# Are all Indians multi-lingual? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 26, 2026, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401 "2026-09-26T15:10:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2026, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/1 "2026-09-26T15:10:18Z")
I just saw a language map of India, which showed the thirty-five languages in that country which have more than a million speakers. Plus I checked and found that India has twenty-two official languages. How many languages does the average Indian actually know? Are virtually all Indians multi-lingual or are there some noticeable amount who are mono-lingual? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2026, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/2 "2026-09-26T15:18:09Z")
This Wikipedia entry answers some of this question: > **[Multilingualism in India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism_in_India)** > > The Constitution of India designates the official languages of India as Hindi and English. The number of bilingual speakers in India is 314.9 million, which is 26% of the population in 2011. Hindi is one of the official languages of India and had 528 million native speakers as of the 2011 Census. About 139 million Indians speak Hindi as a second language and 24 million speak it as their third language. Combined percentages of first, second and third language speakers of Hindi and English in In... ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2026, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/3 "2026-09-26T16:00:11Z")
Anecdote time: In my country, there are many foreign workers from India who come for 3-5 years to earn money for their families back home. These are people from the poor rural areas, mostly working as manual labor or caretaking for the elderly, with no formal education beyond high school. The two of them who I know personally speak basic English to me, but are not fluent. One of them told me that he speaks 4 languages, the other said 5. I think they mentioned Hindi, Nepali, Bengali, and a couple others. One guy said that his village uses mostly Bengali, but the two adjacent villages each use a different language, so everybody where he lives knows at least 3 languages. Also, after living for a couple years in Israel, they have both managed to learn to speak Hebrew , so that gives them a total of 5 languages for one guy, and 6 for the other. Just a sample of 2, out of one and half billion people. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2026, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/4 "2026-09-26T16:10:10Z")
If you were a migrant worker, you would speak several languages too: not much choice. I still see no reason to disbelieve @Wendell_Wagner 's link which claims that only one out of four Indians can speak more than one language. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2026, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/5 "2026-09-26T16:19:00Z")
Most people in the world speak more than one language. One source says that 40% speak one, 43% speak two, 13% speak three, 3% speak four, 1% speak five or more. In the U.S., 77% speak one and 23% speak at least two. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2026, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/6 "2026-09-26T16:28:09Z")
In my previous job I worked with our office in Banaglore a lot. Being that Bangalore is a tech center, people come from all over the country to work there. They all speak the languange of their home state which aren’t similar enough for cross communication. The local language in Bangalore is Kannada but most employees don’t learn that when they arrive. Hindi is common, but not universal. For tech works, English is nearly universal and is the most common language heard in the office. Every tech worker I’ve met is fluent in their local language and English. And most speak some Hindi and/or another regional language. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2026, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/7 "2026-09-26T17:18:41Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > Anecdote time: Another anecdote - well off the tourist track\*, I was on a hired motorcycle trying to get from Ranthambore, south-west, to Bundi without a map, a distance of about 140km of very rural roads. It took way longer than expected, and at one point (after dark) we stopped to ask for directions. (I can work out which way is west and south by the stars… but I do not recommend this skill for driving on dark rural roads in India!) Fortunately, there was a young (6 or 7 year old) schoolgirl in the small curious crowd who was learning English, so we asked for and got directions as passed through the only English speaker present in the tiny village where we ended up. None of the adults spoke English. But that was very unusual, almost everyone in larger towns speaks English and usually several languages aside from their home language. \* both Ranthambore and Bundi are very much on the tourist track - the former having a tiger reserve, the latter being quite a hippy hangout back in those years (and Rudyard Kipling’s inspiration for several of his works). But the roads between them are very much not. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2026, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/8 "2026-09-26T17:26:05Z")
When I visited my ancestral village in India in the early 1980s, most of the people we met only spoke the local language. Actually there were two dialects even in that tiny area, depending on the religious group the person was from. My grandmother could read and write in three languages and speak five. But she had a tenth grade education, which in the 1920s was quite a lot for a girl in a village. And then of course she had lived in four countries by the 1980s. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2026, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/9 "2026-09-26T20:14:10Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > I still see no reason to disbelieve @Wendell_Wagner 's link which claims that only one out of four Indians can speak more than one language. If you look closely, that’s not the claim they’re making. 26.9% is the percentage of bilingual speakers of Hindi and another language, which is the claim that is made in the footnote attached to that sentence. But that’s a very old stat, based on the 2011 census. That newspaper article attributes the increase in bilingualism to internal migration, which from what I’ve read, has increased greatly since 2011. I don’t see anything in that page that would give an answer to the number of bilinguals between any two of India’s 22 or 35 or x languages, but it has to be far more than a quarter of the population. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2026, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/10 "2026-09-26T21:52:10Z")
