The Language Families of India
Fun fact from 'Eaten by a Fish'
The many languages of India belong to five distinct language families. These are:
Indo-European, primarily represented by its subgroup, Indo-Aryan (23 languages)
Dravidian (17)
Austroasiatic (14)
Sino-Tibetan, represented by its subgroup, Tibeto-Burman (65)
Afro-Asiatic (formerly known as the Hamito-Semitic or Semito-Hamitic), represented by its subgroup, Semitic (1)
THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE FAMILY
The Indo-European language family is the most widespread of all language families in the world, with speakers across every continent. It is estimated that almost 46% of the world’s population speaks an Indo-European language. To this family also belong the languages of Iran and many of the languages of India.
The Indo-Iranian languages together form the largest sub-group of the Indo-European family of languages. This subgroup includes Sanskrit, Avestan, Old Persian, and many of the modern languages of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and the erstwhile USSR. It is further subdivided into Iranian and Indo-Aryan. The Iranian subgroup includes Avestan, Old Persian, and modern languages such as Farsi, Pashto, Kurdish, and Ossetic. The Indo-Aryan languages are spoken in what is now northern and central India and Pakistan.
In India, of the 121 languages identified by the Census of India, 2011, twenty-three languages belong to the Indo-European family.
These are:
Indo-Aryan: Assamese, Bengali, Bhil/Bhilodi, Bishnupuriya, Dogri, Gujarati, Halabi, Hindi, Kashmiri, Khandeshi, Konkani, Lahnda, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Shina, Sindhi, Urdu
Iranian: Afghani/Kabuli/Pashto
Germanic: English
More than 78 per cent of the total population of India speaks one or other of these languages as their mother tongue.
THE DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGE FAMILY
The Dravidian language family consists of some seventy languages, spoken by more than 215 million people, primarily in southern and central India and Sri Lanka. The exception is Brahui, which is spoken in Balochistan in modern-day Pakistan.
Linguistic evidence suggests that Dravidian speakers were already present in the subcontinent before the advent of the Rigvedic Aryans. Several Dravidian words are found in the Rigveda, which do not occur in other Indo-Iranian languages. Such words include, for instance, mayūra or ‘peacock’, kuṇḍa or ‘pit’, and kāṇá or one-eyed. Retroflex consonant sounds (produced by the tip of the tongue raised against the middle of the hard palate) found in the Rigveda are also believed to have been borrowed by Rigvedic Sanskrit from Dravidian. At some point after the coming of the Rigvedic Aryans into the subcontinent, Dravidian speakers moved to the outskirts of the area that came to be occupied by the Aryans. The most ancient and purest forms of the Dravidian languages are found in southern India. As per the Encyclopaedia Britannica, this region was not exposed to Sanskrit till the 5th century BCE, which suggests that the south of India was populated by Dravidian speakers even before the advent of the Aryans into India.
The four literary Dravidian languages are Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telegu.
In India today, more than 20 per cent of the total population speaks a Dravidian language. Of the 121 primary languages identified by the Census of India, 2011, seventeen belong to the Dravidian language family.
These are:
Coorgi/Kodagu, Gondi, Jatapu, Kannada, Khond/Kondh, Kisan, Kolami, Konda, Koya, Kui, Kurukh/Oraon, Malayalam, Malto, Parji, Tamil, Telegu, Tulu.
THE AUSTROASIATIC LANGUAGE FAMILY
The Austroasiatic (also spelled Austro-Asiatic) language family consists of some 150 languages spoken by about 65 million people across South-east Asia and eastern India. Khmer, Mon, and Vietnamese are the most important of these languages and have the longest recorded history.
In India, the Austroasiatic language family is represented by all the languages of the Munda branch, Nicobarese of the Mon-Khmer branch, and Khasi. A total of fourteen languages of the 121 languages identified by the Census of India 2011 belong to this family.
These are:
Bhumij, Gadaba, Ho, Juang, Kharia, Khasi, Koda/Kora, Korku, Korwa, Munda, Mundari, Nicobarese, Santali, Savara.
However, only 1.11 percent of the total population of India speaks an Austro-Asiatic language.
THE SINO-TIBETAN LANGUAGE FAMILY
The Sino-Tibetan family of languages has the second-most number of speakers in the world, after the Indo-European language family. It is divided into two sub-groups, Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman.
