Mary Beth Metcalf, age 15, of Danville, Ill., for his question:
WHAT LANGUAGE IS SPOKEN IN INDIA?
About 180 languages, including 14 major ones, plus more than 700 dialects are spoken in India. In just one state, Madya Pradesh, the people speak over 375 languages and dialects.
Hindi is the official language of India. India's constitution of 1950 provided that Hindi would be the official language, but that government business would be conducted in English for 15 years. In 1965, English was dropped as an official language and became an "associate" language.
Today about half of the Indian people speak Hindi. only about two percent of the people speak English. But English also serves as a common language among most educated Indians.
The problem of many different languages is an obstacle to India's development. For example, at national conferences persons from different parts of the country may not understand each other.
Differences in writing among the languages present another problem. As an example, the language most widely spoken has two different alphabets. Written one way, it is called Hindi, and written the other way, Urdu.
Many people who cannot speak Hindi did not want it to become their nation's only official language. They claimed that the best jobs in government and industry would go to those who speak Hindi.
In addition, several of India's other languages have old and honored literatures. Many Indians fear that these writings would someday be lost if everyone spoke Hindi.
Generally speaking, Indians who speak the same language live in the same state. A major language is spoken throughout most of the states. Some states have been created from parts of others to unite members of a language group.
In 1956, the government reorganized the states for this reason, reducing their number from 27 to 14.
The people of the new state of Bombay after the 1956 reorganization still included two large language groups: persons who spoke Gujarati and those who spoke Marathi. Each group was dissatisfied and wanted its own state.
So the government in 1960 divided Bombay into two new states: Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Also, in 1966 two states were formed from Punjab because of language differences. The states are Punjab, where Punjabi is spoken, and Haryana, where Hindi is spoken.
The chief languages of India belong to two language families: Indo European and Dravidian. The Indo European languages, spoken in northern India, include Hindi and its closely related form, Urdu. These languages also include Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi and Rajasthani. They come from Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language with many words similar to words in European tongues.
The main Dravidian languages, spoken in southern India, include Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.
The tribal peoples speak their own languages.