For the love of languages
- POSTED ON: 16 Feb, 2021
- TOTAL VIEWS: 485 Views
- POSTED BY: Madhumitha Srinivasan
- ARTICLE POINTS: 150 Points
The United Nations has declared that every year, February 21 will be observed as International Mother Language Day. This declaration recognises that “languages and multilingualism can advance inclusion, and the Sustainable Development Goals’ focus on leaving no one behind.”
In countries like France and Germany, people commonly speak one language – French and German, respectively. In countries like India, its people speak not one, or two or three – but 427 languages!
In fact, India has the world’s fourth-highest number of languages, after Nigeria (524), Indonesia (710) and Papua New Guinea (840).
While the Constitution of India does not give any language the status of a national language, the official language of our country is Hindi in Devanagari script.
Below are a few commonly spoken languages across India and its states. Can you match the script to the right language? Drag the scripts at the bottom (on the green) to the names of the languages (on the orange).
(Cover image: Subhashish Panigrahi/Creative Commons)