The *Many* Languages of INDIA!

This video is all about India and its stunning linguistic diversity.

Special thanks to Ajay Sharma for his Hindi and Sanskrit samples, Gopal Krishna for his Tamil samples and feedback, and Soroosh Motevalli for his Persian samples.

Current patrons include these amazing people:

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The following Creative Commons images were used in this video. Still images from the video incorporating transformations of these images are offered under Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0 license.

[arupz]

I'm a South indian.. my native language is Malayalam..
I speak Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Hindi and English
.. Im comfortable in all the Dravidian languages plus English and hindi

[iditrirajan]

Finally a foreigner who knows that people from India don't speak Indian 😆😆😆

[batman]

meanwhile some Americans

i want to learn indian

[balasoshingade]

I'm maharashtrian and now I'm feeling like marathi is the languages that connect north and south India...

[ayanokoji]

Fun fact :- those 22 recognised official languages have different accents too LoL

[bilalsadain]

The most important thing to know: "Indian" is not a language. It's so annoying when people ask me "you speak Indian?"

[HariAyiravalli]

I am from India in Kerala.. my native language is Malayalam 🙆🙆🙆🙆🙆

[nashtlulo]

I'm from Mizoram.My native languages is Mara, our tribe has 5 different languages, but I spoke only three Tlosaih, Chapi and Hawthai.If I talked to other mizo tribe I used Mizo(Duhlian).When I went outside my state I used English, Hindi, Assamese and a little bit of Bengali.

[enigmaticharmer]

All Indians are either bilingual or trilingual.

[joemark]

Mother Tongue: Malayalam
Languages spoken: Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, English

[magn]

Foreigners: You are from India, Do you speak Indian?
Me : 😶

[Mantoshsarkar-ksgn]

I am Bengali, but My Family and I are/ am fluent in English, Hindi, Gujarati and Telugu, thanks to the fact that we lived in those States in India..

[imtysjamir]

I'm from Nagaland, a small state in North East India bordering Myanmar. I speak a language called Ao. I can also speak Nagamese, English and Hindi. Nagaland has 16 tribes and each tribe has its own language but Nagas as a whole communicate with English and a made up language called Nagamese.

[voscra]

This is an incredible summary of Indian languages. As someone with a background in linguistics who specifically study South Asian languages, I can really vouch for the accuracy of this video, and I love the fact that you never make generalizations and recognize the incredibly diversity of India.

This is a level of summarization of research that is very unexpected for a YouTube video.

[mravalik]

Let me start out by saying, I love all the languages because of how rich they are, but with myself, I am currently learning Hindi, Punjabi, and Tamil - which without a doubt Tamil is I believe by far the most complicated 😂
Love to India from America 🙏🏻💙

[imranshaikh]

I’m a South Indian Muslim living in Mumbai. I fluently speak Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic and Spanish. I mostly used them in the different circle of friends and family, but mostly during my travels.

[kavyakrishnakumar]

In Kerala all 14 districts have their own dielects. And sometimes even we can't understand eachother 😂.

[dumbproductions]

Dr. Who: I speak every language

India: no, you don't

[JustKixs]

Filipino here. I've visited India and people thought that I was local, especially in Jammu and Kashmir, so people spoke to me in Hindi.
I spoke English in India and got along well with everyone. Good job India!

[sunheart]

I am from Germany (speak German, English and French) and I'm learning Marathi (and Farsi, so I have also noticed the many loan words from Farsi). Marathi is such a beautiful language! At one point I want to learn a Dravidian language too, probably Tamil. But for now I'm concentrating on Marathi.