Languages Of East Asia
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Languages Of East Asia
The languages of East Asia belong to several distinct language families, with many common features attributed to interaction. In the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, Chinese varieties and languages of southeast Asia share many areal features, tending to be analytic languages with similar syllable and tone structure. In the 1st millennium AD, Chinese culture came to dominate East Asia, and Classical Chinese was adopted by scholars and ruling classes in Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. As a consequence, there was a massive influx of loanwords from Chinese vocabulary into these and other neighboring Asian languages. The Chinese script was also adapted to write Vietnamese (as Chữ Nôm), Korean (as Hanja) and Japanese (as Kanji), though in the first two the use of Chinese characters is now restricted to university learning, linguistic or historical study, artistic or decorative works and (in Korean's case) newspapers, rather than daily usage. Language families The Austroasiatic ...
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East Asia
East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea and Taiwan are all unrecognised by at least one other East Asian state due to severe ongoing political tensions in the region, specifically the division of Korea and the political status of Taiwan. Hong Kong and Macau, two small coastal quasi-dependent territories located in the south of China, are officially highly autonomous but are under Chinese sovereignty. Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau are among the world's largest and most prosperous economies. East Asia borders Siberia and the Russian Far East to the north, Southeast Asia to the south, South Asia to the southwest, and Central Asia to the west. To the east is the Pacific Ocean and to the southeast is Micronesia (a Pacific Ocean island group, classifi ...
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Vietnamese Writing System
Vietnamese ( vi, tiếng Việt, links=no) is an Austroasiatic language originating from Vietnam where it is the national and official language. Vietnamese is spoken natively by over 70 million people, several times as many as the rest of the Austroasiatic family combined. It is the native language of the Vietnamese (Kinh) people, as well as a second language or first language for other ethnic groups in Vietnam. As a result of emigration, Vietnamese speakers are also found in other parts of Southeast Asia, East Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia. Vietnamese has also been officially recognized as a minority language in the Czech Republic. Like many other languages in Southeast Asia and East Asia, Vietnamese is an analytic language with phonemic tone. It has head-initial directionality, with subject–verb–object order and modifiers following the words they modify. It also uses noun classifiers. Its vocabulary has had significant influence from Chinese a ...
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Lao Language
Lao, sometimes referred to as Laotian (, 'Lao' or , 'Lao language'), is a Kra–Dai language of the Lao people. It is spoken in Laos, where it is the official language for around 7 million people, as well as in northeast Thailand, where it is used by around 23 million people, usually referred to as Isan. Lao serves as a lingua franca among the citizens of Laos, who also speak approximately 90 other languages, many of which are unrelated to Lao. It is a tonal and analytic language, similar to other Kra-Dai languages as well as to Chinese and Vietnamese. Spoken Lao is mutually intelligible with Thai and Isan, fellow Southwestern Tai languages, to such a degree that their speakers are able to effectively communicate with one another speaking their respective languages. These languages are written with slightly different scripts but are linguistically similar and effectively form a dialect continuum. Although there is no official standard, the Vientiane dialect became the de ...
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Korku Language
Korku (also known as ''Kurku,'' or ''Muwasi'') is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Korku tribe of central India, in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. It is isolated in the midst of the Gondi people, who are Dravidian, while its closest relatives are in eastern India. It is the westernmost Austroasiatic language. Korkus are also closely associated with the Nihali people, many of whom have traditionally lived in special quarters of Korku villages. Korku is spoken by around 700,000 people, mainly in four districts of southern Madhya Pradesh (Khandwa, Harda, Betul, Hoshangabad) and three districts of northern Maharashtra (Rajura and Korpana tahsils of Chandrapur district, Manikgarh pahad area near Gadchandur in Chandrapur district) (Amravati, Buldana, Akola). The name Korku comes from ''Koro-ku'' (-''ku'' is the animate plural), ''Koro'' 'person, member of the Korku community' (Zide 2008). Sociolinguistics The Indian national census of 2011 reported 727,13 ...
