 99 in against in Subsequently, Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali were added in More From India. India: Woman gives birth in train toilet. Indian wrestler Nisha Dahiya wrongly declared dead. Minor additions come from the Portuguese, Dutch, and French, but, as one might expect, the bulk of Europeanisms come from the British. In the efforts to replace English words and phrases with Indian ones, reformers looked mainly to Sanskrit, though India is home to another ancient language family, the Dravidian, which exists almost exclusively in southern India, though pockets of Dravidian languages survive in the Northern parts of India and western Pakistan.

Little research exists on the origins of Dravidian speech, though researchers know with some degree of certainty that few, if any connections exist between Dravidian and other language families in India or isolated languages outside the nation.

Zograf mentions this briefly, but University of Stanford professor Murray Emeneau discusses the subject of similarities between the two families in his book, Language and Linguistic Area. Zograf, however concentrates on the differences between the two families and brings to light a number of interesting points.

In direct contrast with New IA, Dravidian speech contrasts long and short vowels. Words in this family typically end in a vowel and stress the first syllable. In other words, Dravidian languages differ significantly from IA ones even at the level of the actual sounds in the language, to say nothing of how words or sentences are formed.

These exclusive traits complement a vocabulary saturated with unmodified Dravidian words. This does not mean to imply that these languages are immune to linguistic mingling.

On the contrary, Sanskrit and the Prakrits present themselves in each of the major Dravidian tongues, though Tamil remains largely immune to the addition of IA words. Telegu and Malayalam are the two languages most influenced by IA, though vast differences in pronunciation — as the Dravidian sound system makes the borrowed words conform to its rules — make these loan words somewhat invisible.

In addition to these new words, Europeanisms can be heard in the major Dravidian languages. Similarly, the Dravidian speech pockets in north and central India draw from the surrounding sea of IA conversation. The differences between IA and Dravidian idioms include sophisticated linguistic analyses that, though ignored on this site, are presented in great detail in other works, such as those cited herein.

Although there is archaeological evidence of written language in India from the third millennium B. The other — Kharoshthi — seems to have died out by the fifth century C. Finally, European mercantilism and imperialism brought the roman script to India, and, in addition to European languages — notably English— that use it, some presses or publications will transliterate Indian languages into roman script for practical reasons.

As a part of a site dedicated to postcolonial issues, it is important to note here that linguistic differences have social, cultural, and political consequences too numerous to summarize easily. With so many traditions, and their complex weave of borrowings and translations, selecting texts and finding the resources to study them will provide more material than institutions in India or abroad can handle.

Coupled with that problem is that the prestige of writers working in English or Hindi and older Sanskrit texts tends to overshadow other traditions like Urdu and Bengali, not to mention the Dravidian languages, to people in the West.

In short, despite the recent interest in Indian literature, there is still a lot more to be done. Right your that linguistic differences have social, cultural, and political consequences too numerous to summarize easily. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Taliban News. This story is from November 20, Around million people use it as their mother tongue, after Mandarin Chinese million , Spanish million and English million.

The Languages for the Future report released on Wednesday by the British Council in London identified 10 top languages that Britain needs to learn on priority. A survey commissioned by the council suggests that three quarters of the UK public are unable to speak any of these languages well enough to hold a conversation. Interestingly, it emerged on Wednesday that the most common languages spoken by schoolchildren in the UK consist of four from the Indian subcontinent — Panjabi, Urdu, Gujarati and Bengali, three from Europe — Polish, French and Portuguese and Arabic, Tamil and Somali.

The council also calls for increased understanding and learning of Indian languages.