Culture of Asia - Languages

Languages

Asia is a continent with great linguistic diversity, and is home to various language families and many language isolates. A majority of Asian countries have more than one language that is natively spoken. For instance, according to Ethnologue over 600 languages are spoken in Indonesia while over 100 are spoken in the Philippines. The official figure of 'mother tongues' spoken in India is 1683, of which an estimated 850 are in daily use. Korea, on the other hand, is home to only one language.

The main language families found in Asia, along with examples of each, are:

• Austro-Asiatic: Khasi, Khmer, Mundari, Vietnamese
• Austronesian: Atayal, Cebuano, Cham, Ilokano, Indonesian, Javanese, Malay, Paiwan, Sundanese, Tagalog, Tetum
• Dravidian: Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu
• Indo-European: Armenian, Bengali, English (which originated in Europe), Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, Kurdish, Nepali, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese (of European origin), Punjabi, Russian (of European origin), Konkani, Sanskrit, Tajik, Urdu
• Japonic: Japanese, Okinawan
• Sino-Tibetan:
  • Sinitic: Mandarin, Gan, Hakka, Min, Wu, Xiang, Yue
  • Tibeto-Burman: Tibetan, Burmese, Assamese
• Tai–Kadai: Lao, Thai, Manipuri
• Turkic: Azeri, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Uzbek
• Afro-Asiatic: Arabic, Aramaic, Canaanite, Berber, Hebrew

Other languages that do not belong to the above groups include Ainu, Burushaski, Georgian, Hmong, Korean, Mongolian, various Romance-based creoles (Chavacano, Macanese, and Kristang) and many others.