Which country has the most written languages?

The answer may be India. India certainly has a large inventory of spoken languages, over 2000 (see note at bottom) at a conservative estimate, and a great many of them are languages with a written heritage. From my point of view as a calligrapher it is also fascinating that the written languages of India utilize a great many different scripts. According to the People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI) 66 of these languages have a written form.

See: How many of India’s 122 major languages and 1599 other languages have a written form?

This survey includes only currently spoken languages. India is also home to a large number of languages that have gone extinct, including literary languages, and I feel these shoud be included in the inventory of written languages. I don’t want to doubt the work of the PLSI, but the number seems conservative. I can come up with nearly 66 contemporary written languages without straining too hard, and that does not include any of the languages of India that I have no familiarity with whatsoever. Kannada script alone is used for six languages; Devanagari is used as the sole writing system for about 20 languages.

Hindi is the language with the largest number of speakers in India (and the third largest number of speakers of any language in the world) and is written with the Devanagari script. Urdu is a close cousin to Hindi. Indeed, the two languages used to be known collectively as Hindustani. Urdu is usually written with its own variant of Perso-Arabic script.

The Indian subcontinent utilizes writing systems based on three historical precedents: Brahmi, Arabic and Latin. The Brahmi family tree of writing systems has branched into scores of variants, some quite closely related and easily read by those familiar with a close relative; and other variants that would seem to the casual observer to be completely unrelated. Two factors have led to the vast number of different writing systems: 1) the idea that a language should have its own writing system; the corollary is that a language should have a writing system, which partially explains why India has so many written languages; and 2) a history of political pluralism, which has encouraged regional languages and writing systems (vs. long periods of political unification, e.g., in China, that encouraged the use of one major writing system. Even so there are quite a number of different written languages in China, but certainly not as many as in India).

In the same language family are Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Odia, Maithili, Sindhi, Nepali, Assamese, and Sinhala. Each of these languages has its own alphabet. Also in the same language family Rajasthani and Marathi use the Devanagari script; Bhojpuri historically was written with Khaiti, but today in Devanagari; Nepali primarily utilizes Devanagari but there are other Nepali scripts; and Chhattisgarhi is today written in Devanagari, but historically was written with the Odia script. Classical Sanskrit has been written in many different scripts.

These constitute the major Indo-Aryan languages of India, but there are many more, many of them written languages.

South India is dominated by languages in the Dravidian language family, although the writing systems also derive from Brahmi script. The main languages are Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam, each of which has its own writing system, although Telugu and Kannada alphabets are nearly identical. There are some 70 languages in South India, many of them written. Tulu and Konkani are important languages in their own right. Tulu has its own writing system as well as using Kannada script. Konkani is a good example of how Indian languages can be written in many different ways. Konkani has been written in Devanagari, Roman/Latin, Kannada, Malayalam and Perso-Arabic. This is not entirely unusual. Languages are often written in whatever script local inhabitants can read. As such you will find English written in Devanagari script; the same inscription in both Kannada and Perso-Arabic/Urdu script; and so on.

The British were in India for nearly three centuries, so it is no surprise that the Roman/Latin script is found all across the country. We have to count it as an Indian writing system as well.

Finally, there are a great many Tibetan speakers in India. Tibetan is in the Sino-Tibetan language family but uses a Brahmi-derived writing system.

Sanskrit in Devanagari script:

Kannada script:

Urdu script in the center surrounded by Gujarati:

Logo design in Gujarati script:

Tibetan Script:

The Punjabi or Gurmukhi script:

Sinhala script:

A creative rendering of Telugu script:

Linguists and the Government of India both have trouble defining “language” and coming up with a concrete number of languages spoken in India. “According to the Census of India, 2018, ‘No fewer than 19,500 languages or dialects are spoken in India, as mother tongues, with 21 of them spoken by 10,000 or more people.’ “ (1)

(1) How India’s many languages can be used as an educational resource

However, the 2011 Census of India came up with a different set of numbers. It is not that the situation changed from 2011 to 2018, but rather the task of categorizing languages was carried out in a different manner. I leave you to try to understand their conclusions:

According to … census of 2011, after thorough linguistic scrutiny, edit, and rationalization on 19,569 raw linguistic affiliations, the census recognizes 1369 rationalized mother tongues and 1474 names which were treated as ‘unclassified’ and relegated to ‘other’ mother tongue category.[50]

Among, the 1369 rationalized mother tongues which are spoken by 10,000 or more speakers, are further grouped into appropriate set that resulted into total 121 languages. In these 121 languages, 22 are already part of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India and the other 99 are termed as “Total of other languages” which is one short as of the other languages recognized in 2001 census.[51]

see full entry at: 2011 Census of India – Wikipedia