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Aslian Languages
The Aslian languages () are the southernmost branch of Austroasiatic languages spoken on the Malay Peninsula. They are the languages of many of the ''Orang Asli'', the aboriginal inhabitants of the peninsula. The total number of native speakers of Aslian languages is about fifty thousand and all are in danger of extinction. Aslian languages recognized by the Malaysian administration include Kensiu, Kintaq, Jahai, Minriq, Batek, Cheq Wong, Lanoh, Temiar, Semai, Jah Hut, Mah Meri, Semaq Beri, Semelai and Temoq.Geoffrey Benjamin (1976Austroasiatic Subgroupings and Prehistory in the Malay PeninsulaJenner ''et al'' Part I, pp. 37–128 History and origin Aslian languages originally appeared on the western side of the main mountains and eventually spread eastwards into Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang. The nearest relatives to the Aslian languages are Monic and Nicobarese.Blench, R. (2006)Why are Aslian speakers Austronesian in culture. Paper presented at the Preparatory ...
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Khmer Language
Khmer (; , ) is an Austroasiatic languages, Austroasiatic language spoken by the Khmer people, and the Official language, official and national language of Cambodia. Khmer has been influenced considerably by Sanskrit and Pāli, Pali, especially in the royal and religious Register (sociolinguistics), registers, through Hinduism and Buddhism. It is also the earliest recorded and earliest written language of the Mon–Khmer family, predating Mon language, Mon and Vietnamese Language, Vietnamese, due to Old Khmer being the language of the historical empires of Chenla, Angkorian Empire, Angkor and, presumably, their earlier predecessor state, Funan. The vast majority of Khmer speakers speak Central Khmer, the dialect of the central plain where the Khmer are most heavily concentrated. Within Cambodia, regional accents exist in remote areas but these are regarded as varieties of Central Khmer. Two exceptions are the speech of the capital, Phnom Penh, and that of the Khmer Khe in Stung ...
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Vietnamese Language
Vietnamese ( vi, tiếng Việt, links=no) is an Austroasiatic languages, Austroasiatic language originating from Vietnam where it is the national language, national and official language. Vietnamese is spoken natively by over 70 million people, several times as many as the rest of the Austroasiatic family combined. It is the native language of the Vietnamese people, Vietnamese (Kinh) people, as well as a second language, second language or First language, first language for List of ethnic groups in Vietnam, other ethnic groups in Vietnam. As a result of overseas Vietnamese, emigration, Vietnamese speakers are also found in other parts of Southeast Asia, East Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia (continent), Australia. Vietnamese has also been officially recognized as a minority language in the Czech Republic. Like many other languages in Southeast Asia and East Asia, Vietnamese is an analytic language with phonemic tone (linguistics), tone. It has head-initial directionali ...
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Austroasiatic Languages
The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are the majority languages of Vietnam and Cambodia. There are around 117 million speakers of Austroasiatic languages. Of these languages, only Vietnamese, Khmer, and Mon have a long-established recorded history. Only two have official status as modern national languages: Vietnamese in Vietnam and Khmer in Cambodia. The Mon language is a recognized indigenous language in Myanmar and Thailand. In Myanmar, the Wa language is the de facto official language of Wa State. Santali is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. The rest of the languages are spoken by minority groups and have no official status. '' Ethnologue'' identifies 168 Austroasiatic languages. These form thirteen established families (plus perhaps Shompen, which is poorly atte ...
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Kanji
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequently-derived syllabic scripts of ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. The characters have Japanese pronunciation, pronunciations; most have two, with one based on the Chinese sound. A few characters were invented in Japan by constructing character components derived from other Chinese characters. After World War II, Japan made its own efforts to simplify the characters, now known as shinjitai, by a process similar to China's simplified Chinese characters, simplification efforts, with the intention to increase literacy among the common folk. Since the 1920s, the Japanese government has published character lists periodically to help direct the education of its citizenry through the myriad Chinese characte ...
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Japanese Writing System
The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana. Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalised Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana, used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis. Almost all written Japanese sentences contain a mixture of kanji and kana. Because of this mixture of scripts, in addition to a large inventory of kanji characters, the Japanese writing system is considered to be one of the most complicated currently in use. Several thousand kanji characters are in regular use, which mostly originate from traditional Chinese characters. Others made in Japan are referred to as “Japanese kanji” ( ja, 和製漢字, wasei kanji, label=none; also known as “country’s kanji” ja, 国字, kokuji, label=none). Each character has an intrinsic meanin ...
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