OCTOBER 04, 2024

India notifies five new classical languages!

With over 121 languages and more than 19,500 dialects, India is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world.

On October 3, 2024, the Government of India conferred the status of “classical language” to 5 languages.

With this, the total number of classical languages in India has increased to 11. Here is a list of all the Indian classical languages!

Data: pib.gov.in

Dates back to 100 BC

Marathi

Dates back to 600 BC

Pali

Spoken between 500 BC and 500 AD

Prakrit

Image: blogs.bl.uk

Dates back to 400-500 AD

Assamese

Image: wikipedia.org

Dates back to 900-1,000 AD

Bengali

Dates back to 1,000 AD

Odia

Dates back to 830 AD

Malayalam

Image: commons.wikimedia.org

Dates back to 350–400 AD

Kannada

Image: wikipedia.org

Dates back to 400 BC

Telugu

Image: commons.wikimedia.org

Dates back to 1,500 BC 

Sanskrit

Image: commons.wikimedia.org

Dates back to 5th century BC

Tamil

5 oldest languages in the world

Thanks for reading!

See next

Read Now