Languages of India

Children, what language do they speak in India? Hindi?

Well, not exactly. Hindi here, along with English, is the lingua franca, the official languages of the state, but native speakers of Hindi number only 250 to 450 million people (depending on dialect classification) out of the 1.4 billion population.

Each state of India is home to different peoples who de facto use their own languages. There are 22 languages with more than 1 million speakers, and hundreds of smaller ones.

For example:

• Mumbai, state of Maharashtra.
  Language: Marathi (मराठी).
  83 million speakers.
• Panaji, state of Goa.
  Language: Konkani (कोंकणी).
  1.7 million speakers.
• Bangalore, state of Karnataka.
  Language: Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ).
  38 million speakers.

And so on. Even the writing system differs.

By the way, there are more speakers of Marathi than there are of Turkish, Korean, German, or French.