particullarly in india.
2006-07-12 14:47:12 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
According to Ethnologue there are 415 living languages in India (plus 13 extinct langugages)
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=IN
The "18" mentioned in another answer refers only to those recognized by the Indian constitution as "official languages. The web site cited spells this out and notes that there are over 200 languages included in the Indian census.
http://adaniel.tripod.com/Languages1.htm
Others break things down further into the number of "dialects".
Infoplease refers to 1,600+ dialects
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107629.html
Similarly, according to wikipedia "the number of mother tongues in India is as high as 1,652" (There is no further explanation of what they meant by this, but given the similarity with the Infolplease number, it is presumably referring to dialects as well.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India
2006-07-12 15:18:50 · answer #1 · answered by bruhaha 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The CIA recognizes there to be 16.
English
Hindi (main languag spoken by 30%)
14 others: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; Hindustani is a popular variant of Hindi/Urdu spoken widely throughout northern India but is not an official language
2006-07-12 16:55:51 · answer #2 · answered by creative 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Officially, I think there are 18:
1. Assamese.
2. Bengali.
3. Gujarati.
4. Hindi.
5. Kannada.
6. Kashmiri.
7. Konkani.
8. Malayalam.
9. Manipuri.
10. Marathi.
11. Nepali.
12. Oriya.
13. Punjabi.
14. Sanskrit.
15. Sindhi.
16. Tamil.
17. Telugu.
18. Urdu.
2006-07-12 14:56:26 · answer #3 · answered by merigold00 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I guess 18!!
2006-07-12 15:51:40 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