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Although India has a rich linguistic history with more than 22 different national languages spoken throughout the length and breadth of the country, English has become its most popular language. English seems to be enjoying its youth in India, with the ubiquitous middle class of the country embracing the language as their own. It now serves as an integrating force and a link language which unites the country and provides a beacon of hope to youth.

"A "hidden" language spoken by only about 1,000 people has been discovered in the remote northeast corner of India by researchers who at first thought they were documenting a dialect of the Aka culture, a tribal community that subsists on farming and hunting." Also has sound samples.

Amazon wants to increase their number of users in India because of their giant population. However, most of the population doesn't speak English so Amazon's going to break the language barrier.

Teacher Vidya Tandanki brings children ranging from 9 to 14 into her home three days a week and teaches them Telugu. Telugu, a common tongue in India, is rare to hear from the mouths of second- and third-generation Indian Americans. (Los Angeles Times)

Languages a world apart have a similar habit of borrowing elevated vocabulary from other languages. In 1066, because the ruling class spoke Old French, that set of vocabulary became synonymous with the elite. Everyone else used Old English. During this period, England's society was diglossic: one community, two language sets with distinct social spheres. Today, English-speakers pick and choose from the different word sets-Latinate (largely Old French borrowings) and Germanic (mostly Old English-derived words)-depending on the occasion. Although English is no longer in a diglossic relationship with another language, the Norman-era diglossia remains reflected in the way we choose and mix vocabulary. In informal chat, for example, we might go on to ask something, but in formal speech we'd proceed to inquire. There are hundreds of such pairs: match/correspond, mean/intend, see/perceive, speak/converse. Most of us choose one or the other without even thinking about the history behind the split. Germanic words are often described as earthier, simpler, and friendlier. Latinate vocabulary, on the other hand, is lofty and elite. It's amazing that nine hundred years later, the social and political structure of 12th-century England still affects how we think about and use English. The article also discusses a similar historical phenomenon in India, where much of southern India, just like Norman England, was diglossic between Sanskrit (an Indo-European language used ritually and formally by Hindu elites) and vernacular Dravidian languages. Today, that diglossia is gone, but Sanskrit-derived vocabulary still forms an upper crust, mostly pulled out for formal speech or writing.

Is being trilingual better than being bilingual? Read to find out!

"Biologists using tools developed for drawing evolutionary family trees say that they have solved a longstanding problem in archaeology: the origin of the Indo-European family of languages. ... Dr. Atkinson's work has integrated a large amount of information with a computational method that has proved successful in evolutionary studies. But his results may not sway supporters of the rival theory, who believe the Indo-European languages were spread some 5,000 years later by warlike pastoralists who conquered Europe and India from the Black Sea steppe."

In the mid-1970s, sociolinguist John Gumperz was summoned to Heathrow International Airport to help make sense of an odd culture clash. The new hires in Heathrow's employee cafeteria (mostly women from India and Pakistan) and some of the baggage handlers at the airport - had grown to openly resent each other. Why? One word: gravy. British women cafeteria employees said the word with a rising intonation - gravy? - that was understood as "Would you like some gravy?" The Indian and Pakistani women, however, said it with falling intonation - gravy. That came across as, "This is gravy; take it or leave it." A mere surface intonational difference, yet the cause of major social misunderstanding.

Only ten percent of Indias population know how to read english, Shopping online in english can be discouraging if you cannot read the language. Amazon looking to cash in on these discouraged people have made their site viewable in Hindi. By doing so Amazon believes they will gain more customers from the fastest growing nation which means more money.

English originated in England and is the dominant language in many countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia. It is also the official language of India, the Philippines, Singapore, island nations in the Carribean Sea and Pacific Ocean, and many countries in Africa, including South Africa. About a third of the world's population uses English and it is the first choice of foreign language in most other countries in the world. The parent language of English Proto-Indo-European was used about 5,000 years ago by nomads. The closest language to modern English is Frisian, used by the Dutch province of Friesland. During the course of many millennia, modern English has slowly gotten simpler and less inflected. In English, only nouns, pronouns (he, him, his), adjectives (big, bigger, biggest) and verbs are inflected. English is the only European language to use uninflected adjectives (tall man & tall woman versus Spanish el hombre alto & la mujer alta. For the verb "ride", English has 5 forms (ride, rides, rode, riding, ridden) versus German reiten that has 16 forms. The simplification and loss of inflection has made English more flexible functionally and more open in vocabulary. English has "borrowed" words from other languages (e.g. cannibal, cigar, guerrilla, matador, mosquito, tornado, vanilla, etc. From Greek, English "borrowed": alchemy, alcohol, algebra, arsenal, assassin, elixir, mosque, sugar, syrup, zero, cipher etc. From Hebrew is: amen, hallelujah, manna, messiah, seraph, leviathan, shibboleth, etc. There are many other words in the English dictionary that are taken from other languages. Many countries speak or use English, but not in the same way we use it. The article is very long and goes through phonology (sounds), morphology inflection (grammar forms of tense, case, voice, person, gender, etc), composition, syntax (sentence forms), vocabulary, orthography (spelling systems) of English. It also gives

This article observes the affects of trilingualism vs bilingualism. The main idea was that trilingual people experience similar benefits to bilingual people, but it is harder to balance the three languages compared to the two.

In West Bengal, the education minister just made it mandatory for students to study three languages. He is making this compulsory in private, government, and ICSE and CBSE-affiliated schools. This request follows feedback that was received about Bengali not being offered in many schools. Now the three languages learned will consist of the mother tongue, regional language, and an international language.

Although linguists have used for many years the process of deriving pronunciations of obscure words via comparing it to related descendant languages, this method has now been expedited by being scripted into computer code. Thus, scientists can now utilize computer technology to predict pronunciations of obscure words with up to 76% accuracy, which is greatly assisting the documentation of ancient, poorly recorded, or endangered languages in India.

This article talks about two scientists who conducted an experiment by using the traditional comparative method to predict pronunciations of words in eight Western Kho-Bwa linguistic varieties spoken in India.

Researchers have found that people who speak multiple languages are twice as likely to recover their mental functions after a stroke as those who speak one language. The study gathered data from 608 stroke patients in Hyderabad, India, who were assessed, among others, on attention skills and the ability to retrieve and organise information. Bilinguals and multilinguals have better cognitive reserve - an improved ability of the brain to cope with damaging influences such as stroke or dementia - due to the mental challenge of speaking multiple languages and switching between them.