Vizag - Language

Visakhapatnam is predominantly Telugu speaking city. The Telugu spoken by the middle classes is a standard dialect with a good dose of English words, while a significant population who have settled down in the city from adjoining villages and neighbouring districts mainly Vizianagaram and Srikakulam speak Uttarandhra (North Coastal) Mandalikam (dialect). But even in UttarandhraUttarandhra was part of Kalinga empire Buddhist Missionaries and Merchants might have taken Telugu (derived from Brahmi script)script to Southeast Asia from the shores of Uttarandhra dialect there are subtle differences and in fact Telugu spoken in Srikakulam (Kalinga Andhra) is quite different from Telugu spoken in Visakhapatnam. Historians believe that centuries ago, when where it parented into the scripts of Mon, Burmese, Thai, Khmer, Siam, Javanese and Balinese languages and even Sinhala of Srilanka. Their similarities to Telugu script can be discerned even today. Vizag is also home to a large Oriya and Bengali communities. One can find Oriya inscriptions in Simhachalam temple and the temple in fact thrives on pilgrims of Orissa. Vizag due to the NAVY and high concentration of public sector industries has good amount of Hindi speaking people. Vizag is also home to a large section of muslim's most of them date back to many generations in Vizag which makes Hindi probably second most popular spoken language in vizag.