[WMASTERS] Re: [tamil.net] How many speakers?

[shivraj.d@intelligroup.com (Shivraj D)]

________________________________________________

This week's sponsors -The Asia Pacific Internet Company (APIC)
  @  Nothing Less Than A Tamil Digital Renaissance Now   @
<http://www.apic.net> Click now<mailto:info@apic.net> for instant info
________________________________________________



> From: LCGJAMES@usthk.ust.hk
> Subject: [tamil.net] How many speakers?
> 
> Does anyone know where I can get reasonably up-to-date estimates of the
overall 
> numbers of speakers of Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu? Most of the
major 
> (even very recent) encyclopedias and dictionaries give figures only from
the 
> 1961 or 1971 Indian censuses. 


The following figures are given in 'Manorama Year Book 1997' for 
indic languages.

Estimated World Fugures, 1995 (m)
-------------------------------------------
Mother Tongue		Speakers
-------------------------------------------
Hindi			437
Bengali			200
Urdu			102
Panjabi			95
Telugu			74
Tamil			71
Marathi			70
Kannada		44
Gujarati			41
Malayalam		35
Oriya			32
Assamese		22
Sindhi			18
Nepali/Gorkhali		16
Santali			5
Kashmiri		4
Konkani		4
Bhili/Bhilodi		3
Gondi			2
Kurukh/Oraon		2
Tulu			2
Dogri			1
Ho			1
-------------------------------------------
Source: World Almanac 1996.

~ Siva

> The latest figure I can find for for Tamil (from the Encyclopedia
Britannica) 
> is 57,000,000, but no figures are given for the other languages.
> 
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Gregory James.
> 
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.freeyellow.com/members/sivaraj/
----------------------------------------------------------



________________________________________________

Sponsors/Advertisers  needed -  please email bala@tamil.net
Check out the tamil.net web site on <http://tamil.net>
Postings to <webmasters@tamil.net>. To unsubscribe send
the text - unsubscribe webmasters - to majordomo@tamil.net
________________________________________________