New Delhi: Tamil, the second most spoken language in South India after Telugu, was thriving with more than 6.9 crore speakers even as Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin is campaigning against ‘Hindi imposition’, Indian Express reported.
Telugu, spoken in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, has the most speakers among the southern languages at above 8.11 crore.
It is reported citing available language data from the 2011 Census that Kannada has over 4.37 crore speakers with 3.48 crore-plus speakers Malyalam is behind it.
However, Tamil is reported to be the fifth-most spoken language across India.
A breakdown of the data can showcase the popularity of Tamil with 88.37% of total population in Tamil Nadu speaking the language, being the state’s official language.
While 92.4% of Tamil speakers, which is 6.38 crore as per the 2011 Census, live in Tamil Nadu, a large number of them live outside the state including Union Territories.
Karnataka is reported to have 21.1 lakh Tamil speakers, Puducherry at 11.01 lakh, Andhra Pradesh at 7.14 lakh, Maharashtra at 5.1 lakh, and Kerala at 5.03 lakh, according to the report based on the data.
While no other state has more than a lakh Tamil speakers, the northern state with most Tamil speakers was Delhi at 82,719 alongside Gujarat at 40,072 and and Madhya Pradesh at 20,544.
While Telugu had 1.05 crore speakers outside Andhra Pradesh, there were 52.73 lakh Tamil speakers outside Tamil Nadu ranking itself second among the South Indian languages being spoken outside the state.
While there were 30.55 lakh Kannada speakers outside Karnataka, total Malayalam speakers outside Kerala were 24.26 lakh.
As many as 66.56 lakh or 9.6% of the total 6.9 crore Tamil speakers identified the language as their “first subsidiary language”.
To these bilingual speakers the most common mother tongues was ‘Telugu at 34 lakh Kannada at 11.9 lakh, Urdu at 8.79 lakh, Malayalam at 7.25 lakh at, Gujarati at 1.99 lakh, and Hindi at 1.59 lakh’, according to the report.
However, Tamil Nadu is found to have the lowest rates of multilingualism in the country.
Only 2.04 crore or 28.3% of the state’s population was bilingual, while 24.47 lakh or 3.39% was trilingual.