India has two "official languages" used across the country in business, government, and education: Hindi and English. There are also more widely used regional l

India has two "official languages" used across the country in business, government, and education: Hindi and English. There are also more widely used regional languages recognized by state governments, such as Tamil, Gujarati, Punjabi, and the author's native Bengali. Educated Indians are usually multilingual, speaking Hindi, which they learn at school, and one or more regional languages. This is not a unique situation. Every country with a large enough area and a long enough history has a vast array of minority languages and dialects. North America is just different because it was settled relatively recently and the indigenous population was almost entirely wiped out.