Languages of South Asia

South Asia is home to several hundred languages, spanning the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

Geolinguistically, the Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and Munda language groups are predominantly distributed across the Indian subcontinent.

Persian is spoken in the central plateau, with varieties like Dari in Afghanistan, Farsi in Iran and Tajik in Tajikistan.

[3] From the colonial era onwards, English became a lingua franca to some extent, aiding those who participated in the Indian independence movement, for example.

In contemporary times, English is considered the international lingua franca of the South Asian countries.

[13] On a subregional level, Telugu was a language of high culture in South India in precolonial times,[17] while in modern times, Punjabi and Bengali function as major transnational languages connecting the northwestern and eastern regions of India to Pakistan and Bangladesh, respectively (see also Punjabiyat).

Bengali is the second most spoken language of South Asia, found in both Bangladesh and Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam.

[22] Other notable languages include Odia, Telugu, Punjabi, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Sindhi, Kannada, Pashto, Malayalam, Maithili, Meitei (Manipuri), Konkani, and Tulu.

Arabic is considered as the religious language, and English is medium of instruction for education and international purposes such as tourism.

The official language of the country is Nepali, earlier known as Gorkhali in the Kingdom of Nepal, which is part of the Indo-Aryan group and is the spoken by majority of the population.

Punjabi is followed by Pashto, Sindhi, Saraiki,[a] Urdu, and Balochi; while more than 70 other languages like Shina, Balti, Gujarati,[28] Bengali,[29] etc.