Miscellaneous News

Linguistic Data in India

March 6 , 2025 8 hrs 0 min 26 0

Non-Hindi speakers are generally more open to learning new languages, whereas Hindi speakers exhibit lower multilingualism.
In 1991, 84.5% of native Tamil speakers in Tamil Nadu (those who speak Tamil as their first language in the state) were monolingual, a figure that dropped to 78% by 2011.
Similarly, the share of native Odia speakers in Odisha who were monolingual declined from 86% to 74.5%.
In contrast, States where Hindi is the predominant first language already had a high share of monolinguals, and in many cases, this share increased over time.
For instance, in 1991, 90.2% of Hindi speakers in undivided Bihar were the monolingual.
By 2011, in the divided Bihar, this figure had risen to 95.2%.
Similarly, in Rajasthan, the share of monolinguals among the Hindi speakers had increased from 93% in 1991 to 94.3% in 2011.
In Tamil Nadu, 13.5% of native Tamil speakers also spoke the English in 1991, a figure that rose to 18.5% by 2011.
In contrast, in Haryana, the share of native Hindi speakers who also spoke the English declined from 17.5% to 14.6% over the same period.
In Tamil Nadu, only 0.5% of native Tamil speakers also spoke Hindi in 1991, a figure that rose slightly to 1.3% in 2011.
But, the share of native language speakers who also spoke Hindi saw a significant increase in Gujarat and Maharashtra.