TIL that some 16 languages spoken in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh have 200 words for snow alone - some of them ornately descriptive like "flakes falling on water", or "falling when the moon is up".

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 79%. (I'm a bot)

The 1961 census counted 1,652 Indian languages The People's Linguistic Survey of India counted 780 Indian languages in 2010 197 of these are endangered, 42 of them critically so, according to UNESCO Arunachal Pradesh and Assam in the northeast, Maharashtra and Gujarat in the west, Orissa and Bengal in the east, and Rajasthan in the north have the most languages India has 68 living scripts.

Seven years ago, he launched his ambitious People's Linguistic Survey of India, which he called a "Right-based movement for carrying out a nation-wide survey of Indian languages as people perceive them".

As the indefatigable language hunter turned 60, he undertook 300 journeys in 18 months across the length and breadth of India to search for more languages.

By 2011, the PLSI had recorded 780 languages, down from the 1,652 languages counted by the government in 1961.

India has lost a few hundred languages because of lack of government patronage, dwindling number of speakers, poor primary education in local languages, and migration of tribespeople from their native villages.

"Our languages have survived tenaciously. We are truly a linguistic democracy. To keep our democracy alive, we have to keep our languages alive."

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