Languages in India

India is home to two major linguistic families: Indo-Aryan (spoken by about 74% of the population) and Dravidian (spoken by about 24% in the four southern states). Other languages spoken in India come from the Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman linguistic families. The Indian constitution recognizes 23 official languages. Hindi and English are used by the Union Government of India for official purposes, wherein Hindi has a de jure priority. Tamil and Sanskrit were designated "classical languages" by the Indian government in 2004 and 2005. The number of dialects in India is as high as 1,652.