List of languages by number of native speakers in India
India is home to several hundred languages. Most Indians speak a language belonging either to the Indo-European (ca. 74%), the Dravidian (ca. 24%), the Austroasiatic (Munda) (ca. 1.2%), or the Tibeto-Burman (ca. 0.6%) families, with some languages of the Himalayas still unclassified. The SIL Ethnologue lists 415 living languages for India.
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[edit] Overview
Hindi is the most widespread language of India. The Indian census takes the widest possible definition of "Hindi" as a broad variety of "Hindi languages". The native speakers of Hindi so defined accounts for about 43% of Indians.
Indian English is recorded as the native language of 226,449 Indians in the 2001 census. English is the second "language of the Union" besides Hindi.[1]
Thirteen languages account for more than 1% of Indian population each, and between themselves for over 95%; all of them are "scheduled languages of the constitution." Scheduled languages spoken by less than 1% of Indians are Santali (0.64%), Nepali (0.28%), Sindhi (0.25%), Manipuri (0.14%), Bodo (0.13%), Dogri (0.01%), spoken in Jammu and Kashmir). The largest language that is not "scheduled" is Bhili (0.95%), followed by Gondi (0.27%), Kumaoni (0.21%), Tulu (0.17%) and Kurukh (0.10%)
[edit] List by number of native speakers
Ordered by number of speakers as first language. Indian population in 1991 exhibited 19.4% of bilingualism and 7.2% of trilingualism, so that the total percentage of "native languages" is at about 127%.
[edit] More than one million speakers
The 2001 census recorded 29 individual languages as having more than 1 million native speakers (0.1% of total population).
| Rank | Language | 2001 census[2] (total population 1,028.610,328 ) |
1991 census[3] (total population 838,583,988) |
Encarta 2007 estimate[4] (worldwide speakers) |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Speakers | Percentage | Speakers | Percentage | Speakers | ||
| 1 | Hindi[5] | 422,048,642 | 41.03% | 329,518,087 | 39.29% | 366 M |
| 2 | Bengali | 83,369,769 | 8.11% | 69,595,738 | 8.30% | 207 M |
| 3 | Telugu | 74,002,856 | 7.19% | 66,017,615 | 7.87% | 69.7 M |
| 4 | Marathi | 71,936,894 | 6.99% | 62,481,681 | 7.45% | 68.0 M |
| 5 | Tamil | 60,793,814 | 5.91% | 53,006,368 | 6.32% | 66.0 M |
| 6 | Urdu | 51,536,111 | 5.01% | 43,406,932 | 5.18% | 60.3 M |
| 7 | Gujarati | 46,091,617 | 4.48% | 40,673,814 | 4.85% | 46.1 M |
| 8 | Kannada | 37,924,011 | 3.69% | 32,753,676 | 3.91% | 35.3 M |
| 9 | Malayalam | 33,066,392 | 3.21% | 30,377,176 | 3.62% | 35.7 M |
| 10 | Oriya | 33,017,446 | 3.21% | 28,061,313 | 3.35% | 32.3 M |
| 11 | Punjabi | 29,102,477 | 2.83% | 23,378,744 | 2.79% | 57.1 M |
| 12 | Assamese | 13,168,484 | 1.28% | 13,079,696 | 1.56% | 15.4 M |
| 13 | Maithili | 12,179,122 | 1.18% | 7,766,921 | 0.926% | 24.2 M |
| 14 | Bhili/Bhilodi | 9,582,957 | 0.93% | |||
| 15 | Santali | 6,469,600 | 0.63% | 5,216,325 | 0.622% | |
| 16 | Kashmiri | 5,527,698 | 0.54% | |||
| 17 | Nepali | 2,871,749 | 0.28% | 2,076,645 | 0.248% | 16.1 M |
| 18 | Gondi | 2,713,790 | 0.26% | |||
| 19 | Sindhi | 2,535,485 | 0.25% | 2,122,848 | 0.253% | 19.7 M |
| 20 | Konkani | 2,489,015 | 0.24% | 1,760,607 | 0.210% | |
| 21 | Dogri | 2,282,589 | 0.22% | |||
| 22 | Khandeshi | 2,075,258 | 0.21% | |||
| 23 | Kurukh | 1,751,489 | 0.17% | |||
| 24 | Tulu | 1,722,768 | 0.17% | |||
| 25 | Meitei/Manipuri | 1,466,705* | 0.14% | 1,270,216 | 0.151% | |
| 26 | Bodo | 1,350,478 | 0.13% | 1,221,881 | 0.146% | |
| 27 | Khasi | 1,128,575 | 0.11% | |||
| 28 | Mundari | 1,061,352 | 0.103% | |||
| 29 | Ho | 1,042,724 | 0.101% | |||
* Excludes figures of Paomata, Mao-Maram and Purul sub-divisions of Senapati district of Manipur for 2001.
