India is a rather interesting and unique country in terms of internal structure and principles of governance. Its form of government is federal, and the state is the largest administrative unit of the country. Each state speaks its own language, officially enshrined in the Constitution, and dialects derived from it. India, whose official language, in addition to Hindi, is also English, controls only 29 states (not counting the seven union territories), and the boundaries between them are drawn according to national and linguistic principles. In this regard, they differ significantly in area, population and standard of living, available resources.
Relevance of studying the language issue
In this article, I would like to pay special attention to the linguistic situation in India, because now it is becoming more vulnerable due to the observed processes of erasing cultural and other barriers, tendencies towards Westernization. In this scenario, it will be increasingly difficult for this state to preserve its identity and ensure the further development of each of more than twenty languages and over one and a half thousand dialects, of whichreleased.
Of course, most of them are not in danger of extinction, since India is the second most populous country, and any of its official languages can boast of the number of its speakers (from 1.5 million to 423 million - the Hindi language). The problem lies in maintaining the purity of languages (avoiding borrowings and simplifications) and in the need to use them, because English, Spanish, etc. come to the fore in the modern world. Almost half of the world speaks them.
Historical explanation of the peculiarities of the country
In fact, India historically did not develop as a unitary state, and there are reasons for this. The country is home to many nationalities professing their own religions and belonging to different language groups. All these peoples in different centuries came and settled on Indian lands. Various kinds of interactions took place between them: some mini-states united neighboring ones under their auspices, others tried to spread their own faith or build an economic exchange. However, neither a single nation - "Indians", nor a strong country with stable internal ties and a common political course has developed over this long time.
Perhaps it's all because of too deep misunderstanding of each other's views and mutual distrust, plus passivity characteristic of Hindus, unwillingness to actively fight for anything. After all, separatist movements and national conflicts are still strong in India today. The country did not fall apart, probably only becausethe British who colonized it were able to maintain control over the states for a long time and built on their basis more or less effective institutions of government, which the Indian authorities still use today.
Language families of India
There are only four officially fixed language groups in the country. It turns out that:
- The northern and central regions are dominated by representatives of the Indo-Aryan family.
- South India - Dravidian.
- Northeast is the zone of Sino-Tibetan languages.
- Separately, speakers of the languages of the Australo-Asiatic or Austrasian group (Santal tribes) can also be singled out.
Official languages of Indian states, number of speakers
The country's constitution declares 22 official languages. The following is a given list of the languages of India (in no particular order) through which the states carry out the main communication. Figures are based on the 2002 census.
- Hindi - 422 million
- Urdu - 51.6 million (note, the state language of Pakistan).
- Bengali language or Bengali - 83.4 million
- Tamil - 61.2 million
- Telugu - 75 million
- Marathi (the language of the most economically developed state - Maharashtra) - 81.3 million
- Gujarati - 47 million
- Kannada - 38.7 million
- Punjabi - 30 million
- Kashmiri - 5.9 million
- Oriya - 34 million
- Malayalam - 34.1 million
- Assamese - 13.9 million
- Maithili - 13.1 million
- Santalsky - 7, 2million
- Nepali - 2.9 million
- Sindian - 2.7 million
- Dogri - 2.4 million
- Manipuri - 1.5 million
- Konkani - 2.5 million
- Bodo - 1.4 million
- Sanskrit is a dead language.
India: state language is Hindi
If we more accurately consider the language environment that India has, it has not one state language - there are two. But the first and main language is Hindi, which, by the way, is spoken by the government of the state. It is very expressive, and along with Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, etc., comes from the ancient Indo-Aryan language - Sanskrit. It is spoken by about 422-423 million people, making Hindi the second most widely spoken language in the world.
The status and role of English
The question involuntarily arises: why is the state language in India English, where is the connection? Information from world history comes to the rescue. It turns out that since the 17th century, England, on behalf of the East India Campaign established in it, has been conducting profitable trade with India. Having exhausted the previous sources of enrichment, the British for a hundred years (by 1850) subjugated the entire territory of the country, and India became a colony of Great Britain. Its rules, authorities, the English monopoly on trade were established there, and the local population was engaged in mining, supply of raw materials and production of goods.
During the time of being part of the British Kingdom, until independence was proclaimed in 1947, the population of India was drawn into the capitalistrelations, adopted English models of government, and also adopted the language of the conquerors and their ways of thinking. Therefore, India, whose official language is also Hindi, recognizes English as equal in importance.
The latter is usually used when communicating with foreigners. For example, it is actively practiced in the field of tourism, because a huge flow of tourists annually goes to rest on the shores of the Indian Ocean. In addition, all business meetings of Indian businessmen and politicians with partners and colleagues from abroad are held in English. The country after gaining independence has not lost close and beneficial ties with the UK, it is part of the British Commonwe alth of Nations.
Conclusion
Thus, a rather complicated language situation is developing in India. After all, when each of the states of the country communicates mainly in its official language, it is quite difficult to develop a common internal policy in the state. There may be misunderstandings, problems with accurate reporting of information, mistrust of the government in power or national movements. However, there are also positive aspects. The presence of such a wide range of languages in India implies that each of them is associated with certain cultural characteristics, values of the people using it. Therefore, India today is a country with the richest cultural heritage, which arouses the interest of the world community. Thus, Indian culture gained respect and recognition from him, andhence a guarantee of prosperity in the future.
