India is home to more than 22 languages. Unfortunately, India’s diversity of languages (dialects included) is facing an existential crisis. In the last few decades, experts say, the country has lost a few hundred languages because of lack of government patronage, absence of credible data on them, dwindling numbers of speakers, poor primary education in local languages, migration of tribals from villages, and a lack of a cohesive national language policy. Linguists estimate that there are around 7,000 languages spoken worldwide and at least half of those will be lost by the end of this century.
