MOOKNAYAK MEDIA BUREAU | December 28, 2024 | Jaipur : The largest continent in the world and home to nearly five billion people, Asia has around 2,300 languages that can be grouped in language families like Altaic, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Caucasian, Dravidian, Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Siberian, Sino-Tibetan and Kra–Dai. In some Asian countries, English is taught in the academic curriculum or through professional training and many Asians speak English as a second language.

Asia has around 2300 languages and nearly 5 billion people

Famous Linguist Professor Ram Lakhan Meena says that Asia is home to approximately 2,300 languages and has a population of around 4.75 billion people, making up roughly 60% of the world’s population. Diverse language landscape: Asia boasts a vast array of languages, with 2,300 different ones spoken across the continent.

He also says that Most spoken languages: Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Bengali, and Japanese are considered among the most widely spoken languages in Asia. Due to its large population, Asia has a significant linguistic diversity.

In the United States, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) is the umbrella term used to describe people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent who are part of nearly 50 ethnic groups from East, Southeast, Central, and South Asia, and the Pacific Islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. According to the Pew Research Center, Asian Americans are projected to be the nation’s largest immigrant group by the middle of the 21st century.

In this article, we will focus on some of the most common Asian languages spoken by the population. The Asian and Pacific Islander communities are beautifully complex and unique, and this list should only be considered a beginner’s guide to learning more about these languages and the cultures that speak them.

Major Asian Language Groups

The majority of European countries speak Indo-European languages which are the second-largest language family in the world when it comes to the number of speakers. This is also the case for Asian languages. However, not all Asian languages fall within this group. Asian languages span a much broader variety of families, including Sino-Tibetan, Indo-European, Altaic families, Austronesian, and many others.

In South Asia, Indo-European, Indo-Aryan languages, and Dravidian languages are the major families while in East Asia, it’s Sino-Tibetan. Several other families are regionally dominant. In the scope of this article, we will go into detail about the five major Asian language families:

Sino-Tibetan

Out of all five groups, Sino-Tibetan might be the most mysterious one. Up until today, the location and timing of the emergence of the Sino-Tibetan language family are still debated. Some believe the Sino-Tibetan languages originated in northern China around 4,000-6,000 years ago. Another school of thought assumes it appeared 9,000 years ago in southwest China or northeast India.

However, one of the most recent research in 2019 suggested that the homeland of the Sino-Tibetan language group was in the Yellow River basin region of present-day northern China. It scattered and diversified about 5,900 years ago; and finally, in the 21st century, it has around 1.5 billion speakers worldwide which make it one of the most popular language groups in the world only after Indo-European.

In Asia, the Sino-Tibetan language group covers Chinese (about 1.3 billion native speakers), Tibetan (6 million), Burmese (33 million), Karen, and various languages of the Tibetan Plateau, southern China, Burma, and Northeast India. This group is also seen as a typical Southeast Asian language.

Indo-European

Indo-European is the largest language family in the world, comprising about 445 languages, most of which are the languages of the Americas and Europe (English, French, Portuguese and Spanish), along with other languages in Western and Southern Asia. In total, 46% of the world’s population (around 3.2 billion people) speak Indo-European as their mother tongue.

Out of 445 Indo-European languages, 313 of them are from the Indo-Iranian branch which includes Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Assamese, Odia, other languages in South Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus and parts of South Asia, etc.

Altaic-Congo 

The Altaic language family derives its name from the mountainous region of Altai where these languages are thought to have originated. When it comes to the number of languages, the Atlantic-Congo family comes out on top, with an impressive 1,432 languages, most of which are Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic, and Japonic languages.

Austronesian

The Austronesian language family contains over 1200 of the world’s languages which are spoken by about 386 million people. It is geometrically large spanning from Southeast Asia to the westernmost islands of the Pacific. The major languages falling into this group are Fijian (Fiji), Tagalog (Philippines), Cebuano, Malay (Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei), Javanese, Sundanese, and Madurese of Indonesia.