** The percentage of speakers of each language for 2001 has been worked out on the total population of India excluding the population of Mao-Maram, Paomata and Purul subdivisions of Senapati district of Manipur due to cancellation of census results.
[edit] 100,000 to one million speakers
| Rank | Language | 2001 census | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speakers | Percentage | ||
| 30 | Kui | 916,222 | |
| 31 | Garo | 889,479 | |
| 32 | Kokborok | 854,023 | |
| 33 | Mizo | 674,756 | |
| 34 | Halabi | 593,443 | |
| 35 | Korku | 574,481 | |
| 36 | Munda | 469,357 | |
| 37 | Mishing | 390,583 | 0.047% |
| 38 | Karbi/Mikir | 366,229 | 0.044% |
| 39 | Saurashtra | 310,000 | 0.037% |
| 40 | Savara | 273,168 | 0.033% |
| 41 | Koya | 270,994 | 0.032% |
| 42 | Kharia | 225,556 | 0.027% |
| 43 | Khond/Kondh | 220,783 | 0.026% |
| 44 | English | 178,598 | 0.021% |
| 45 | Nishi | 173,791 | 0.021% |
| 46 | Ao | 172,449 | 0.021% |
| 50 | Sema | 166,157 | 0.020% |
| 51 | Kisan | 162,088 | 0.019% |
| 52 | Adi | 158,409 | 0.019% |
| 53 | Rabha | 139,365 | 0.017% |
| 54 | Konyak | 137,722 | 0.016% |
| 55 | Malto | 108,148 | 0.013% |
| 56 | Thado | 107,992 | 0.013% |
| 57 | Tangkhul | 101,841 | 0.012% |
[edit] 10,000 to 100,000 speakers
| 1991 census | SIL estimate | ||
| 58 | Kolami | 98,281 (0.012%) | 115,000 (1997) Northwestern: 50,000; Southeastern: 10,000 |
| 59 | Angami | 97,631 (0.012%) | 109,000 (1997) |
| 60 | Kodagu | 97,011 (0.012%) | 122,000 |
| 61 | Dogri | 89,681 (0.011%) | (Pakistan+India: 2.1 million) |
| 62 | Dimasa | 88,543 (0.011%) | 106,000 |
| 63 | Lotha | 85,802 (0.010%) | 80,000 |
| 64 | Mao | 77,810 (0.009%) | 81,000 |
| 65 | Tibetan | 69,146 (0.008%) | 124,280 (1994) |
| 66 | Kabui (Rongmei) | 68,925 (0.008%) | 59,000 (1997) |
| 67 | Phom | 65,350 (0.008%) | 34,000 (1997) |
The following are SIL Ethnologue estimates:
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] Notes
- ^ In 1991, there were 90,000,000 "users" of English. (Census of India's Indian Census, Issue 10, 2003, pp 8–10, (Feature: Languages of West Bengal in Census and Surveys, Bilingualism and Trilingualism) and Tropf, Herbert S. 2004. India and its Languages. Siemens AG, Munich.)
- ^ Abstract of speakers' strength of languages and mother tongues – 2000, Census of India, 2001
- ^ Comparative Speaker's Strength of Scheduled Languages -1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001, Census of India, 1991
- ^ "Languages Spoken by More Than 10 Million People – Table – MSN Encarta". Archived from the original on 2007-12-3. http://web.archive.org/web/20071203134724/http://encarta.msn.com/media_701500404/Languages_Spoken_by_More_Than_10_Million_People.html.
- ^ includes Western Hindi, Eastern Hindi, Bihari languages except for Maithili, Rajasthani languages and Pahari languages.
[edit] General references
- Data table of Census of India, 2001
- Language Maps from Central Institute of Indian Languages
- SCHEDULED LANGUAGES IN DESCENDING ORDER OF SPEAKERS' STRENGTH – 2001
- COMPARATIVE RANKING OF SCHEDULED LANGUAGES IN DESCENDING ORDER OF SPEAKERS' STRENGTH-1971, 1981, 1991 AND 2001
- Census data on Languages
