In the NUMBER@1 Census , Telugu had the third largest base of native speakers in LOCATION@1 -LRB- NUMBER@2 million -RRB- , after Hindi and MISC@1 and was awarded the status of classical language in NUMBER@3 -LSB- -RSB- .

In the NUMBER@1 Census , Telugu had the third largest base of native speakers in LOCATION@1 -LRB- NUMBER@2 million -RRB- , after Hindi and MISC@1 . MISC@2 was accorded the status of classical language by the Government of LOCATION@1 in NUMBER@4 and had about NUMBER@5 million native speakers .