Sinitic languages, commonly called Chinese dialects, are spoken in China, Taiwan, by minorities in all the countries of Southeast Asia, as well as by Chinese immigrants in many parts of the world.
Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken in Tibet and Myanmar (Burma, as well as in Nepal, Bhutan, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They are also spoken by hill tribes throughout mainland Southeast Asia and central China. The Tibeto-Burman speech area is one of the most linguistically diverse regions of the world.
In India, the Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken in Sikkim and the north-eastern states of Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, and Arunachal Pradesh. As many as sixty-five languages of this sub-group are spoken in India.
These are:
Adi, Anal, Angami, Ao, Balti, Bhotia, Bodo, Chakhesang, Chakru/Chokri, Chang, Deori, Dimasa, Gangte, Garo, Halam, Hmar, Kabui, Karbi/Mikir, Khezha, Khiemnungan, Kinnauri, Koch, Kom, Konyak, Kuki, Ladakhi, Lahauli, Lakher, Lalung, Lepcha, Liangmei, Limbu, Lotha, Lushai/Mizo, Manipuri, Mao, Maram, Maring, Miri/Mishing, Mishmi, Mogh, Monpa, Nissi, Dafla, Tibetan, Tripuri, Vaiphei, Wancho, Yimchungre, Zeliang, Zemi, Zou.
Despite the great number of these languages, only 1.01 percent of the total population of India speak a Tibeto-Burman language.
THE AFRO-ASIATIC LANGUAGE FAMILY
The Afro-Asiatic language family is made up of some 250 languages spoken in North Africa, parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East, and has an estimated 250 million speakers in the world.
In India, this language family is represented by a single language, Arabic (Arbi), which belongs to its Semitic subgroup. It is spoken by less than 1 percent of the total population, amongst descendants of Arab traders and immigrants, in small pockets mainly along the western coast of India.
The best and most comprehensive resource on the languages of India is the Language Atlas of India, in which is compiled all the language data collected during a census. The first such Atlas was published in 2004; it was based on the data collected in the 1991 Census. The information in this post is from the latest Language Atlas. This is is based on the data collected during the 2011 Census, the 15th and most recent Census of India (the 2021 Census has been postponed to October 2023 at the very earliest).
The Language Atlas of India for 2011, may be downloaded as an ebook from the Census of India website:
Language Atlas of India, 2011. New Delhi: Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India ; Ministry of Home Affairs, 2011.
For those readers who would like more detail on the language families of India, the following sections of the Language Atlas are particularly useful:
Introduction: p. ix
Family-Wise languages: pp. 11-19, including Maps 5-8, which show the distribution of language-families across India
Annexure-II: p. 203, which gives, in tabular form, the family-wise groupings of the 121 languages of India by number of languages and number of speakers. On this page are also listed the languages in each language-family.
Did you find this post useful? Would you like more such posts? Let us know!
ADDITIONAL SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
For more on the languages of India, see my earlier post, The many languages of modern India
For a more detailed discussion on the Indo-European language family, see my earlier post, Who Were the People Who Produced the Rigveda? Part 3: The Indo-Europeans.
See also the online Encyclopaedia Britannica:
Sasanoff, Jay H., and Warren Cowgill. “Indo-European Languages.” Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indo-European-languages.“Semitic Languages Summary.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Accessed June 25, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/summary/Semitic-languages.
Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju. “Dravidian Languages.” Encyclopædia Britannica, May 12, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dravidian-languages.
Diffloth, Gerard. “Austroasiatic Languages.” Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Austroasiatic-languages.
Egerod, Soren Christian. “Sino-Tibetan Languages.” Encyclopædia Britannica, May 27, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sino-Tibetan-languages.
“Afro-Asiatic Languages Summary.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Accessed June 25, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/summary/Afro-Asiatic-languages.
I've looked at this several times and I'm always a bit overwhelmed. Feel like I need to catalogue it somewhere so I can find it in the future. Excellent information! Just not ready to process it all yet! :)
This was fascinating ! Thank you for the consistent and careful research you continue to do. About Afro Asian languages, there seems to be a language different from Marathi or Hindi, spoken among the Sidis of some areas of mainland Maharashtra- including Murud Janjira and Kashid, which has apparently descended from Swahili. We heard it spoken in Kashid, and found it interestingly quite unfamiliar. Have you any information on this?