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TFI Asia

Asia - Languages

Languages of Asia
There is a wide variety of languages spoken throughout Asia, comprising a number of families and some unrelated isolates. Many languages have a long tradition of writing.

South and West Asia

Indo-European languages, widely spoken in Southern, Western and Central Asia as well as Russia:-

• Indo-Iranian languages:
• Indo-Aryan languages: Sanskrit, Pali, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Nepali, Sinhalese, Assamese, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Oriya, Marathi, Bihari, Gujarati
• Iranian languages: Persian, Kurdish, Pashto, Tajik, Baluchi
• Germanic languages: English
• Slavic languages: Russian
• Dravidian languages: Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Tulu
• Burushaski language
• Nihali language
• Kusunda language (recently suggested as part of Indo-Pacific languages)
• Semitic languages: Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Aramaic

Central and Northeast Asia

• Ural-Altaic languages (now doubted to be a genetic (linguistics) grouping)

Uralic languages

The Altaic languages include the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages. Some also include Korean and the Japonic languages; on the other hand there are some who argue Altaic is not a genetic (linguistics) group at all.

• Turkic languages: Turkish, Azeri, Turkmen, Tatar, Uzbek, Kazakh, Uyghur
  
• Mongolic languages: Mongolian, Buryat

The Buyeo languages are a hypothetical language family which includes Korean and the Japonic languages.

Japonic languages

• Japanese, Ryukyuan

Paleosiberian languages

• Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages
• Eskimo-Aleut languages
• Yukaghir languages
• Nivkh
• Yeniseian languages

East and Southeast Asian languages

Sino-Tibetan languages:

• Chinese languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Gan, Wu, Min, Xiang
• Tibeto-Burman languages: Tibetan, Burmese, (and in South Asia) Nepal Bhasa, Mizo, Kiranti languages
• Tai-Kadai languages
• Thai, Hkamti, Lao
• The Austric languages is a hypothesised language family grouping the Austronesian languages with the Austro-Asiatic languages

Austronesian languages:

• Atayal, Cebuano, Cham, Ilokano, Indonesian, Javanese, Malay, Paiwan, Sundanese, Tagalog, Tetum
• Austro-Asiatic languages
• Vietnamese, Khmer, Mon, Khasi, Nicobarese, Munda
• Andamanese languages (suggested as part of an Indo-Pacific languages group)

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