Linguistic Survey of India
Topic: Population of India: Distribution, Density, Growth and Composition · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Population: Distribution, Density, Growth and Composition"
Meaning
The Linguistic Survey of India was a large study of India's languages, led by George Grierson from 1903 to 1928. It recorded 179 languages and 544 dialects. A dialect is a local form of a language. The survey sorted Indian languages into families and branches. This is the basis of how India's language map is still studied.
Example
The survey recorded the many speech forms of the Ganga plain, such as Bhojpuri in eastern UP and western Bihar. It showed that languages blend into one another from district to district instead of stopping at sharp borders.
Don't confuse with
- Census 2011 language data: this grouped 19,569 raw mother-tongue answers into 121 languages. The Census is a regular official count based on people's own answers. Grierson's survey was a one-time study made by language experts.
Related concepts
- Scheduled languages
- Census 2011 language data
- Language families of India
- Indo-European language family
- Dravidian language family
- Austric language family
- Sino-Tibetan language family
- Classical language