Of course not all South Asians are multilingual. But South Asians often value both education and tradition. They are a little more likely to speak parental languages. In India, English is often used as a _lingua franca_ - in medical offices or in some official or business communication. And there is often value in knowing Hindi or other language, widely spoken in a specific region. I have a number of South Asian friends in Canada, and many speak two South Asian languages, English - plus varying degrees of Canadian French. I would hesitate to generalize further though. In India maybe 10% speak English extremely well and maybe 25%(?) speak two languages fluently; probably younger people and emigrants speak more languages. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2026, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/11 "2026-09-26T23:28:40Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Every tech worker I’ve met is fluent in their local language and English. And most speak some Hindi and/or another regional language. That’s my experience too. The local (they called it Home Language) that I most commonly encountered was Turkulu. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2026, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/12 "2026-09-27T00:01:30Z")
I’ve been told by at least 2 different people from India (I don’t know if that counts for much for a general assessment) that many Indians speak at least 3 languages. Their local dialect The national language of Hindi An international language (usually english) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2026, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/13 "2026-09-27T00:09:22Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > Turkulu What language was this name used for? It’s not a standard name. Presumable it’s a member of the Turkic language family. Where precisely is it spoken? ---
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2026, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/14 "2026-09-27T00:21:25Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > If you look closely, that’s not the claim they’re making. 26.9% is the percentage of bilingual speakers of Hindi and another language, which is the claim that is made in the footnote attached to that sentence I don’t think it is limited to Hindi + second language although the footnoted article jumps from all languages to Hindi + second language without any context. The table in the Multilingualism section (which is confusingly in a Hindi sub-section) has the top 14 languages. The sum of the Second Language Speakers column, is ~309.5M or about 25%. Presumably the rest of the languages get to the 314.9M figure from the top. Point taken about the census being out-of-date; the next one is 2027. * * * Regarding the anecdotes: My experience is that Indians in the US speak 3-6 languages, but it’s completely biased. The Indians we are most likely to interact with are going to speak English. In 2011, that was less than 11% of the population. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2026, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/15 "2026-09-27T11:00:43Z")
I used to work in a factory in Birmingham that employed a fair number of people from the Indian subcontinent. Some were second-generation English, but many were recent immigrants from all parts of India and Pakistan. Whenever there were more than two or three having a conversation, they would be speaking English as their only common language. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2026, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/16 "2026-09-27T12:28:34Z")
People from different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds speaking English _in England_ is not mind-blowing. Presumably, in Russia you would have found them speaking Russian. I did find a second-hand link claiming that, according to “data from a 2019 survey by the Lok Foundation and the University of Oxford, conducted by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) on the demographic profile of English language”, 6% of respondents spoke English, 3% of rural respondents stated they spoke English, 12% of urban respondents spoke English, 41% of respondents with a “good financial standing” spoke English, and 2% of “poor” Indians spoke English. I agree that more recent census or survey data is necessary to get a picture of absolute numbers and trends concerning multilingualism. ---
**Author:** ![phs3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8491ac/32.png) [@phs3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phs3)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2026, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/17 "2026-09-27T13:46:31Z")
There’s a joke: What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual. What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Biingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? American. Apparently not so true nowadays but it sure seemed like it when I was a kid (though of course with immigration the percentage was perhaps even higher in the past). And my dad was a linguist, fluent in at least seven languages, so it’s not like I wasn’t language-aware. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2026, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/18 "2026-09-28T07:40:45Z")
> [@phs3](#): > > What do you call someone who speaks one language? American. To be fair, I hold three nationalities (only one of which is majority English-speaking) but only fluently speak English. I _should_ be fluent in [chiShona](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shona_language), [Afrikaans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans) and [isiXhosa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa_language) - the most widely spoken language in Zimbabwe and those of my current region in South Africa, but I can only limp along in chiShona and Afrikaans. (I was planning to learn Afrikaans and isiXhosa alongside my junior school age kids, but divorce means I don’t have access to their textbooks.. a lame excuse!) ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2026, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-indians-multi-lingual/1033401/19 "2026-09-28T07:56:21Z")
Better infrastructure compared to the past means that anybody with an Internet connection can access textbooks and learning materials in English, Xhosa, (etc.), even in places like rural India (or rural Brazil), but that is not sufficient if you do not know how to use it, or you do not have time, or there is a dearth of actually proficient teachers. > **[KlOpzOAmRLq0OmPN0oo2\_Xhosa+Level+1V12+A5Manual+2019.pdf](https://uploads.teachablecdn.com/attachments/KlOpzOAmRLq0OmPN0oo2_Xhosa+Level+1V12+A5Manual+2019.pdf)**