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Far East
 Chinese
Japanese
Thai
Korean
Vietnames
Indonesian
Laotian
Malaysian
Hindi
Chinese
Chinese, specifically the Mandarin dialect, is the most widely-used language on the planet. More than 885 million
people speak it. China contains a number of nationalities and is socio-economically diverse. It should come as no
surprise, then, that the Chinese language is diverse as well. Ignoring for a moment the national minorities of China
(Manchu, Hui, Mongolians, Tibetans, Miao, Yi (Lolo), Hakka and others), who speak their own languages, the majority
language of China has a number of forms. The term “Chinese” actually refers to a number of languages. The spoken
language is divided into the so-called Mandarin language (guanhua), which is the obligatory official language, and
local languages (suhua, tuhua). Written Chinese, having nothing in common with the spoken language, is divided into
the classical language (venyan) and modern language (baihua). They differ from each other about as much as Latin
differs from modern French. Furthermore, the written language has a number of styles (official, commercial, epistolary,
literary, etc., which have their own grammatical and stylistic structure and several of them vary phraseologically.
The most important dialects (or more correctly, languages) in China are Mandarin, Sechuan, Cantonese and Fujian.
Japanese
Japanese is the official language of Japan. It is spoken by about 112 million people. It has two dialects. The western
branch, which forms the basis of the old Japanese literary language, and the eastern branch, which forms the basis of
the national literary language. Japanese has ancient common roots with Altai, the Austronesian languages, and it borrows
some words from these languages, Chinese and Indo-European languages. The written memorials have been well-known since
the 6th and 7th centuries.
Thai
Thai is the Siamese language, the language of the Khon-Thais (in Thailand), the official language of Thailand. It has
4 dialects: central (which forms the basis of the literary language), northern, northeastern and southern. The written
language was created in 1283 and dates back to the southern Indian written language.
Korean
Korean is spoken on the Korean peninsula and widely used in China, Japan and the USA. It is spoken by about 46 million
people. Korean is categorized as an isolated language. It is distinct in its richness of depictive words. It borrows
some words from foreign languages, mainly European languages, Chinese and Japanese. Until the end of the 19th century,
the written and literary language was Hanmun, a Koreanized style of the Chinese Venyan. The Seoul variant of the central
dialect forms the basis of modern literary Korean (Pkhyodzhunmal, the standard language). In North Korea, the Pyongyang
dialect is the official language (Munkhvao, the cultural language).
Vietnames
Vietnames is the language of North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos. It is spoken by about 34.5 million
people. Two dialects form the basis of modern literary Vietnamese: northern and central. The written form of literary
Vietnamese relies on the sonic composition of the central dialect and the tonal system of the northern dialect. Vietnamese
borrows many words from Chinese.
Indonesian
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. It is in the Sumatran group of the Indonesian branch of the
Malayo-Polynesian (or Austronesian) family of languages. The term "Indonesian language" replaced "Malaysian language"
after the Republic of Indonesia was formed in 1945. The Indonesian language, which is an evolved form of Malaysian,
differs from it both lexically and morphologically.
The most ancient memorials of the ancient Malaysian language (7th century) were discovered on the island of Sumatra from
the 3rd century through the 1930s. Malaysian was preserved as a language for inter-tribal and inter-island communication.
Over the years Malaysian used various alphabets. A variant of Devangari was used until around the turn of the 14th century,
when it was replaced by an extended version of the Arabic alphabet. Latin letters began to be used in the early 19th century.
As it developed, Malaysian (Indonesian) added words from from Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Dutch, and other languages, as
well as from parent languages of the indonesian branch—Java, Sudanese, and Minan-Kabau.
Laotian
Laotian is the official language of Laos. Besides Laos, it is widely used in Northeastern Thailand, Southeastern China,
Cambodia and Myanmar. About 10 million people speak it. It belongs to the Thai group of the Sino-Tibetan family of
languages. Literary Laotian is based on the Vientiane dialect, which plays a normative role. Most of the vocabulary
is comprised of words that are common to the Thai group. There are many borrowed words from Pali and Sanskrit. The first
written memorials in Laos date back to the 13th century.
Malaysian
Malaysian is a term that broadly defines the group of kindred languages encompassing 50 million speakers of the so-called
Indonesian languages. More precisely, it is the name of a single language from the above-mentioned group with 3 million
speakers. Malaysian in the narrow sense is represented by a group of dialects that are more or less homogeneous on the
peninsula of Malakka, on the island of Sumatra and on adjacent smaller islands. In addition there is a special lower
Malaysian language, or commercial Malaysian language that is strongly mixed with European languages such as Portuguese
and Dutch serving as a lingua franca between representatives of various nationalities far outside the Malaysian world.
Arabic writing is most widely used.
Hindi
Hindi is the official language of India; one of the main literary languages. It is spoken mainly in central regions of
northern India (the states of Uttar-Pradesh, Madkhya-Pradesh, Kharyana, the union territory of Delhi, parts of states
Rajastkhan, Khimachal-Pradesh and Bikhar). Hindi is spoken by more than 153 million people. Hindi uses devanagari
writing.
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