Indian languages in Singapore

Indian languages in Singapore are mainly used by the country's 348,119 ethnic Indian residents, who form about 9.2% of Singaporean citizens and permanent residents. As a result of historical migration and settlement patterns, Singapore Indians came to the island from various parts of South Asia speaking a variety of Indian languages. Today, most ethnic Indians in Singapore are locally born second, third, fourth or even fifth generation descendants of immigrant forefathers. In addition, a substantial minority are recent immigrants from the Indian subcontinent.

In Singapore, a distinction is made between the ancestral ethno-linguistic identity of a person and the actual language that he or she uses or is able to use. Singapore's census takers make this distinction by capturing both types of data. Ancestral ethno-linguistic identity is captured under the category of 'dialect group' (although this term may be more appropriate for describing the linguistic composition of the majority Chinese, rather than Indians). In contrast, actual language use is captured by the term'language most frequently spoken at home'.

In 2010, the Singapore census categorised 237,473 Singaporeans and 110,646 permanent residents into a number of 'dialect' groups. However, these groups included Sikhs, who are a religious rather than linguistic group. Virtually all of the Sikhs are Punjabi, which was also captured as a separate 'dialect' category (comprising mainly Hindu Punjabis). Given their small absolute and relative numbers, the following table adapts the 2010 census data by combining the 'Sikh' (12,952) and 'Punjabi' (5,672) category under 'Punjabi'.

The percentages in the table refer to the proportion of each language group within the larger Resident Indian community in Singapore.

Singapore's Indian community is characterised by an ethnic Tamil majority (54.18%) and a large number of smaller groups. Ethnic Tamils in Singapore include both Tamils from India and Sri Lankan Tamils (sometimes referred to as 'Ceylonese'). Malayalees from Kerala in South India form the second largest community, making up 7.57% of the Indian population. Tamils and Malayalees are the two main South Indian communities in Singapore, forming two-thirds of the Indian population. Meanwhile, the three main North Indian groups in Singapore (the Punjabi, Gujarati, and Sindhi communities) constitute 7.67% of all Indians. The remaining 29.68% consists of many smaller groups from both South India (such as the Telugus), East India (such as the Bengalis), and North India (Hindustanis).

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