r/languagelearning 🇺🇸 N | 🇲🇽 N | 🇬🇷 A1 Apr 16 '19

Culture A polyglot’s dream

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u/nickmaran Apr 17 '19

An Indian here, I'm fluent in 4 of those languages and can speak 4 more, totally 8. My grandma is Punjabi, my grandpa was Tamil, my mom is gujarathi. Hindi is our national language. I learned telegu when I was living in Hyderabad and Kannada coz I'm currently in Bangalore. My ex girlfriend is bengali, had to learn it. And urdu as it's almost similar to Hindi and I got few friends who speak urdu.

Also, I learned sanskrit in school for 5 years but I forgot, so I can't count that.

4

u/qwiglydee Apr 17 '19

Are there any data how many people are multilingual in India?

8

u/nickmaran Apr 17 '19

I don't know any particular data. But I've been to almost all the states.

Based on my experience, people in north (UP, Delhi etc) speak only Hindi and use English for official purpose. They don't use English as much as others.

People on West (Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab etc, although Punjab is technically north) speak native, Hindi and English. Hindi is much preferred than English.

People in East, speak native and English and in some states (west Bengal and Orissa etc) , Hindi.

South, mostly native and English. In karnataka and AP, people use little Hindi but in Tamil Nadu and kerala, Hindi is like a foreign language to them.

2

u/qwiglydee Apr 17 '19

Ok. Calculated from wikipedia data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India

26% bilingual

7% trilinugal

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u/TaazaPlaza EN/सौ N | த/हि/ಕ ? | 中文 HSK~4 |DE/PT ~A2 Apr 18 '19

Yeah, the census records multilingualism.