Semitic languages

The Semitic language family is a branch of the Afroasiatic language family originating in West Asia. It is spoken by more than 330 million people in large parts of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as by large minority populations in both Europe and North America. The most spoken language from this group is Arabic with about 315 million native speakers.

Major Languages spoken in Asia are;

Khmer
Also known as Cambodian, Khmer is the official language of the Southeast Asian country, Cambodia. 1.3 million people in Southeast Thailand and Southern Vietnam also speak Khmer. Used in the ancient Khmer empire, the Khmer language has been written since the 7th century and uses a script system based on those in South India.

Russian
Central Asian countries, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, speak Russian in addition to the languages of their respective countries. Because of the political and cultural influence of Russia in the region, Russian is the main common language used in Central Asia for literature, diplomacy and trade.

Cantonese
Cantonese is a variety of Chinese that is spoken in Hong Kong, Macau, and Canton, along with other cities in the Guangdong and southern Guangxi provinces of China. Compared to Mandarin, Cantonese has more features of Old, or Archaic, Chinese, the language ancestor to all modern varieties of Chinese. While Mandarin has 1.3 billion speakers, Cantonese is used comparatively less with around 75 million speakers worldwide.

Laotian
Laotian, or the Lao language, is the official language of Laos, the Southeast Asian country that is geographically bound by China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar. Laotian is primarily monosyllabic and uses tones to differentiate words that are pronounced similarly. The language has influences from Cambodian and Thai.

Tibetan
The Tibetan language is spoken in Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, and in parts of India. The most common dialect of the Tibetan language is Lhasa Tibetan, which is spoken in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. Because of the spread of Tibetan Buddhism, the language is also spoken and read in the Western world and is commonly found in Buddhist publications and prayers.

Chinese Mandarin
Mandarin is the official language of China, and it’s actually the most natively spoken language in the world, with 1.3 billion speakers. Speakers use four tones to speak Mandarin, and the written language uses over 100,000 special characters called “logograms.”

Hindi
Hindi, an Indo-Aryan derived language, is the most widely spoken language in India, though you’ll find that most national business is done in English. It’s spoken as a first language by nearly 425 million people, including those in Fiji.

Malay
Malay, or Bahasa Melayu, is comprised of two major dialects, northern (spoken in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei) and southern (spoken in Indonesia). It’s spoken by more than 33 million people as a first language, as well as widely used as a second language.

Indonesian
The Indonesian language, also called Bahasa Indonesia, is very similar to Malay — a standardized version if you will — though natives can definitely distinguish between the two. Indonesian uses the Latin script, making it one of the easiest Asian languages for foreigners to learn.

Thai
Yes, it’s the national language of Thailand and the the first language for most Thai people, but you’ll hear people speak Thai in Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia and Cambodia. The language is spoken by 60 million people, or 2% of Asia’s total population.

Burmese
In Myanmar, (formerly Burma), Burmese is the official language. It’s spoken by more than 32 million people worldwide. The Burmese script uses rounded letters and is called “ca-lonh,” which means “round script.”

Filipino
Filipino, a standardized version of Tagalog, is the national language of the Philippines, while English follows as an official language of the country. While Filipino and Tagalog share the same grammar and conjugations and are nearly the same, Filipino is spoken nationwide while Tagalog is spoken mainly in Central Luzon.

Japanese
The Japanese language is spoken by 121 million people, spoken in Japan and small Japanese communities across American Samoa, Hawaii, Europe, Australia and the Americas. There are three Japanese writing scripts, including Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.

Vietnamese
The Vietnamese language belongs to the Viet-Muong branch of the Mon-Khmer language family and is spoken by about 75 million people. Because Vietnam was ruled by the Chinese Empire in 111 BC, a lot of Vietnamese words are adopted from Chinese.

Korean
About 75 million people speak Korean, or Kugo. Korean is the official language of both South and North Korea, and the two countries differ in minor spelling or vocabulary choice.

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