India has 14 officially recognized languages. In addition there are many more fully developed languages. They are distinct and are not merely separate dialects of the same language, there there are many dialects, too. India’s 2001 census found 29 languages with 1 million or more native speakers. The most prevalent, Hindi, was spoken by more than 40 percent of Indians. The next seven languages by popularity were Bengali, Telegu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Guajarathi and Kanada. Combined, those languages were used by another 40 percent of Indians.
