Languages of India

Main languages of India are Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Bodo, Chhattisgarhi, Dogri, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. Most of the languages in the above list are spoken by more than half a million people .

Hindi - The Official Language of India

Hindi is the official language of India and is referred to as 'Rāj-Bhāṣhā' (language of the state). Its mainly spoken in the northern and central India, but it is understood and spoken in most of the Indian cities. The importance of Hindi is as the main link language. So for example - when a Punjabi talks to a Oriya, most probably they will use Hindi.

Sanskrit

Sanskrit was a language of scholars in India. A lot of those scholars believed in the caste system. This caste system is still present! Probably this caste system and inherent complexities of Sanskrit kept it out of the reach of common man!

Now only few hundred people speak Sanskrit and few thousand can really understand it! Now-a-days, people study/learn Sanskrit to read great piece of literature like the Veđ/s, Rāmā`yaṇ, Mahābhāraŧ etc..

Apart from Sanskrit, there were other languages spoken by masses (Pali, Prakrit, etc.). These languages also have influenced modern Indian languages.

Nagari Languages

The main purpose of this page is to coin the phrase 'Nagari Languages' and to classify those languages accordingly. This page do not list all the languages of India (or South Asia) generally referred as Indic languages.

Those languages which are written using Nagari (aka Devanagari) script can be called as Nagari Languages. These Nagari languages and other Indic languages have a common root, i.e. Sanskrit.

A lot of words of Nagari languages are similar.

I/we would like to classify Nagari languages in the following four categories -

1.	Those languages which -
	A.	are spoken by more than one crore (ten million) people.
	B.	uses mainly the Nagari script.
	C.	aren't a simple dialect of any other Nagari language.
	Ex.	Hindi (हिन्दी), Marathi (मराठी), Nepali (नेपाली), Konkani (कोंकणी), Bodo (बोड़ो/बड़ो), Maithili (मैथिली), Bhojpuri (भोजपुरी), Marwari (मारवाड़ी), Magahi (मगही), Haryanvi (हरयाणवी), Chhattisgarhi (छत्तीसगढ़ी)
2.	Those languages which -
	A.	are spoken by more than ten lakh (one million) people.
	B.	uses mainly the Nagari script.
	Ex.	Brij Bhasha (ब्रज भाषा), Awadhi (अवधी), Bundelkhandi (बुंदेलखंडी)
3.	Those languages which mainly use the Nagari script.
	Ex.	Sanskrit (a sacred and historic language), Newari, Dogri, Garhwali, Jaipuri, Mewari, Shekhawati, Kumaoni, Bagheli, Bhili, Kurukh/Kudukh, Mundari, Bhatneri, Balti, Bateri, Kachchi, Kanauji, Kurmali, Panchpargania, Angika, Khortha, Kurku, Khadiya, Kului, Harauti, Palpa, Kankan, Limbu, Sherpa, Ho, Nagpuri, Gondi.
4.	Those languages which sometimes uses Nagari script but generally written in other scripts.
	Ex.	Sindhi, Urdu, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Punjabi...

Though the languages of the 4th category uses Nagari as second script but a lot of words of the these languages are similar to Hindi! The Gujarati script is very simillar to Nagari.

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This page may never be complete or correct. It should not be used as a reference! Only you may refer it as the first attempt to classify some of the South Asian languages from the perspective of the DevaNagari script.

You may find lists of these languages on other web-pages like those pages at Unicode.org.

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