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The languages of India primarily belong to two major linguistic families, Indo-European (whose branch Indo-Aryan is spoken by about 74% of the population) and Dravidian (spoken by about 24%). Other languages spoken in India come mainly from the Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman linguistic families, as well as a few language isolates.[1] The number of mother tongues in India is as high as 1,652[2], of which 24 languages are spoken by a million or more people. Three millennia of language contact situation have led to a lot of mutual influence among the four language families in India and South Asia. Two contact languages have played an important role in the history of India: Persian and English.[3] In 2004, the government elevated Tamil.[4][5][6] to the newly created official status of "Classical Language", followed by Sanskrit[7] in 2005.