If we deliberately think about all the factors that have made India distinguished from other countries then ‘diversity’ would come on the top. Diversity is applicable with all spheres of the country and in this regard language is not an exception. India’s lots of cultural and geographical diversities have resulted a number of different languages spoken across the country. Majority of these languages have been accepted nationally, but there are a few, which are considered as local dialects of particular regions.

If we take a look back to the history of Indian language then we will come to know that the Indian languages had been consisting of distinct alphabets. All the languages belong to four major families, Dravidian languages, Indo-Aryan languages, Tibeto-Burman linguistic languages and Austro-Asiatic languages. In the present times, the Dravidian languages are spoken by 22% of Indian, whereas, 70% of people speak Indo-Aryan languages. On the other side, the Tibeto-Burman linguistic languages and Austro-Asiatic languages are spoken by 8% of Indians.

Article 343 of Indian Constitution declares Hindi as India’s national language. This is also the official language of 20% of Indian population which is known as the ‘Hindi-belt’. The states of India come under this category are UttarPradesh, Uttarakhand, MadhyaPradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttaranchal, Rajasthan and Bihar. Among them, in Haryana and HimachalPradesh, Hindi is used as official language. Along with Hindi, English language is commonly used as an official language of India. The language holds a special status of an additional official language of the country.

In the current times, there are total 418 number of languages in India, among which 11 have become extinct and 22 languages have officially recognised by the Indian Constitution. Among these languages, some of the widely spoken languages are:

Sanskrit: This is the oldest documented language of the world. It is also the ancestor among all the indo-aryan languages.

Hindi: It is the official language of 10 states and spoken in the states of the northern India.

Bengali: This language is the official language and spoken by almost 200 million people of west Bengal and Bangladesh. It is also the second highly spoken language of India.

Punjabi: This language of indo-aryan lingual family is the official language of Punjab.

Gujarati: This is the official language of Gujarat and spoken in the Union Territories of Dadar and Nagar Haveli.

English - This is the associative official language of the country and is primarily used for communication with other states where Hindi is not the official language.

No matter whether a language is official or regional, carries its unique legacy of the region it belongs to. So, every language holds its own status in the minds of its native people. After all, every language of India contains the equal importance in making the country a rich land.