List of languages by number of native speakers in India
India is home to several hundred languages. Most Indians speak a language belonging to the families of the Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European (ca.74%), the Dravidian (ca. 24%), the Austroasiatic (Munda) (ca. 1.2%), or the Tibeto-Burman (ca. 0.6%), with some languages of the Himalayas still unclassified. The SIL Ethnologue lists 415 living languages for India.
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Overview [edit]
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 account for about 41% of Indians according to the 2001 census.
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 fewer 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%)
List by number of native speakers [edit]
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%.
More than one million speakers [edit]
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.
100,000 to one million speakers [edit]
| 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 | English | 226,449 | 0.027% |
| 43 | Kharia | 225,556 | 0.027% |
| 44 | Khond/Kondh | 220,783 | 0.026% |
| 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% |
10,000 to 100,000 speakers [edit]
| 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 | Kodava Takk | 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:
See also [edit]
References [edit]
Notes [edit]
- ^ 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.
- ^ includes Western Hindi, Eastern Hindi, Bihari languages except for Maithili, Rajasthani languages and Pahari languages.
General references [edit]
- Data table of Census of India, 2001
- Language Maps from Central Institute of Indian Languages
- Scheduled Languages in descending order of speaker's strength – 2001
- Comparative ranking of scheduled languages in descending order of speaker's strength-1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001
- Census data on Languages
External links [edit]
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