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India is a country of incredible linguistic diversity, with over 1,600 languages spoken throughout the country, 23 of which only constitutionally recognized official languages. However, Hindi and English are the official languages of the Indian government and are used for official purposes, such as in government documents and in the courts.
Hindi is the most widely spoken language in India, 53.6% of the Indian population declared that they speak Hindi as either their first or second language, in which 41% of them have declared it as their native language or mother tongue. It is also the language used in Bollywood movies, which are hugely popular throughout the country.
Hindi is the most widely spoken language in the northern parts of India. The map below shows the most and second most spoken language in each Indian State.
Other major languages in India include Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Kannada, Gujarati, and Punjabi. Each of these languages has its own unique script and grammar, and many of them have a long literary tradition.
In addition to the major languages, there are also many smaller languages and dialects spoken throughout India. These include tribal languages, such as Santali and Khasi, and regional dialects, such as Haryanvi and Rajasthani.
The map below shows the distribution of the most widely spoken languages in India.
Of the Indian population, 19.4 percent exhibited bilingualism and 7.2 percent exhibited trilingualism. As a result, India has a Greenberg’s diversity index of 0.914, i.e. two people selected at random from the country will have different native languages in 91.4 percent of cases.
Did you make both the maps yourself?