East Asia
Countries in East Asia
China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and Mongolia
East Asian languages in the Language Sets
Chinese
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, Chinese-Americans are the largest Asian group in the USA, at more than 2.7 million. About 1.5 billion people worldwide speak Chinese, which makes it the most spoken language in the world.
Also see Difference between Mandarin and Cantonese.
Speakers |
874 million first-language speakers, an additional 1 million second-language speakers |
Region |
Covers all of mainland China
Also spoken in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia (Java and Bali), Laos, Malaysia (Peninsular), Mauritius, Mongolia, Philippines, Russia (Asia), Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, USA, and Vietnam |
Classification |
Sino-Tibetan, Chinese |
Japanese
Speakers |
125 million first-language speakers, an additional 1 million second-language speakers |
Region |
Throughout the country of Japan
Also spoken in 26 other countries including American Samoa, Argentina, Australia, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Dominican Republic, Germany, Guam, Mexico, Micronesia, Mongolia, New Zealand, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and the Philippines |
Classification |
Japanese, Japanese |
Korean
The Korean language is classified as a member of the Ural-Altaic family (other members of this family include the Mongolian, Finnish, and Hungarian languages.) Until the early 1400s, most documents were written in classical Chinese characters (known in Korean as Hanja). As the idiographs are difficult to learn, only the educated people could read and write. King Sejong, the fourth ruler of the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910), set up a special committee of scholars in 1443 to create a new writing system specifically suited to the Korean language. The result was Han-gul (meaning 'the one script'). It originally contained 28 symbols, although four have dropped out of use.
Speakers |
78 million first-language speakers, less than 1 million second-language speakers |
Region |
Also spoken in 31 other countries including American Samoa, Australia, Bahrain, Belize, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, China, Germany, Guam, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Mongolia, New Zealand, North Korea, and the Northern Mariana Islands |
Classification |
Language Isolate |
Southeast Asia
Countries in Southeast Asia
Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam
Southeast Asian languages in the Language Sets
Vietnamese
Located on the eastern Indochinese peninsula in Southeast Asia, Vietnam is for the most part a tropical country. It has over 3,000 kilometers of coastline on the Gulf of Tonkin and South China Sea, and borders China to the north, the Lao People's Democratic Republic to the west, and Cambodia to the southwest.
The Vietnamese language is a mix of Austro-Asiatic languages and Mon-Khmer languages. Although it is distinct from Chinese, much of the language incorporates thousands of Chinese words. Vietnamese is a tonal language. The script was phonetically romanized in 1548 by a French missionary and called quoc ngu. The most widely spoken foreign languages in Viet Nam are Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), English, French and Russian.
The numerous hill tribes have their own languages, but overall these are a small minority of the total population.
Speakers |
68 million first-language speakers, an additional 12 million speak Vietnamese as a second language. |
Region |
The entire country
Also spoken in Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, UK, USA, and Vanuatu |
Classification |
Austro-Asiatic, Mon-Khmer, Viet-Muong, Vietnamese |
Also see Languages of the Phillipines.
South Asia
Countries in South Asia
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka.
South Asian languages in the Language Sets
See Languages of India.
Middle East
Countries in the Middle East (Wikipedia)
Middle Eastern languages in the Language Sets
Arabic
Arabic is spoken in more than 20 countries, from Morocco to Egypt and throughout the Arabian peninsula. It is the first language of over 186 million people, and at least another 35 million speak Arabic as a second language. As the language of Qur'ān, the holy book of Islam, it is thought as a first language in Muslim states throughout the world.
With origins dating back to pre-Islamic Saudi Arabia, and a rapid spread across the Middle East, Arabic has among the richest and largest bodies of literature and poetry of all the world's classical languages. In fact, the languages of northern India, Turkey, Iran, Portugal and Spain are full of words of Arabic origin. So many people have a working knowledge of Arabic, in fact, that in 1974 it was made the sixth official language of the United Nations.
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the official language throughout the Arab world, and in its written form it is relatively consistent across national boundaries. MSA is used in official documents, in educational settings and for communication between Arabs of different nationalities. However, the spoken forms of Arabic vary widely, and each Arab country has its own dialect. Dialects are spoken in most informal settings, such as at home, with friends or while shopping. Of all the spoken dialects, Egyptian Arabic is the most widely understood, due primarily to Egypt's role as the major producer of movies and TV programs in the Arab world.
Arabic belongs to the Semitic family of languages, and, like Hebrew, is written from right to left. It is also the language of Islam, one of the world's major religions, and has a literary tradition that dates back to the days of Mohammed in the 7th century. In fact, the spread of Islam transformed the regions of Northern Africa and the Middle East into Arabic-speaking areas within a century of its founding. In later centuries, Arabic was spoken in parts of Europe and Asia following additional Arab conquests.
Today, words of Arabic origin can be found in some European languages such as Italian and Spanish, due to periods of Arab reign in those countries. English words of Arabic origin include algebra, alcohol, mosque, tariff, alcove, magazine, elixir, sultan and cotton.
| Speakers |
Spoken by almost an estimated 186 million native speakers in more than 20 countries |
| Region |
Middle East, northern Africa, other Muslim countries
An official language in Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, Qatar, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Western Sahara and Yemen
Sizable populations also speak it in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Israel, Somalia, Tanzania and Turkey. |
| Classification |
Afro-Asiatic, Semitic, Central, South, Arabic. |
|
Resources
Order OCLC Language Sets
Other Language Sets pages
Languages of Europe
Languages of India
Languages of the Phillipines
Languages of the Americas
Other links
Languages by country
Ten most widely spoken world languages
The Arabic language
The World Bank Group: Data & Statistics
Southeast Asia information
youthink! @ World Bank Group
South Asia map [PDF] |
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