Major Language Families/ CC-14
The Indian languages belong to four language families: Indo-European,
Dravidian, Mon-Khmer, and Sino-Tibetan.
Indo-European and Dravidian languages are used by a large majority of India's
population. The language families divide roughly into geographic groups.
Languages of the Indo-European group are spoken mainly in northern and
central regions.
The languages of southern India are mainly of the Dravidian group. Some
ethnic groups in Assam and other parts of eastern India speak languages of the
Mon-Khmer group. People in the northern Himalayan region and near the
Burmese border speak Sino-Tibetan languages.
Speakers of 54 different languages of the Indo-European family make up about
three-quarters of India's population. Twenty Dravidian languages are spoken
by nearly a quarter of the people. Speakers of 20 Mon-Khmer languages and
98 Sino-Tibetan languages together make up about 2 percent of the population.
The heritage of the ancient and medieval periods of Indian culture is still a part
of India today. But when India became exposed to European culture (and
eventually became part of the British Empire) it came heavily under the
influence of Western ideas. Some Indian writers reacted to the European
presence by reviving the ancient values of Hinduism. Other writers eagerly
adopted Western forms of writing such as journalism and the novel.
The modern period of Indian literature began in the 1800's, a period of great
social change. All the major languages evolved a thriving literature which they
still possess. The most important development was the increased importance of
prose. Although prose works had existed in earlier Indian literature, most
traditional texts (which were largely religious in content or feeling) had been
written in verse. During the modern period, Indian prose achieved maturity as a
vehicle for expressing a wide range of ideas.
Two related developments helped the process of change. One was the
introduction of the printing press by Christian missionaries (scribes had hand-
copied texts in earlier times). The other development was the birth of Indian
journalism. The spread of Western-style education helped produce a new
readership for the new literature. Writers expressed ideas of social reform, and
laid great emphasis on realism.
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WORLD LANGUAGE FAMILIES
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The languages of India primarily belong to two major linguistic families,
Indo-European (whose branch Indo-Aryan is spoken by about 75 percent of the
population) and Dravidian (spoken by about 25 percent). Other languages
spoken in India come mainly from the Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman
linguistic families, as well as a few language isolates. Individual mother tongues
in India number several hundred, and more than a thousand if major dialects are
included. The SIL(Summer Institute of Linguistics) Ethnologue lists over 400
languages for India; 24 of these languages are spoken by more than a million
native speakers, and 114 by more than 10,000. Three millennia of political and
social contact have resulted in mutual influence among the four language
families in India and South Asia. Two contact languages have played an
important role in the history of India: Persian and English.
While Hindi is the official language of the central government in India, with
English as a provisional official sub-language, individual state legislatures can
adopt any regional language as the official language of that state. The
Constitution of India recognizes 23 official languages, spoken in different parts
of the country, and two official classical languages, Sanskrit and Tamil.
The Constitution of India now recognizes 23 languages, spoken in different
parts of the country. These consist of English plus 22 Indian languages:
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 a official language of the
states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttaranchal, Madhya Pradesh,
Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and the National Capital
Territory of Delhi. Tamil is an official language of Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry
and Andaman Nicobar Islands.
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.
Hindi and English
The Indian constitution declares Hindi in Devanagari script to be the official
language of the union. Unless Parliament decided otherwise, the use
of English for official purposes was officially to cease after the constitution
came into effect, on January 26, 1965.
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The prospect of the changeover led to much alarm in the non Hindi-speaking
areas of India, as a result of which Parliament enacted the Official Languages
Act, 1963, providing for the continued use of English for official purposes along
with Hindi, even after 1965. An attempt was made in late 1964 to expressly
provide for an end to the use of English, but it was met with protests from
across the country, some of which turned violent. Widespread protests occurred
in states such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, Karnataka, Pondicherry
and Andhra Pradesh. As a result of these protests, the proposal was
dropped, and the Act itself was amended in 1967 to provide that the use of
English would not be ended until a resolution to that effect was passed by the
legislature of every state that had not adopted Hindi as its official language, and
by each house of the Indian Parliament.
The languages of India may be grouped by major language families. The largest
of these families 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 spoken as lingua franca. The second largest
is the Dravidian family, accounting for some 200 million speakers. Minor
linguistic families include the Munda with approximately nine million speakers,
and Tibeto-Burman families with approximately six million speakers. There is
also a language isolate, the Nihali language.
Nihali has been shown to be related to Kusunda of central Nepal. However, the
proposed Indo-Pacific relationship has not been established through the
comparative method, and has been dismissed as speculation by most
comparative linguists. Nihali and Kusunda are spoken by hunting people living
in forests. Both languages have accepted many loan words from other
languages, Nihali having loans from Munda (Korku), Dravidian and Indic
languages.
Bengali arose from the eastern Middle Indic languages of the Indian
subcontinent. Magadhi Prakrit, the earliest recorded spoken language in the
region, had evolved into Ardhamagadhi ("Half Magadhi") in the early part of
the first millennium C.E. Ardhamagadhi, as with all of the Prakrits of North
India, began to give way to what are called Apabhramsa languages just before
the turn of the first millennium. The local Apabhramsa language of the eastern
subcontinent, Purvi Apabhramsa or Apabhramsa Abahatta, eventually evolved
into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups: the Bihari languages,
the Oriya languages, and the Bengali-Assamese languages. Some argue for
much earlier points of divergence, going back to as early as 500 C.E., but the
language was not static; different varieties coexisted and authors often wrote in
multiple dialects. (Source : New World Encyclopedia)
