Languages of Asia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

• Sino-Tibetan
  • Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, Nepal Bhasa
• Indo-European languages are widely spoken in southern and western Asia, as well as Asian Russia:
  • Indo-Iranian languages: Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Kurdish
  • Slavic languages: Russian
• Austronesian languages:
  • Pangasinan, Malay, Indonesian, Filipino, Tetum, Javanese
• Semitic languages:
  • Arabic, Hebrew
• Turkic languages:
  • Turkish, Azeri, Turkmen, Tatar, Uzbek, Kazakh, Uyghur
• Mongolic languages
• Tai-Kadai languages
• Austroasiatic languages
• Eskimo-Aleut languages
• Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages
• Uralic languages
• Dravidian languages
• The Altaic languages are a somewhat disputed grouping including Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungustic languages, with Korean and Japanese included by some. Another disputed language family, the Ural-Altaic languages, is formed with the addition of Uralic languages to these.

A number of isolated languages - languages with no demonstrable links to other tongues - are also spoken in Asia:

• Yukaghir languages
• Nivkh

See also: East Asian languages