It is no surprise that people want to visit India. It is a beautiful land that is rich in history. However, are you wondering what languages are spoken in India? What if nobody understands you when you go there? Is going through the trouble of applying for an Indian visa worth it?
You just go ahead and get process your Indian visa. Don’t worry the application form for an Indian visa is in English. English won’t be a problem for the Indian people, since it is the language usually used for business and is the second major language of the country. In fact, English is even the first language of many people and many of them would even use it over Hindi.
Of course, Hindi is the official language of India. Although more than 40 percent of India’s population speak and understand Hindi, there are others who do not use or do not even know the language at all. Being a foreigner won’t give you a hard time communicating and going around India. All you need is your knowledge of the English language and your Indian visa.
Aside from English and Hindi, there is a wide range of languages spoken in India. In fact, every region in India has an associated language family. In the northern regions, the Indo-Iranian and Indo-European languages are used. In the south, the Dravidian languages are widely spoken. If you go to the Himalayan ridge, the Sino-Tibetan languages are predominant there. Lastly, some of the tribal peoples also have their own language family known as the Austro-Asiatic language family.
Let’s just say you have applied for an Indian visa and you will be travelling to India in the near future. What are the other languages that you will expect aside from English and Hindi? Well, there are a lot. A lot would mean that there are around 114 languages and 216 dialects that are spoken in India according to the Indian national census. English plus 18 of these languages are considered to be official languages.
Assamese is the language that is spoken by most of the people in Assam; more than half of the population, in fact. When you go to Bengal, you’ll be surprised to know that most people here only speak Bengali and no Hindi or English at all. In Gujarat, the Gujarati language is widely used. In Karnataka, the people here would be using a language of the Dravidian family known as Kannada. Konkani would be spoken in the Konkan region. In Kashmir, Kashmiri is used, but must not be mistaken as the state language. In Kerala, you will find the youngest language of the Dravidian family: Malayalam. In the northeast part of India, Manipuri is widely spoken there. Travel to Maharashtra and Mumbai and there you will discover the Marathi language. Travel towards Nepal and to the regions of India to the Northeast. There you will find people speaking in Nepali. In Orissa, the state language would be called Oriya. Punjabi is the Punjab’s state language, as the name implies. There are also people who still use Sanskrit, India’s classical language and one of the world’s oldest languages. Indian people who were originally from Pakistan would be using the Sindhi language. Go to Tamil Nadu and here you will hear about the Tamil language. If you go to Andhra Pradesh, you will discover the Telugu language. India also has a Muslim population and they use the Urdu language.
As you have seen, India has a wide range of languages. The ones mentioned above are just the official ones. It will be nice to learn more about these languages. Apply for an Indian visa now, if you want to know more about India. Applying for an Indian visa won’t be hard if you have the requirements. Going through the trouble of getting and India Visa is really worth it.
