Asian languages. The largest continent in the world and home to nearly 5 billion people
Asia has around 2300 languages that can be grouped in families like Altaic, Austro-Asiatic
Austronesian, Caucasian, Davidian, Indo-European, Siberian, among others. But a lot of these so-called
languages are in fact more accurately described as idioms or dialects with very little variation
between the groups they share the base language with. This doesn't change the fact that there are
a lot of languages in Asia. India and China alone have a tremendous amount, and in this video
I want to precisely find out which ones they are. To do this, I also want to look at a cool
hypothetical question, which is what if Asian countries were divided by language? I already
did this for Europe and South America, and you seem to like it, so I thought it was time to do
it for Asia as well. As we know, language is an important factor in defining a country's identity
and culture, and more often than not, a country's borders are based precisely on the grouping of
people belonging to a specific culture. But many countries have more than one language within it
depending on the region, and in opposition, many countries share the same language. So
what if Asian countries' borders were simply defined by the major language spoken in each
territory. We would have a new map of the continent with some countries coming together
while others would lose or gain territories, and new countries altogether emerging. This is the
question I want to answer today and through it learn and understand which languages are spoken
where in Asia. Now there's an issue here which is what do we consider as the languages. There's no
way we can count the 2300 that would create an insane mosaic of countries and a full balkanization
of the continent if each language was its own country. Besides, many of the 2300 aren't that
different from each other and can certainly be grouped into a smaller count. However, we can't
group them up that much. For instance, if you look at the language families map, we only have 11 of
them. I believe this takes into account the origin of the language, the alphabets, among other things
But it groups up countries like Russia and India. This is the reference map I used for the thumbnail
of the video. Now, despite it being too general in the way it groups up countries, I think it's a
good basis to start with when dividing the continent by languages. So let's go through
each of these areas and look into them in more detail. Very quickly before that, a quick message
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If you're interested, feel free to try it out. Now, back to the video and to the languages of Asia
First, the Middle East Arabic region of the continent. Reddit user TheCarter posted this great map of languages in the Middle East
As we can see, with the exception of Israel speaking Hebrew, the remaining countries of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia
Jordan, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE are all marked in yellow for speaking Arab
which also stretches a little into Turkey and Iran. However, some people pointed out that the
different types of Arab are tremendously different. So, I found this other map on Wikipedia
which separated Arabic dialects. According to it, and if we were to follow it, the only three
countries that would remain the same would be Lebanon, the UAE, and Qatar, with all others
having at least two types of Arabic spoken. If we were to follow this, a whole new Middle East would
be drawn on the map. In the first map, we can also see the key presence of Kurdish language speakers
in the desired location of Kurdistan. A language criteria would finally lead to the creation of
this new country, stretching from Iraq to Turkey, a bit of Syria and Iran, the area in dark red here
There's also an area in northern Iran that is Kurdish and a significant one in central Anatolia
I didn't know about these. Azerbaijan would double or triple its territory as there's a good part of
Iran that speaks Azeri. And in contrast, a good part of Afghanistan could join Iran
as Persian, including all its dialects, stretches from one country to the other
with only a bit of Afghanistan speaking Pashto. Then the Turkish states, where Armenia and Georgia
along with the Caspian Sea, divide them. Turkic languages do differ a little
but according to the information I found, they have a very high level of mutual understanding
only the Siberian Turkic is very different. The word bear is a good example in how similar it is
in all the languages. This map shows us precisely which areas would be united under this common
language. Turkey, Azerbaijan, and part of Iran, parts of Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan
and Kyrgyzstan. A key point here is how the Uyghur region in China would join this new united
country as it is an area where a Turkic language is also spoken. Interestingly, Tajikistan is the
only of the Central Asia is Tans that doesn't speak Turkic, they speak Tajik which is closer
to Farsi and Darcy in Iran and Afghanistan. Russia was left out of the thumbnail but it's
also in Asia and it is also an interesting case when it comes to internal languages As we saw a small region of it speaks Turkic however as we seen in a previous video the prevalence of non cultures inside Russia is decreasing more and
more, even in remote regions, and similarly, the reach of the Russian language is almost total over
the country in modern times. There are, however, still some secondary languages that people speak
many small local languages, such as Tuvan, the language of a previously existing country near
Mongolia and a few others in the Far East, especially throughout Siberia. But some have
