List of Indian languages by number of native speakers

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India is home to several hundred languages. Most languages spoken in India belong either to the Indo-Aryan (ca. 74%), the Dravidian (ca. 24%), the Austroasiatic (Munda) (ca. 1.2%), or the Tibeto-Burman (ca. 0.6%) families, with some languages of the Himalayas still unclassified. The SIL Ethnologue lists 415 living languages for India.

1 Overview
2 List by number of native speakers
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Overview

Hindi (the standard Khariboli dialect besides many mutually intelligible dialects) is the most widespread language of India. Indian English ranks only as 40th as first language, but is spoken as a second language by an estimated 350 million Indians (as of 2005[1]). English is the second "language of the Union" besides Hindi, and the original language of the Indian constitution. In Mughal times, Persian played an important role as a language of government, education and trade and is still a classical language of study in many Indian schools.

Twelve languages account for more than 1% of Indian population each, and between themselves for over 95% of Indians; all of them are "scheduled languages of the constitution".

Scheduled languages spoken by less than 1% of Indians are Santali (0.62%), Sindhi (0.25%), Nepali (0.25%), Meitei (0.15%), Bodo (0.25%), Dogri (spoken in the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir) and Sanskrit (as a Classical Language of India). The largest language that is not "scheduled" is Bhili (0.67%), followed by Gondi (0.25%), Tulu (0.19%) and Kurukh (0.17%).

[edit] List by number of native speakers

Further information: List of languages by number of native speakers

Ordered by number of speakers as first language. Indian population in 1991 exhibited 19.4% of bilingualism and 7.2% of trilingualism, so that the total percentage of "native languages" is at about 127%.

**Table: Ordered by number of native speakers**
Rank	Language	1991 census [2] [3] (total population 838.14 million)		2001 census[4] (total population 1,004.59 million)		Encarta estimate (2007)
		Speakers	Percentage	Speakers	Percentage	Speakers
1	Hindi^[1]	337,272,114	40.0%			336 M
2	Telugu	79,895,668	8.30%			79.9M
3	Bengali	69,595,738	8.30%			69.9M
4	Marathi	62,481,681	7.45%			68.0 M
5	Tamil	53,006,368	7.32%			66.0 M
6	Urdu	43,406,932	5.18%			60.3 M
7	Gujarati	40,673,814	4.85%			46.1 M
8	Kannada	32,753,676	3.91%			35.3 M
9	Malayalam	30,377,176	3.62%			35.7 M
10	Oriya	28,061,313	3.35%			32.3 M
11	Punjabi	23,378,744	2.79%			57.1 M
12	Assamese	13,079,696	1.56%			15.4 M
13	Bhili/Bhilodi	5,572,308	0.665%
14	Santali	5,216,325	0.622%
15	Gondi	2,124,852	0.253%
16	Sindhi	2,122,848	0.253%
17	Nepali	2,076,645	0.248%
18	Konkani	1,760,607	0.210%
19	Tulu	1,552,259	0.185%
20	Kurukh	1,426,618	0.170%
21	Meitei (Manipuri)	1,270,216	0.151%
22	Bodo	1,221,881	0.146%

[edit] Fewer than one million speakers

		Number of speakers	Percentage
23	Khandeshi	973,709	0.116%
24	Ho	949,216	0.113%
25	Khasi	912,283	0.109%
26	Mundari	861,378	0.103%
27	Kokborok	694,940	0.083%
28	Garo	675,642	0.081%
29	Kui	641,662	0.077%
30	Mizo	538,842	0.064%
31	Halabi	534,313	0.064%
32	Korku	466,073	0.056%
33	Munda	413,894	0.049%
34	Mishing	390,583	0.047%
35	Karbi/Mikir	366,229	0.044%
36	Saurashtra	310,000	0.037%
37	Savara	273,168	0.033%
38	Koya	270,994	0.032%
39	Kharia	225,556	0.027%
40	Khond/Kondh	220,783	0.026%
41	English	178,598	0.021%
42	Nishi	173,791	0.021%
43	Ao	172,449	0.021%
44	Sema	166,157	0.020%
45	Kisan	162,088	0.019%
46	Adi	158,409	0.019%
47	Rabha	139,365	0.017%
48	Konyak	137,722	0.016%
49	Malto	108,148	0.013%
50	Thado	107,992	0.013%
51	Tangkhul	101,841	0.012%

[edit] Fewer than 100,000 speakers

		1991 census	SIL estimate
52	Kolami	98,281 (0.012%)	115,000 (1997) Northwestern: 50,000; Southeastern: 10,000
53	Angami	97,631 (0.012%)	109,000 (1997)
54	Kodagu	97,011 (0.012%)	122,000
55	Dogri	89,681 (0.011%)	(Pakistan+India: 2.1 million)
56	Dimasa	88,543 (0.011%)	106,000
57	Lotha	85,802 (0.010%)	80,000
58	Mao	77,810 (0.009%)	81,000
59	Tibetan	69,146 (0.008%)	124,280 (1994)
60	Kabui (Rongmei)	68,925 (0.008%)	59,000 (1997)
61	Phom	65,350 (0.008%)	34,000 (1997)