Indian multi – lingual – ism dates back historically to ancient times when ethnic groups and races came in contact with one another through migration from one region to another region. Although, political compulsions and social re-structuring might have contributed a little to its growth, yet multilingualism in India was largely a product of close contact between four language familes from the earliest recorded history.
India is one of the major hot – spots of linguistic diversity on the globe. It is high in language diversity (350 languages) and low in phylogenetic (5 families) diversity. India is a home not only to several dominant world languages, but also to many small languages facing extinction. The languages spoken in India are Sanskrit, Hindi, English, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali, Assamese, Dogri, Urdu, Oriya, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Sindhi, Konkani, Manipuri, Khasi, Mijo, English.
The regional distribution of the above languages have been described as given below:
1. Hindi – Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh etc.
2. Telugu – Andhra Pradesh, Telangana
3. Punjabi – Punjab
4. Gujarati – Gujarat
5. Marathi – Maharashtra
6. Tamil – Tamil Nadu
7. Kannada – Karnataka
8. Oriya – Orissa
9. Assamesse – Assam
10.Bengali – West Bengal and Tripura
11.Hindi and Assamesse/English – Arunachal Pradesh
12.Angami and English – Nagaland
13.Manipuri – Manipur
14.Mijo – Mizoram
15.Khasi and Garo – Meghalaya
16.Lapcha – Sikkim
17.Konkani – Goa
18.Urdu and Dogri(Kashmiri) – Jammu and Kashmir
19.Malayalam – Kerala
