Indian languages represent all four families of languages, including Indo-European (Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, German, Marathi, French, Italian, Punjabi, and Urdu, of which five languages are native to India), Dravidian,
Austro-Asiatic, and Tibeto-Burman.
Ethnic groups (2005 Census identified 49 ethnic groups): Tai-Kadai language family (6 ethnic groups)--65%
Austro-Asiatic (Mon-Khmer and Viet-Muong) language family (30 ethnic groups)--24% Hmong-Yao (2 ethnic groups)--8%; Tibeto-Burman (8 ethnic groups)--3%; other ethnic groups (including Vietnamese and Chinese)--0.9%.
In Assam, the Rongali Bihu draws from many different traditions such as
Austro-Asiatic, Sino-Burmese and Indo-Aryan, and is celebrated with particular fervor.
The Bramhmi script grew out of phonetic and metrical insights into the process and mechanisms of speech articulation, and is used today in Indo-Aryan, Dravidian,
Austro-Asiatic, and Tibeto-Burman languages throughout southern Asia.
Moreover, 54 of the ethnic groups comprise the 4 major linguistic families of the Indian population, namely Indo-European, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, and
Austro-Asiatic; the remaining 1 group represents a population known to have negroid origin and therefore was treated as an outgroup.
As part of this project, it was decided to prepare a volume of surveys, all adhering to a predetermined common format, each concerning anaphora in a selected Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, or
Austro-Asiatic language.
The penalty is most severe for speakers of Chinese home language (-$5,702), followed by other Indo-Iranian languages (-$4,660), then
Austro-Asiatic languages (-$4,206), and then by Spanish (-$3,612).
Ethnic groups: Tai-Kadai language family (6 ethnic groups)--66.2%;
Austro-Asiatic (Mon-Khmer and Viet-Muong) language family (30 ethnic groups)--22.8%; Hmong-Yao (2 ethnic groups)--7.4%; Tibeto-Burman (8 ethnic groups)--2.7%; other ethnic groups (including Vietnamese and Chinese)--0.9%.