Bengaluru: Karnataka has been declared third place in the country when it comes to percentage of people speaking more than one language while leading in South India as a whole. Thanks to the cosmopolitan capital and the multiple cities which share their borders with other states while also being among one of the top states for attracting migrants, the state has a lot of languages.
Karnataka trails only Maharashtra and Gujarat to stand in the third place in the list of states that comprises of a population of more than 5 crores.
According to a census in 2011, other than English, the languages spoken in the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka were Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Konkani, Saurashtri, Hindi and Malayalam.
Another analysis of the data showed that the state had a greater percentage of its population speaking two or more languages as compared to its neighbours Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, undivided Andhra Pradesh and Kerala and it had also defeated these states by a large margin.
Census data reveals that 40 percent of the denizens in the state are bilingual as compared to the national average of 26 percent of bilingual people. In the state, 40 percent are considered bilingual and 13 percent multilingual.
Even among the states in the list, Karnataka and Gujarat are neck and neck with regards to bilingual and multilingual population as compared to Maharashtra which is a clear leader on top of the list.
According to future estimate, the census which would take place in 2021 would likely show a different trend as compared to the present as cities such as Mumbai and Pune have already reached their saturation point and it would be very difficult for them to bring in more migrants for the state and Gujarat’s development is also likely to slow down with regards to construction and new projects.
According to Prof. C M Lakshmana, head of the Population Research Centre at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Karnataka is more likely to attract more migrants because of the growing pace of its development and construction activities.
