| South India's predominant language family
is Dravidian, a family of approximately seventy-three
languages spoken in South Asia. A relationship of the
Dravidian language family to other linguistic families
has not been established, though various theories have
been proposed. Dravidian as an independent language family
was first established by Francis W. Ellis, a British civil
servant in 1816. The languages of the Dravidian family
Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu have been influenced
by Sanskrit to varying degrees and the converse is true
as well. Almost all Dravidian languages spoken in South
India belong either to the South Dravidian (or South
Dravidian I) or South-Central Dravidian (sometimes also
known as South Dravidian II) subfamilies. Tamil, Malayalam,
Tulu and Kannada are South Dravidian languages, while
Telugu and Gondi are South-Central Dravidian. The States
Reorganisation Act of 1956 divided states in India along
linguistic lines and led to the creation of separate
states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil
Nadu in areas where Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil
respectively were dominant.
In the 2001 Census of India, Telugu, with approximately
80 million native speakers, was the second largest language
in India, after Hindi. Tamil was accorded the status
of classical language by the Government of India in
2002 and had about 74 million speakers (native and non-native
speakers). Kannada had 50 million speakers while Malayalam
has 35.7 million[13]. All four languages are designated
as national languages of India. Konkani, an Indo-Aryan
language, is widely spoken in Goa and coastal Karnataka,
Kerala, and Maharashtra, where it has drawn heavy influences
from Kannada and Malayalam. Most of Maharashtra, which
includes the northern Deccan and Konkan regions of South
India, is predominantly Marathi-speaking. Marathi and
Konkani are part of the southern zone of the Indo-Aryan
languages. Some inscriptions in the Tulu language are
found in and around Barkur.
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