literally like a hundred speakers and would not justify a territorial reorganization
but still it's interesting to know they exist. Another Indo-European language country is next
Pakistan. Pakistan has a lot of languages. According to Wikipedia, there's at least
seven relevant ones and this would mean the country would split up into various independent
regions. Although for instance, Pashto would actually join up two of them. And then India
is a whole universe of its own too, with thousands of languages existing inside it. Hindi is the most
common, being the most spoken across these northern states. Other than those, it's almost like each
state has its own language, save Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. In the northeast too, a few regions
will join Bangladesh, as they also speak Bengali. Nepal speaks Nepali, and Bhutan speaks Dzongka
and the region of Tibet speaks Tibetan, which not only occupies the autonomous region ruled by China
but also some other Chinese territories, as we'll see ahead. For the north is Mongolia, which speaks its own, Mongolian
but it's important to note that Mongolic languages are a thing of their own too
As a language group, if you will, Mongolian itself stretches into the outside of Mongolia's southern borders
taking up some Chinese territory, part of which is actually known as Inner Mongolia
As we go through the languages of China's neighbors, we understand how if Asia was separated
by language, China would lose much of its land. Because China, like India, is its own universe
and has various languages inside it. Most of the country speaks Mandarin, but as we saw
Inner Mongolia speaks Mongolian and Tibet, plus its surrounding areas speak Tibetan
A little bit of Manchuria speaks Korean, and a lot of Xinjiang speaks Turkish
as we saw earlier with the Uyghur language. Much of the Southeast speaks Southern Chinese
including Taiwan, and the southwest speak many languages related to the old region of Indochina
Many of these languages are in fact grouped up within the Sinu-Tibetan family, as is the case
with Burma, where the Burmese language is spoken, although they also vary a lot in dialects. Which
again shows us that if we were to use the dialects as a basis for these separations, hundreds if not
thousands of countries would exist in Asia. Thailand and Laos are together in the Kra-Dai
family where southwestern Thai is the most common here in orange a few other
of these languages also stretch into southwest China while Vietnam and Cambodia are united in something called Austro languages Vietnamese Banatic and Khmer are the most common despite belonging to the same language family their common heritage dates back like 4 years and from what I found they are not mutually intelligible at all
This shows us how in some cases, the language families make sense as a language division criteria
such as the Turkish countries, but in others, like this one, the Austro-Asiatic, they don't
And then Korean and Japanese. North and South Korea speak the same language, Korean
regionally and also because of being separated for some time, there are of course some differences
in the vocabulary and language style, but they are still the same language. A few dialects exist
three in the north and three in the south, and then a central one that joins both countries. If
language was the border criteria, either seven new countries would exist or a single one would
And finally, we have the Austronesian family countries, which also differ a lot between them
and stretch into Oceania as well. Here we can see all the Austronesian languages
how they originated from Taiwan, where a small number of native descendants still speak a version
of it. When it comes to Asia, this is pertinent for the languages of Malaysia, Indonesia
and the Philippines mostly, but despite this common heritage, the languages are also
mostly not mutually intelligible. For instance, Indonesian and Tagalog, spoken in the Philippines
are completely different from each other and within themselves they also have a lot of dialects
Not to mention the colonial influences that for instance the languages in the Philippines have
This area of the world is home to a lot of languages too, perhaps due to how many islands exist
and how many natural divisions there were of these people throughout history
So, that is a brief overview of Asian languages and the hypothetical scenario of the continent
being divided on the spaces. In this scenario, I believe the biggest change would be the creation of a united Turkish state
which, by the way, might actually happen, the separation of India, Pakistan and India
and of course the creation of a Kurdish state. What do you think? Would these country unions and border changes make sense
And is this level of language grouping a valid way of listing Asia's main languages
The thousands of languages in Asia are far too many to count, but there are, of course, important differences within each of these language families
I believe that using the language families map as a basis and then going through each region for a more detailed look
We were able to outline the different languages that in fact exist in each area and how it would make sense to divide regions
By language should that be a chosen criteria in this hypothetical scenario through answering that initial question
I believe we were able to achieve a basic understanding of which languages exist in this continent and how they differ or are similar to each other
as well as how the drawn borders often do not match those similarities or differences
Let me know in the comments if you have any corrections or additional information about this
Thanks so much for watching this video, subscribe if you want and I will see you next time for
more general knowledge