More than 19,500 languages spoken in India, census finds

Around 96.71% of country’s population have one of the 22 scheduled languages as their mother tongue

Mscrutiny, edit and rationalisation. This resulted in 1,369 rationalised mother tongues and 1,474 names which were treated as “unclassified” and relegated to “other” mother tongue category.

The 1,369 rationalised mother tongues were further classified following the usual linguistic methods for rational grouping based on available linguistic information. Thus, an inventory of classified mother tongues returned by 10,000 or more speakers are grouped under appropriate languages at the all-India level, wherever possible, has been prepared for final presentation of the 2011 mother tongue data.

The total number of languages arrived at is 121, the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, said.

The 121 languages are presented in two parts — languages included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, comprising 22 languages and languages not included in the Eighth Schedule, comprising of 99 languages plus the category “total of other languages”, which includes all other languages and mother tongues which returned less than 10,000 speakers each. ■

languages spoken by 10,000 or more people in India