The people of South India speak The native languages of the south mostly belong to the Dravidian family, although Hindi and Sanskrit have influenced these to varying degrees during their development. The officially recognized native languages of the south are Kannada, Malayalam, tamil and telugu. As the predominant languages in specific geographic areas they have in effect been used to determine the regional boundaries for the southern states.

Major efforts have been made to promote Hindi as the `official` language of India, and to gradually phase out English. While Hindi is the predominant language of the North, it bears little relation to the Dravidian languages of the South;consequently very few people in the South speak Hindi. Resistance to change has been strongest in the state of Tamil Nadu- as a result Tamil is still very much the predominant language and English is till also widely spoken.

Tamil
Tamil, one of the two classical languages of India, is the only language of contemporary India which is recognizably continuous with a classical past. It is the official language in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the Union Territory of Pondicherry. In the 1991 Census of India, Tamil speakers in Tamil Nadu alone numbered around 56 million: Substantial numbers of Tamil speakers can also be found in Sri Lanka and Malaysia and significant minorities in Singapore, Fiji and Mauritius. There are around 71 million speakers worldwide.

The Tamil alphabet is descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India. The earliest Tamil inscription dates back to at least 500 BC. The oldest literary text in Tamil, Tolk?ppiyam, was composed around 200 BC. During the 19th century, attempts were made to create a written version of the colloquial spoken language. Nowadays the colloquial written language appears mainly in school books and in passages of dialogue in fiction.

Tamil is classed as a Dravidian language, and is one of the major Dravidian languages of South India. The exact origins of the Dravidian family are unknown but it is believed to have arrived in India`s northwest around 4000 BC, gradually splitting into four branches with the passage of time. Tamil became isolated to India`s South as the Indo-Aryan language varieties such as the Hindi became more dominant in the North.

Along with Sanskrit, Tamil is recogonised as `one of the two classical languages if India`. It has a rich historical tradition dating back more than 2000 years. Modern Tamil is diglossic in nature, which means it has two distinct forms: literary or classical (used mainly in writing and formal speech) and spoken (used in everyday conversation).

Kannada
Kannada also known as kanarese is also a Dravidian language. It is the official language of the state of Karnataka in india`s south-west, where it`s spoken by around 35 million people. After Telugu and Tamil it`s the third most spoken Dravidian language of South India.
The earliest known example of Kannada literature is the Kavirajamarga, which dates back to the 9th century AD, and today the modern language is represented by a thriving tradition covering all literary genres.

Malayalam
Like Tamil, Malayalam belongs to the Dravidian language family. Though there are obvious lexical links between the two languages, with many words sharing common roots, Malayalam however includes a far greater number of borrowings from ancient Indian Sanskrit. Its divergence from tamil began sometimes after the 10th century AD, with the first official literary record of it dating back to the Ramacharitam, a pattu poem written in the 12th century.

The modern form of the Malayalam script developed from the 16th century literary works of Tunchatt Ezhutacchan. It is the official language in the state of Kerala on India`s far south-western coast, where it`s spoken by around 30 million people.

Telugu
Telugu is a south-east Dravidian language spoken mainly in the state of Andhra Pradesh on India`s east coast: it became the state`s official language in the mid-1960s with around 70 million speakers. It is the most predominant of South India`s four major Dravidian languages. Its literary history dates back to the 11th century AD when the poet Nannaya produced a translation of parts of the Mahabharata. While Sanskrit has played a major role in Telugu literature over the centuries, there is an increasing tendency for written works to reflect the more colloquial variety of modern standard Telugu.