People from India, question about languages?

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Forrest's APES class

Well like you said there are many different languages in India. Perhaps up to 200 or so, (i'm not sure but my parents say that thats about how many there are), If you grow up in India, no matter where you live, Hindi is taught in school so thats one language.

Then depending on where you live, you learn another language in school, ( i.e, Andhra you learn Telagu, Tamil Nadu you learn Tamil), so those are 2 languages, your parents probably know at least one other language, therefore they'll teach you that at hom, thats 3. Then it depends on if you move.

Example:

You grow up in Madras, you learn Tamil and Hindi in school for sure, then lets say hypothetically our parents grew up in Ahamanabad, so they know Gugurathri, so they teach you that, then you move to Andhrapradhesh, so you learn Telagu there, thats 4 languages right there.

My cousins moved around a ton in India, so they know like 10 different languages.

I'm an American born kid, and only know English and Telagu, so don't take what I said 100%, I mean if someone growing up in India told you how, then I'd believe them over me but this is how I'm pretty sure it works.

nille p

im from india i watch hindhi movies and i automaticly picked up the language when i hear it and watch with subtitles no one taught me hindhi but i can now understand it. Some people just have a lot of memorey to learn alot of languages

Paddy

You are right India is a land of many languages. But it would be incorrect to say we Indians speak all the languages. My parents are from two corners of India and surprising as it may seem they communicate in English.
Indian languages are quite similar, people from Tamil Nadu who speaks only Tamil can understand other southern languages though they may not be able to speak, read or write them.
In the North Hindi is the main language, but Bhojpuri, Bihari,Urdu are understood by the people because these languages are quite similar.
Same is the case with Bengali and Gujarati.
Then you have neighbors, colleagues,etc who speak a different language and you pick up the language just by being with them.

I could care less

Yes there are 26+ major languages in India (with different speech, script and pretty much everything else), mostly different language can be tied to differest states.

However, not all Indians speak all those languages. Typically you will speak following four languages, though it depends on where in India you grow up.

-- Mothertongue (the language spoken by your parents)
-- State Language (because you kinda need to learn this to go about doing your day to day business)
-- National Language (Hindi)
-- Business Language (English)

As most of the cities have people with all languages, one would end up with a neighbour who speaks a difft language. When I grew up in India (Am in US now), I had neighbours who spke Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. As my folks spoke Kannda, got used to 4 languages. As there are so many people with difft languages, everyone need to know English as I cannot communicate with other people when I go to a difft state!

guess who??

i am punjabi and i don't know how to speak it very well but my parnets speak it all the time i understand it. and yeah i have no hindi or anything else in me and i understand it becuase of movies from bollywood wit subtiles now i don't even need the subtiles
there are many kindds of indians and i hate when people confuse them and call me hindu i am punjabi and proud next time all of u people ask wat kind of indian are u like spainsh people there so many kinds of spainsh people and they get mad if u guess wrong so do we

gee

i can speak chinese and english.

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