Geography of Puducherry - Official Languages of Government

Official Languages of Government

The official languages of Puducherry are Tamil (89%), Malayalam (4.8%), Telugu (2.9% Yanam) and French (1%). The status of each language varies by district. When communicating between districts of different languages, generally English is used for convenience.

  • Tamil is used by the Puducherry government, especially used when communicating within and between the Tamil majority districts (Pondicherry and Karaikal) along with issuing official decrees. Telugu is widely spoken in Pondicherry, Karaikal and Yanam districts. Malayalam is spoken in Mahé and Pondicherry districts.
  • French is also an official language of the territory. It was the official language of French India from 1673 until 1954), and its official status was preserved by the Treaty of Cession signed by the Indian Union and the French Republic on 28 May 1956.

French remained as the de jure official language of Puducherry U.T by the Article XXVIII of the Treaty of Cession, which states that:

"The French language shall remain the official language of the Establishments so long as the elected representatives of the people shall not decide otherwise"

Read more about this topic:  Geography Of Puducherry

Famous quotes containing the words official, languages and/or government:

    We were that generation called “silent,” but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the period’s official optimism nor, as others thought, because we feared its official repression. We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man’s fate.
    Joan Didion (b. 1935)

    No doubt, to a man of sense, travel offers advantages. As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man. A foreign country is a point of comparison, wherefrom to judge his own.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The United States is the only great nation whose government is operated without a budget. The fact is to be the more striking when it is considered that budgets and budget procedures are the outgrowth of democratic doctrines and have an important part in developing the modern constitutional rights.... The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)