Languages of South Asia
The languages of South Asia include a few major language families:
Indo-Iranian languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, which can be further divided into three groups:
Indo-Aryan languages, the most widespread.
Iranic languages, in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Nuristani languages, in a small area of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Dravidian languages, in South India and Sri Lanka.
Tibeto-Burman languages, a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, along the northern and eastern edges.
Austroasiatic languages, in small areas of India.
There are also some people who speak Kra-Dai languages, and some language isolates such as Burushaski, which are not known to be related to any other languages.
South Asia includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, the Maldives, and sometimes Afghanistan.
Indo-Aryan languages
Most Indo-Aryan languages grew from Sanskrit, an ancient language. It is hard to decide to define what is a language, and what is just a dialect (language variant). For example, Hindi and Urdu are similar when spoken, but Hindi is written in the Devanagari script and Urdu is written in the Persian-Arabic script. Hindi uses more words from Sanskrit, while Urdu uses more words from Persian and Arabic.
Iranic languages
Only some of the Iranic languages are from South Asia. Others are from West Asia or Central Asia. This table shows the total number of people who speak each language.
Nuristani languages
About 130,000 people speak the five Nuristani languages.
Dravidian languages
Tibeto-Burman languages
A number of Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, Northeast India, Bangladesh, North India, and North Pakistan.
Austroasiatic languages
Most Austroasiatic languages are spoken in Southeast Asia, rather than South Asia. The Austronesian languages spoken in South Asia are part of the Munda and Khasic branches.
Kra-Dai languages
Most Kra-Dai languages are spoken in East Asia and Southeast Asia. About 10,000 people speak these languages in South Asia, in Assam and the surrounding area.
Language isolates
A language isolate is a language that is not known to be related to any other languages.
There are several native languages to the Andaman Islands. Originally they were grouped into Great Andamanese, Ongan, Jangil, and Sentinelese. Today, people have stopped speaking some of these languages, making them extinct.
The Burushaski language is spoken by about 100,000 people in North Pakistan. The Kusunda language is spoken by less than 100 people in Nepal. The Nihali language is spoken by 2,000 or so people in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. All of these are considered language isolates.
References
South Asia
Languages of Asia