Languages of India

Goal of the Lesson plan:

• To learn the names of different languages spoken in India

and to associate them with the different regions of India.
• The lesson plan looks very big but don’t get intimidated
please read through and just tailor it to you class.

Language is a very important part of a person’s identity.

Uniqueness of multiple languages in India: India is quite

unique when it comes to the language spoken and used in the
country. Indians speak and write in not one or two but many
different languages.

In order to fully appreciate how unique that is, let us look at a

few countries that are bigger in size than India: USA, Canada,
China and Brazil. The entire USA has one official and popular
language :English. Canada has two official and popular
languages: English and French. China has two most popular
and commonly used languages: Mandarin and Cantonese.
Brazil has one popular and official language: Spanish.

India on the other hand has 18 languages officially recognized

by the constitution and many more spoken by people around
the country.

Why does India have so many languages when

countries bigger than India have only one or two
languages: There are two main reasons for this situation:

1. First is the history of the country. India has a very old

civilization and has been a land occupied by people for
centuries. In the past centuries,people migrated to India
from many parts of Asia and even Europe and in doing so
brought their languages to India. These foreign
languages were sometimes adopted as Indian languages,
sometimes influenced and changed some of the existing
languages in India and sometimes created totally new
languages.
2. Second reason for so many languages in the country is
the size and physical features of the country. India is a
land of high mountains, big river valleys, two huge
 coastal regions , a big desert and a big plateau region. In
the past, because of lack of fast and convenient
transportation, people from one region did not interact
too much with people from another region. And as a
result every region developed its own language.

Origin of Indian Languages:

Most of the languages of India belong to two language

families:
The Aryan languages and the Dravidian languages.

Languages spoken in the five states of south India belong to

the Dravidian family and most of the languages spoken in the
north belong to the Aryan family.

Languages of India
Some Aryan languages Some Dravidian
languages

Marathi Tamil
Gujarati Telugu
Bengali Kannada
Hindi Malayalam
Every language has two parts to it: The spoken part and the
written part. The written part is called the script. The script
has alphabets, vowels, consonants etc. Eg., The English script
has alphabets from A to Z . The modern Aryan languages are
considered to have evolved from the Sanskrit language. The
evolution of south Indian languages isn’t clear. Many believe
that before the arrival of the Aryans, Dravidian languages
were spoken over all India. Some of the tribes of north India
speak (or spoke in the near past) in dialects similar to
Dravidian languages.
The script of the Aryan languages is different from the script
of Dravidian languages.

Languages and Dialects

After India’s independence the government decided that the
official language of the government of India will be Hindi.

It is believed that there are two main reasons why Hindi was
chosen to be the official government language of India.

1.Hindi is spoken in six of the most populated states of India,

some of which are also the biggest states of India in physical
size.

2. Hindi has connection with Indian history before its

independence. The people living in the Indian subcontinent
called ‘Hind” or ‘Hindustan’ spoke language called Hindi or
Hindustani. This language and its script were based on an
ancient Indian language called Sanskrit. Most of the sacred
books of Hinduism are written in Sanskrit and the script is
called Devanagiri.

Languages of different regions of India:

Now let us look at the various languages spoken in different

regions of India.

As we heard above, the Indian constitution recognizes, for

now, 18 official Indian languages. Some of the present states
of India were created based on the main language spoken in
that region and were recognized by the Indian constitution.
The process of creating states based on languages began in
1953 and even today there are demands for new states for
different language speakers.

States or region based languages:

State Languages
Kerala Malayalam
Tamil Nadu Tamil
Karnataka Kannada
Andra Pradesh Telugu
Maharashtra Marathi
Gujarat Gujarati
Orissa Oriya
Punjab Punjabi
Assam Assamese
Bengal Bengali
Rajasthan Rajasthani

As you see above, states whose boundaries are based on

languages are Kerala for Malyalam speakers. Tamil Nadu for
Tamil speakers. Karnataka for Kanadda speakers. Andra
Pradesh for Telugu speakers. Maharashtra for Marathi
speakers. Orissa for Oriya speakers. West Bengal for Bengali
speakers. Gujarat for Gujarati speakers. Punjab for Punjabi
speakers. Assam for Assamese speakers.

Another language named after its region is Konkani spoken in

the coastal regions of the Konkan coast. The Konkan coast is
spread out over a couple of different states.

Though many states were created based on language

boundaries, there are other states which weren’t created
based on language boundaries and there are many language
speakers who don’t have their own state.

Some other languages spoken in India, are Dogri, Ladacki and

Kashmiri. All three of these languages are spoken in different
parts of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. In Sikkim, the main
language spoken is Nepali. In Manipur the main language is
Manipuri.

Some languages of India aren’t specific to a region of

India, like Sindhi whose speakers came to India from
Sindh (in present day Pakistan), but are scattered all
over India. Urdu is spoken by many Muslims all over
India.

The Indian constitution uses the term ‘mother tongue’ instead

of language or dialect. Each of the 18 official languages
includes in it many mother tongues. The Indian census records
over 200 different mother tongues.
Despite the different languages and dialects, most of the
official languages speakers have developed a standard of
speaking language which has become the accepted style of
speaking for that language.

The Indians also distinguish between the general north Indian

spoken accent and general south Indian spoken accent.

Hindi has more than ten variations. Hindi spoken in Rajasthan

is different from Hindi spoken in Bihar or Hindi of Himachal
Pradesh. Sometimes the different variations of a language are
considered as separate language with their own literature. One
of Hindi dialects spoken in east India is Maithali. Many Maithali
speakers regard their language as a different language from
Hindi.

History of Indian languages: (optional)

The languages spoken in present India, evolved in different
phases of Indian history. In the earlier stage of Indian history
other languages were spoken. The holy books of different
religions that developed in ancient India are written in
different languages. The holy books of Hinduism were written
Sanskrit. The holy books of Buddhism were written in Pali. The
holy books of Jainism were written in Ardhamaghadi. These
three languages aren’t spoken fluently in India today, but
Sanskrit is recognized as one of the official languages of India.
Among the present Dravidian languages of south India, Tamil
language had exerted its greatest influence on other Dravidian
languages.

Activity:

1. Play game of which language belongs to which region

2. Draw a chart of Dravidian languages and Aryan languages
and ask kids to fill in which language is Aryan and which
is Dravidian.
3. Play the game match the columns Aryan/ Dravidian
languages or states and languages
4. Have kids say a sentence in the language they speak at
home other than Hindi