Languages of South Asia

Language families of South Asia

The languages of South Asia include a few major language families:

• Indo-Iranian languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, which can be further divided into three groups:
  • Indo-Aryan languages, the most widespread.^[1][2]
  • Iranic languages, in Pakistan and Afghanistan.^[1][2]
  • Nuristani languages, in a small area of Afghanistan and Pakistan.^[2]
• Dravidian languages, in South India and Sri Lanka.^[1][2]
• Tibeto-Burman languages, a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, along the northern and eastern edges.^[1][2]
• Austroasiatic languages, in small areas of India.^[1][2]
• There are also some people who speak Kra-Dai languages, and some language isolates such as Burushaski, which are not known to be related to any other languages.^[2]

South Asia includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, the Maldives, and sometimes Afghanistan.

Indo-Aryan languages

Most Indo-Aryan languages grew from Sanskrit, an ancient language. It is hard to decide to define what is a language, and what is just a dialect (language variant). For example, Hindi and Urdu are similar when spoken, but Hindi is written in the Devanagari script and Urdu is written in the Persian-Arabic script. Hindi uses more words from Sanskrit, while Urdu uses more words from Persian and Arabic.^[2]

Language	Number of people who speak this language[3]	Places where people speak this language
Hindi	515,500,000	North India (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand)
Bengali	265,000,000	Bangladesh, West Bengal, Tripura
Urdu	17,200,000	Pakistan, parts of India (Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh)
Marathi	95,300,000	Maharashtra
Panjabi	154,500,000	United Panjab (Pak Panjab,Ind Panjab, Haryana, Himachal,Chandigarh, Delhi and Hazara divison of present day Kyber Paktunistan
Gujarati	60,600,000	Gujarat
Bhojpuri	52,400,000	western Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Nepal
Odia	38,000,000	Odisha
Maithili	34,000,000	eastern Bihar, eastern Jharkhand, Nepal
Sindhi	32,600,000	Sindh, Balochistan, northern Gujarat
Nepali	24,500,000	Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan
Magahi	20,700,000	southern Bihar, eastern Jharkhand, northern West Bengal
Sinhala	17,300,000	Sri Lanka
Chhattisgarhi	16,300,000	Chhattisgarh
Assamese	15,300,000	Assam
Chittagonian	13,000,000	eastern Bangladesh
Deccan	12,800,000	northern Karnataka
Sadri	12,100,000	Jharkhand, eastern Chhattisgarh, northern Odisha, southern Bihar
Sylheti	11,800,000	eastern Bangladesh, southern Assam

Iranic languages

See the main article: Iranic languages

Only some of the Iranic languages are from South Asia. Others are from West Asia or Central Asia.^[1][4] This table shows the total number of people who speak each language.

Language	Number of people who speak this language	Places where people speak this language
Pashto	40,000,000	Afghanistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Dari Persian	20,500,000[5]	Afghanistan
Balochi	10,000,000[6]	Balochistan

Nuristani languages

About 130,000 people speak the five Nuristani languages.^[2]

Dravidian languages

See the main article: Dravidian languages

Language	Number of people who speak this language[3]	Places where people speak this language
Telugu	93,000,000	Andhra Pradesh, Telangana
Tamil	81,000,000	Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka
Kannada	56,400,000	Karnataka
Malayalam	37,800,000	Kerala
Brahui	3,300,000[7]	central Balochistan
Gondi	3,000,000[8]	Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra[9]
Kurukh	2,300,000[10]	Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, West Bengal, northern Bangladesh
Tulu	1,900,000[8]	western Karnataka, northern Kerala
Beary	1,700,000[8]	western Karnataka, northern Kerala

Tibeto-Burman languages

A number of Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, Northeast India, Bangladesh, North India, and North Pakistan.

Austroasiatic languages

Most Austroasiatic languages are spoken in Southeast Asia, rather than South Asia. The Austronesian languages spoken in South Asia are part of the Munda and Khasic branches.^[2]

Kra-Dai languages

Most Kra-Dai languages are spoken in East Asia and Southeast Asia. About 10,000 people speak these languages in South Asia, in Assam and the surrounding area.^[2]

Language isolates

A language isolate is a language that is not known to be related to any other languages.

There are several native languages to the Andaman Islands. Originally they were grouped into Great Andamanese, Ongan, Jangil, and Sentinelese. Today, people have stopped speaking some of these languages, making them extinct.

The Burushaski language is spoken by about 100,000 people in North Pakistan. The Kusunda language is spoken by less than 100 people in Nepal. The Nihali language is spoken by 2,000 or so people in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. All of these are considered language isolates.^[2]

References

1. "Linguistic landscaping of South Asia using digital language resources: Genetic vs. areal linguistics" (PDF). 2014. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
2. The languages and linguistics of South Asia : a comprehensive guide. Berlin. 2016. ISBN 978-3-11-042330-3. OCLC 951075713.
3. Ghosh, Iman (2020-02-15). "Ranked: The 100 Most Spoken Languages Around the World". Visual Capitalist. Retrieved 2020-09-11.
4. "Home Page | Iranian Languages". iranian-languages.arizona.edu. Retrieved 2020-09-11.
5. "Dari". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2020-09-11.
6. Jahani, Carina. "The Balochi Language Project - Institutionen för lingvistik och filologi - Uppsala universitet". www.lingfil.uu.se (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 2019-08-25. Retrieved 2020-09-11.
7. "Brahui". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2020-09-11.
8. "Data on Language and Mother Tongue". Census of India. 2011. Retrieved 2020-09-11.
9. Beine, David Karl (2013). A Sociolinguistic Survey of the Gondi-speaking Communities of Central India (PDF). SIL International.
10. "Kurux". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2020-09-11.