The languages of Asia are richly diverse. The vast majority of the people of continental Asia speak a language in one of three large language families. The first, Altaic, consists of the Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus (Tungusic) subfamilies. The second, Sino-Tibetan, includes the Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages. Finally, the Indo-European family consists of the Indo-Aryan, Iranian, and Slavic languages, as well as Armenian.

The peoples of peninsular and insular Asia, however, speak numerous other languages, including those in the Austroasiatic, Tai, Hmong-Mien (Miao-Yao), and Dravidian families, as well as Japanese, Korean, a vast number of Austronesian languages, and the unrelated languages lumped together within the Paleo-Siberian areal category. Also spoken on the western bounds of Asia are Arabic and Hebrew (both Afro-Asiatic languages) and the Caucasian languages, consisting of at least two unrelated families. Except for the extensive eastward expansion of Russian (a Slavic language), the pattern of language distribution in Asia has remained relatively stable since the 18th century.

However, many of the languages spoken by ethnic groups numbering a few thousand or less have become functionally extinct and exist today, if at all, only in the records of linguists. Those fragile groups cannot long withstand the onslaught of more politically and economically influential languages that often are imposed along with new cultural patterns.

Among the dominant languages that have gained speakers is Russian, which remains the primary public language in Siberia and is still important in the Central Asian republics, having been taught to large numbers of non-Slavic inhabitants. Similarly, Mandarin Chinese—now generally called putonghua (“common language”) in China—is spoken by more people than any other language in the world, although such regional languages as Wu and Cantonese also retain their vitality.

In India, where more than 20 languages are officially recognized, the larger regional languages are not losing ground, despite enormous increases in the Hindi-speaking population. The major languages of northern India, including Hindi, evolved from Sanskrit and are members of the Indo-European language family, while the languages of southern India belong to the Dravidian family and include Tamil and Telugu. More than 10 different scripts are used in India. An Indian banknote has its value written on it in 13 Indian languages and also in English. Hindi and English are the official languages of the Indian central government. The dominance of Hindi has become a political issue in parts of India where it is not the primary language, particularly in the Dravidian-speaking south.

The island nations of Southeast Asia, each with hundreds of local languages, have adopted national languages to facilitate communication. Indonesia’s official national language is Bahasa Indonesia, but hundreds of local languages and dialects remain in use across the vast archipelago. Javanese, for example, has more than twice as many native speakers as Bahasa Indonesia. The Philippines, which also has hundreds of local languages and dialects, has adopted Pilipino (or Filipino, a standardized form of Tagalog) as a national language, although it is the first language of only about one-fourth of the population. English—the language of administration when the Philippines was a U.S. possession—remains in wide use; both English and Pilipino are official languages.

Factors such as ethnic migration, extended commerce, and political flux continue to complicate language patterns in many parts of Asia. Around the old Central Asian oases and in southern Siberia, migrants from Russia and exiled ethnic groups have created ethnically and linguistically mixed regional populations. As European Russians moved into the new cities in Central Asia and western Siberia, Russian became the language of the cities; the older languages have been confined chiefly to the countryside. In other areas, the economic attraction of the cities, both for foreigners and for the rural poor, has created urban linguistic patterns of increasing complexity.