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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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