India is a multilingual country, dozens of different languages are spoken in it, which, in addition, are divided into several dialects. The Indian Constitution states that the official languages that can be used in the work of the national government are English and Hindi. The languages of Bengali, Urdu, Telugu, Santali, Makipuri and many others are common on the territory of the country; they belong to different language families.
State languages of India
In 1947, India gained independence from Great Britain and the national leader was faced with a serious question about the state language. Since ancient times, the country has been multilingual, and such a language was supposed to unite it. In addition, it was supposed to be one of the most common and easy to learn.
For a long time, India was a British colony, so English is very widespread on its territory. It also functioned as a state in the colony, and was spoken by many Indians. But it would be strange to retain its status, so Hindi, one of the most popular Indian languages, received this title.
Hindi belongs to the Indo-European family and is divided into many dialects, which are spoken in the northern and central parts of the country. The official version is the standard version used by the government. Hindi ranks second in the world in terms of the number of people speaking it after Chinese: this figure is more than four hundred million, that is, about 40% of the country's population.
Despite the fact that after the adoption of the state language, English was allowed to be used for fifteen years (it was impossible to abandon it right away), it continued to spread and penetrated almost all spheres of life of the Indian population. As a result, it was decided to make it the second state language.
Other languages of India
In India, more than thirty languages are spoken, which belong to different language families: Indo-European, Tibeto-Burmese, Munda, Dravidian. The first group includes Marathi, common in Goa, Maharashtra and Daman, Nepali, which is spoken in Sikkim, Bengali - the language of West Bengal, Urdu, used in Kashmir.
In Orissa they speak the Oriya language, in Bihar they speak Maithili. The Dravidian group includes the Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, and the Tibeto-Burmese - Bodo and Manipura. The Munda family has one representative in India - the Santali language, common, along with others, in Orissa, West Bengal, Bihar. All of them have the status of national, recognized in the states.
There are several dozen other languages spoken in India but not recognized by the government. Many of them are called by some linguists dialects of Hindi: these are Marwari, Bagheli, Bundeli. Others are a mixture of two languages: for example, Hindustani is a mixture of Hindi and Urdu, and Hinglish is a mixture of English and Hindi.
