The concept of Language Atlas emerged as a part of Census data dissemination activity and the first version of Language Atlas was published in 2004 using Census 1991 data. Since then the necessity and utility of a Language Atlas had been felt that encouraged the creation of two Atlas Volumes entitled, Language Atlas of India 2001" and "Language Atlas of India 2011", a unique cartographic attempt made by the Census Organisation. Realising the importance of Language Atlas, the idea of writing and publishing State-wise Language Atlas, was thus born. Language Atlas of West Bengal 2011 being the first in the series and the very first of its kind.
This Language Atlas represents all the languages of West Bengal, recorded and published as a part of Census 2011. In fact, the spatial aspects and dimensions of language data are emerging as an important field of research in India. The typology of language distribution and its geographical correlates, bilingualism, trilingualism and spatial aspects of its extent constitute the subject matter for innovative research.
There are 57 maps along with analytical notes included in this Atlas. These maps are broadly divided into six sections, in the first section, there is one map illustrating the Administrative Divisions of the State as per Census 2011. It is followed by the second section that includes the language family-wise maps, Le. languages belonging to different families, viz. Indo-European, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman. A map illustrating the distribution of Scheduled and the Non-Scheduled languages is also included in this section.
In the third section, 8 Scheduled languages, ie. languages included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India and commonly spoken in West Bengal, are shown according to the speakers strength at the district level of the state.
The information contained in this Atlas will not only be of immense use to the planners and policy makers in the Central and State Governments but also useful to the educational and research Institutes, NGOs and the scholars.
In a broader sense, a speaker of a particular language is a person who speaks it. However, in Language Atlas, when we use the term 'speakers", it means the persons who have returned that language as their mother tongue in census enumeration. For example, according to 2011 Census, in West Bengal we have 7,86,98,852 number of Bengali language speakers. This figure is a combination of 7,81,51,766 people who have returned Bengali as their mother tongue in the Census Schedules as well as 5,47,086 speakers whose mother tongues are grouped under Bengali language. This figure does not include any person who may speak the Bengali language but has not returned it as his/her mother tongue during Census enumeration.
Since the modern concept of Census involves complete coverage of population through enumeration, collection of information on languages through this exercise enables the country to be in possession of a sort of basic frame of linguistic composition of the country. The Census provides size, distribution, demographic and other temporal coverage of information which otherwise can hardly be reached by an individual researcher. Therefore, the only source of nation-wide official data on languages is the Indian Census through which demography and number of speakers of 121 languages of 22 Scheduled languages (languages which are included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution) and 99 Non-Scheduled languages (languages which are not included in the Eighth Schedule of Constitution) are made available.
Hindu (935)
Agriculture (118)
Ancient (1085)
Archaeology (754)
Architecture (563)
Art & Culture (910)
Biography (702)
Buddhist (544)
Cookery (167)
Emperor & Queen (565)
Islam (242)
Jainism (307)
Literary (896)
Mahatma Gandhi (372)
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