Languages of Asia Part 2: South Asia

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Languages of AsiaPart 2 South Asia

• ASIAN 401
• Spring 2009

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Review

• Name the six language families of
  North/East/Southeast Asia
• Name four countries in peninsular Southeast Asia
• Name two language isolates
• Name three Austronesian lgs.
• Name a Sino-Tibetan language

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SOUTH ASIA
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SOUTH ASIA
China
Pakistan
Tibet
Nepal
Urdu Indo-Aryan family
NE India
Sino-Tibetan Languages
India
Hindi Indo-Aryan family
Bengali Indo-Aryan family
Sri Lanka
Tamil Dravidian family
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Languages Families

• Indo-Aryan Pakistan, India
• Dravidian S India, Sri Lanka
• Sino-Tibetan NE India, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet
• Austroasiatic E India

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Sample Languages

• Indo-Aryan Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Marathi,
  Gujarati, Punjabi
• Dravidian Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu
• Sino-Tibetan Bodo, Garo, Naga
• Austroasiatic Santali

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Indo-Aryan

• Branch of larger Indo-European family gt600
  million speakers
• Most of the major languages of India and
  Pakistan, as well as Nepali
• Four distinct consonants p, ph, b, bh

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Dravidian

• Major languages of S India and Sri Lanka (not
  found elsewhere)
• 200 million speakers
• Probably were spoken in all of India before the
  Indo-Aryan speakers arrived

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Sino-Tibetan

• Numerous small hill tribe languages in NE
  India number of speakers small ( 4 mil.), but
  number of lgs very large (gt100?)
• Also languages spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet
• Very complex verb forms

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Austroasiatic

• The Munda languages are spoken in scattered areas
  of E India
• Related distantly to the Austroasiatic languages
  of peninsular SE Asia
• Only about 10 lgs, lt 8 million speakers. Santali
  has the most speakers.

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