The Indian metalanguage has 122 active languages and over 1,500 sub-dialects.
Hindi, the national language, is spoken throughout Northern and Central India. Some 75 percent of Indians speak the Indo-Aryan languages, which originated mostly from Iran, while the rest converse through Dravidian dialects. Persian, which has influenced Farsi and Urdu, was the predominant language during the Mughal period and used in courts in Northern India.
The English language was introduced under British rule. Prior to the British Raj, ancient words in Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu and Tamil found their way to foreign tongues. The influence of the Indian language on English is vast: jungle, veranda, patchouli, shampoo, pyjamas, loot, bungalow, pundit, thug… the list goes on. South Asian words were brought to the West by trade through the East India Company.…
