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The '''languages of , Burushaski Language , Andamanese Languages Individual Mother Tongues in India number several hundred More than a thousand including major dialects. The 1991 census recognized "1576 rationalized mother tongues" which were further grouped into language categories the 1961 census recognized 1,652 [http://www.languageinindia.com/aug2002/indianmothertongues1961aug2002.html . ( SIL Ethnologue lists 415), and 24 languages are spoken by more than a million native speakers, 114 by more than 10,000. Three millennia of language contact situations have led to a lot of mutual influence among the four language families in India and South Asia. Two and English .Bhatia, Tej K and William C. Ritchie. (2006) Bilingualism in South Asia. In: Handbook of Bilingualism, pp. 780-807. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. HISTORY See Also: Linguistic history of India The northern Indian languages from the Indo-European family evolved from Old Indo-Aryan such as Sanskrit , by way of the Middle Indo-Aryan Prakrit languages and Apabhramsha of the Middle Ages . There is no consensus for a specific time where the modern north Indian languages such as Hindi , Marathi , Punjabi , and Bengali emerged, but CE 1000 is commonly accepted.Shapiro, M: ''Hindi''. Each language had different influences, with Hindi/Urdu and closely related languages being strongly influenced by Persian and Arabic. The South Indian ( Dravidian ) languages had a history independent of Sanskrit. However in later stages all the Dravidian languages had been heavily influenced by Sanskrit. The major Dravidian languages are Telugu , Tamil , Kannada and Malayalam . LANGUAGE FAMILIES The languages of India may be grouped by major Language Families . The largest of these in terms of speakers is the Indo-European family, predominantly represented in its Indo-Aryan branch (accounting for some 700 million speakers), but also including minority languages such as Persian, Portuguese or French, and English as Lingua Franca . The second largest is the Dravidian family, accounting for some 200 million speakers. Minor linguistic families include the Munda and Tibeto-Burman families (with some 9 and 6 million speakers, respectively). There is also a Language Isolate , the Nihali Language . CLASSICAL LANGUAGES OF INDIA In 2004, a new category was created by constitutional decree under which languages that met certain requirements could be accorded the status of a 'classical' in India.11 With the creation of this category, Tamil and a year later, Sanskrit have been accorded the status. More languages are being considered to be added to the list. The experts consulted by the government and the Sahitya Akademi of India, a literary body, recommended against awarding the tag to any language. OFFICIAL LANGUAGES See Also: Official languages of India Article 343 of the ", followed by Sanskrit News item that appeared in "The Hindu" on the Cabinet decision to declare Sanskrit as a classical language . in 2005. The Constitution of India recognises 22 languages, spoken in different parts the country, namely Assamese , Bengali , Bodo , Dogri , Gujarati , Hindi , Kannada , Kashmiri , Konkani , Maithili , Malayalam , Meitei , Marathi , Nepali , Oriya , Punjabi , Sanskrit , Santhali , Sindhi , Tamil , Telugu and Urdu . Hindi is the official language of the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttaranchal, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and the National Capital Territory of Delhi. English is the co-official language of the Indian Union, and each of the several states mentioned above may also have another co-official language. WRITING SYSTEMS See Also: Indic scripts Nasta'liq script Indian languages have corresponding distinct alphabets. The two major families are those of the Dravidian Languages and those of the Indo-Aryan Languages , the former largely confined to the South and the latter to the North . Urdu and sometimes Kashmiri , Sindhi and Panjabi are written in modified versions of the Arabic script. Except for these languages, the alphabets of Indian languages are native to India. Most scholars consider these Indic Scripts a distant offshoot of the Aramaic Alphabet , although there are differing opinions. Romanization See Also: ISO 15919 National Library at Kolkata romanization INVENTORIES The Indian census of 1961 recognised 1,652 different languages in India (including languages not native to the subcontinent). The 1991 census recognizes 1,576 classified "mother tongues" {Link without Title} SIL Ethnologue lists 415 living "Languages of India" (out of 6,912 worldwide). According to the 1991 census, 22 languages have more than a million native speakers, 50 have more than 100,000 and 114 have more than 10,000 native speakers. The remaining account for a total of 566,000 native speakers (out of a total of 838 million Indians in 1991). {Link without Title} The largest language that is not one of the 22 "languages of the 8th Schedule" with official status is the (40th), Dogri (54th) and Sanskrit (67th). See FOOTNOTES AND REFERENCES SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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