Languages
Native
Hindi
44%
Secondary languages
English
12%
Language Samples
नमस्ते, आप कैसे हैं?
Namaste, aap kaise hain?
Hello, how are you?
मैं ठीक हूँ, धन्यवाद।
Main theek hoon, dhanyavaad.
I am fine, thank you.
एक, दो, तीन, चार, पाँच, छह, सात, आठ, नौ, दस
Ek, do, teen, chaar, paanch, chhah, saat, aath, nau, das
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Linguistic History
India is among the most linguistically diverse nations on Earth, home to hundreds of distinct languages belonging to at least four major language families: Indo-Iranian (the largest group, including Hindi, Bengali, and Marathi), Dravidian (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam), Austroasiatic (Munda, Khasi), and Sino-Tibetan (various languages of the northeast). Hindi in the Devanagari script serves as one of two official languages of the Union government, alongside English. The Indian constitution recognises 22 'Scheduled Languages'. There is no single national language — each state may have its own official language, making India a remarkable experiment in multilingual governance.
Similar Languages
Urdu
80%
Nepali
55%
Punjabi
60%
Bengali
40%
Media
India Gate in New Delhi, inscribed with Devanagari text, reflecting Hindi's role as a key official language of the Indian Union.
Photo: A.Savin · FAL
Did You Know
01
India has 22 constitutionally recognised languages and is estimated to have over 780 distinct living languages in total — more linguistic variety than any other country except Papua New Guinea.
02
Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible in everyday speech but use entirely different scripts — Devanagari and Perso-Arabic respectively — and diverge sharply in formal vocabulary.
03
The Dravidian languages of South India (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam) are completely unrelated to the Indo-Iranian languages of the north, with separate grammar, vocabulary, and script traditions going back thousands of years.