Major Languages of South Asia

South Asia is one of the world's most linguistically diverse regions. Major languages include:

• Hindi (India, official, 600M+ speakers)
• Urdu (Pakistan, official; mutual intelligibility with Hindi)
• Bengali (Bangladesh official; West Bengal, India)
• Marathi (Maharashtra, India)
• Tamil (Tamil Nadu, India; Sri Lanka, Singapore)
• Telugu (Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, India)
• Malayalam (Kerala, India)
• Kannada (Karnataka, India)
• Sinhalese (Sri Lanka, official)
• Nepali (Nepal, official; also India, Bhutan)
• Punjabi (Punjab, India/Pakistan)
• Gujarati (Gujarat, India)
• Odia (Odisha, India)
• Assamese (Assam, India)

Hundreds more dialects and tribal languages exist. The Indian Constitution recognizes 22 scheduled languages.