Languages in India - Indian Languages, Origin and Development

Hindi or the Hindustani gave rise to two lingual divisions – Hindi and Urdu. In both these languages, grammar and the vocabulary are just about the same. But both Hindi and Urdu have totally different letter of alphabets and they also differ in the formation of sentences. Urdu uses Persian and Arabic letters while Hindi uses Devanagaric. Urdu words are more inclined towards Persian and Arabic whereas hindi gives importance to Indian words.

Though the number of speakers is very less, Sanskrit - one of the most ancient languages of India, still remains as a classic language.

The Dravidian languages have a separate existence of their own. These languages have no roots outside the Indian sub continent. This is the second language group in India. Almost 24% people speak these languages. The Dravidian languages reached India long before the Indo-Aryan languages reached here. The Dravidian language split into 4 branches –

• The northern branch included languages spoken in the Baluchistan region known as Brahui and languages like Malto and Kurux spoken primarily in the eastern states of Bengal and Orissa.
• The central Dravidian language includes languages spoken in central India like Kolami, Naiki, Gadaba, Ollari and Parji.
• The South-central branch includes languages spoken in south central India of which Telugu is the most important. Other languages belonging to this branch are Gondi, Kui, Kuvi, Manda, Pengo, Savara etc...
• And finally the south Dravidian branch includes the languages such as Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Tulu, Toda, Kotar, Kota, Kodagu, Kanarese and Irula. Of this Tamil is believed to be the oldest language.

In the ancient days, India didn't have a common language. Though Sanskrit reduced this gap to a certain point in the earlier days, the language was confined to the higher class. During the times of the British rule, English was almost like a common language.

But with the gaining of independence, the problem of a common language raised its head in India. The constituent assembly was also unable to reach at a consensus. Finally the issue was put to voting and Hindi was selected as the official language and the constitution recoginsed Hindi as the official language of India. Other regional languages were recoginsed as the official languages of the respective states. The following are the official languages of India :

• Asamiya
• Bengali
• Gujarathi
• Hindi
• Kannada
• Kashmiri
• Malayalam
• Marathi
• Oriya
• Punjabi
• Sanskrit
• Tamil
• Telugu
• Urdu
• Sindhi
• Manipuri
• Nepali
• Konkani

The last three were recognised as official languages in 1992 by amending the Eighth schedule of the constitution.