Languages Lost

India has lost roughly 20 per cent of its languages in the past five decades, a survey revealed.

The People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI), conducted by the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre based in Vadodara, Gujarat, over two years starting in 2011, recently revealed that India has lost roughly 20 per cent of its languages in the past five decades. Ganesh Devy, writer and lead coordinator of the PLSI, says 220 of India’s 1,100 languages (as of 1961) are now extinct, most of them belonging to nomadic communities. He added that were these languages still in existence, they might have been spoken by 3-4 per cent of Indians—about 50 million people. Reasons cited for the loss were community displacement, a lack of recognition of and of livelihoods for speakers, and prejudice against ‘under-developed’ mother tongues. The PLSI found 90 languages spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, almost double the number spoken in the second-most diverse state, which was Assam, with 55.

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