LANGUAGES OF ASIA

There are 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.

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

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★ Indo-Iranian languages:

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★ Indo-Aryan languages: Sanskrit, Pali, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Nepali, Sinhalese, Assamese, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Oriya, Marathi, Bihari, Gujarati

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★ Iranian languages: Persian, Kurdish, Pashto, Tajik, Baluchi

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★ Germanic languages: English

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★ Slavic languages: Russian

★ Sino-Tibetan languages:

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★ Chinese language: Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka

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★ Tibeto-Burman languages: Tibetan, Burmese, Nepal Bhasa, Mizo

★ Semitic languages:

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★ Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Aramaic

★ Dravidian languages:

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★ Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Tulu

★ Austronesian languages:

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★ Atayal, Cebuano, Cham, Ilokano, Indonesian, Javanese, Malay, Paiwan, Sundanese, Tagalog, Tetum

★ Austro-Asiatic languages

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★ Vietnamese, Khmer, Mon, Khasi, Nicobarese, Munda

★ Turkic languages:

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★ Turkish, Azeri, Turkmen, Tatar, Uzbek, Kazakh, Uyghur

★ Mongolic languages

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★ Mongolian, Buryat

★ Japonic languages

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★ Japanese, Ryukyuan

★ Tai-Kadai languages

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★ Thai, Hkamti, Lao

★ Uralic languages

★ Andamanese languages

★ Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages

★ Eskimo-Aleut languages

★ Yukaghir languages

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

★ The Altaic languages are a somewhat disputed grouping including the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages, with Korean and the Japonic languages included by some.

★ Another disputed language family, the Ural-Altaic languages, is formed with the addition of Uralic languages to the Altaic languages.

★ The Austric languages is a hypothesised language family grouping the Austronesian languages with the Austro-Asiatic languages
A number of isolated languages - languages with no demonstrable links to other tongues - are also spoken in Asia:

★ Burushaski language

★ Nihali language

★ Nivkh

Contents

See also

See also

★ East Asian languages