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
  • Hellenic languages: Greek
  • Armenian language
  • Germanic languages: English, German, Yiddish
  • 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, Kyrgyz, Azeri, Turkmen, Tatar, Uzbek, Kazakh, Uyghur
• Mongolic languages
  • Mongolian, Buryat
• Japonic languages
  • Japanese, Ryukyuan
• Korean languages

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

• Hmong-Mien languages

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)
• Singlish, Singaporean English

See also

• East Asian languages
• Languages of India

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