Languages of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by 74% of Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 23% of Indians. Other languages spoken in India belong to the Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman, and a few minor language families and isolates.
The northern Indian languages from the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family evolved from Old Indo-Aryan by way of the Middle Indo-Aryan Prakrit languages and Apabhraa of the Middle Ages. There is no consensus for a specific time where the modern north Indian languages such as Hindi-Urdu, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Sindhi and Oriya emerged, but AD 1000 is commonly accepted. Each language had different influences, with Hindi-Urdu (Hindustani) being strongly influenced by Persian.
Language is usually considered to be an effective tool for communication between people in the process of transferring their ideas, message, knowledge etc. Languages of India are a great unifier as well as divider of people.
