The 10 Most Common Languages Spoken in India

10. Malayalam

Another Dravidian language, Malayalam is not as common as many other languages but still 34 million people speak this language in India. It is similar to Tamil and is the official language of India’s southernmost state, Kerala. The Malayalis are the native people of the Kerala state.

Though Malayalam is not a language common outside of India, some Persian Gulf countries do speak it due to the populations of Malayali immigrants.

9. Odia

As the name of the language suggests, Odia is the primary language in the Indian state Odisha. It is another language from Prakish roots though there are elements of Dravidian languages that can be seen influencing the language. About 3% of India’s population speaks Odia (37 million people) and worldwide, 50 million people speak it.

8. Kannada

Kannada is another Dravidian language with approximately 20 different dialects. There are 44 million native speakers of Kannada or 3.7% of India’s population. Most speakers of Kannada are from Karnataka. There are differences in the language from regions and also for informal and formal usage.

7. Urdu

Urdu is a common language in India and is also the official language of the neighboring country, Pakistan. Around 7% of India’s population speaks Urdu as their primary language. It is most common in states such as West Bengal, Bihar, and Kashmir. It is very similar to Hindi and is a “sister language” in some ways.

6. Gujarati

Gujarat is a northwestern Indian state where Gujarati is the official language. Over 62 million people in India speak this language. Like other common languages in India, Gujarati is a language that comes from Sanskrit. While there are similarities amongst Gujarat and other Sanskrit-based languages, they are still each their own language Gujarat has more Persian and Arabic influences.

5. Tamil

Tamil is the language of over 69 million people in India. Most Tamil speakers are from the southern part of the country, including Tamil Nadu. Tamil is also a language common in Sri Lanka. It is also one of the world’s oldest surviving languages. Like Telugu, Tamil is a Dravidian language.

4. Telugu

This language is the primary language in Andhra Pradesh. Telugu is a Dravidian language, unlike the other three most common languages. In fact, Telugu is presently the most widely spoken of the Dravidian languages. There are over 75 million people who speak Telugu in India and over 96 million speakers throughout the world.

3. Marathi

Marathi is a more common language in the Western part of the country. It is the official language of Maharashtra. Interestingly, there are over 40 dialects of Marathi. Over 84 million people in India call Marathi their mother tongue. This language came from Prakrit, a later development of Sanskrit.

2. Bengali (or Bangla)

Although it is not an official language of India, Bengali is the second most common language in India. West Bengali has the most people who speak Bengali with about 85 million speakers in India alone! That amounts to 8.03% of the country’s population.

1. Hindi

One of the official languages of India is Hindi. It is a common tongue throughout the country and is the language on most official forms and exams. Hindi has roots in the Sanskrit language but has taken some influence from other languages, like Portuguese and English, over the years.

Over 500 million people worldwide speak Hindi. Just under half the population (43%) of India speaks Hindi according to a 2011 census. Most of the Hindi speakers are in the northern half of India.