There are about ______ scheduled languages spoken in India.
A. 22
B. 18
C. 30
D. 25
Answer by Student
So, the correct answer is (A): 22
Detailed Explanation by Teachoo
Let’s check all the options
-
Option (A) 22
- 22 is the number of languages that are mentioned in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which are referred to as scheduled languages and given recognition, status and official encouragement by the government. These languages are Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri (Meitei), Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. These languages belong to different language families such as Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman and Munda⁷. These languages are spoken by millions of people across different states and regions of India. So, this is
correct
-
Option (B) 18
- 18 is not the number of languages spoken in India. It is the number of languages that were initially included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India in 1950. Later, four more languages were added in 1967 (Sindhi), 1992 (Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali) and 2003 (Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali), making the total number of scheduled languages 22. So, this is
incorrect.
-
Option (C) 30
- 30 is not the number of languages spoken in India. It is the number of languages that were spoken by more than a million native speakers according to the 2001 Census of India. These languages include the 22 scheduled languages and eight other languages such as Bhili/Bhilodi, Gondi, Khandeshi, Kurukh/Oraon, Tulu etc⁵. However, these are not the only languages spoken in India. There are many more languages that are spoken by less than a million people but are still important for their speakers and their culture. So, this is
incorrect.
- Option (D) 25 - 25 is not the number of languages spoken in India. It is a random number that has no significance in relation to the languages of India. There is no official or reliable source that gives this number as the total number of languages spoken in India. So, this is incorrect.
Thus, option (A) is correct
