Saraf, Ankit
(2014)
Language, Education and Society: Multilingualism in India.
Language and Language Teaching, 3 (2).
pp. 18-21.
ISSN 2277-307X
Abstract
India is said to be a sociolinguistic giant, and
this giant is huge and different from the ordinary.
The nerve system of this giant is multilingualism.
Indian multilingualism is enormous in size, with
over 1600 mother tongues reducible to about
200 languages for a population of about 1.27
billion people, with the population of many of
the linguistic minorities being larger than many
European countries (Annamalai, 2001).
According to Li Wei (Wei, 2000), “Language is
a human faculty: it coevolves with us” and
monolingualism, which even in normal
circumstances is a rare phenomenon, is beyond
imagination in a context such as India where
English has coexisted with indigenous languages
over a long period. In fact, the magnitude of
multilingualism in India has made scholars
wonder about how communication happens and
how social cohesion is maintained (Annamalai,
2001).
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