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What If Asian Countries Were Divided By Language?
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Mar 31, 2025
Thank you to Wondrium for sponsoring today's video! Signup for your FREE trial to Wondrium here: http://ow.ly/1m9T50Mf3fl Support me on Patreon & get exclusive / ahead of time content! https://www.patreon.com/generalknowledge In this video I talk about languages in the continent of Asia. By asking the hypothetical question 'What if Asia was divided by language?' I try to go through each linguistic area, attempting to understand which the main languages spoken in each region of Asia are. Through this view, we can understand how specific languages aren't confined to the political borders we know today. With many countries having various languages spoken within them. And many others sharing the same language, or at least language family. In addition to languages and cultures that are not a main element of any country, such as Kurdish. If the map was redrawn based on linguistic differences, we would see many countries break apart, others unite, and new nations emerge (such as Kurdistan). TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 00:41 What If Asia Was Divided By Language? 02:27 Wondrium 03:29 Middle-East/Arabic Region 04:59 Turkic Speaking Countries 05:49 Russia's Internal Languages 06:36 Pakistan 06:52 India 07:14 Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet 07:27 Mongolia & Mongolic Languages 07:53 China & Taiwan's Languages 08:21 Burma/Myanmar 08:39 Thailand & Laos (Kra-Dai Family)
View Video Transcript
0:00
Asian languages. The largest continent in the world and home to nearly 5 billion people
0:05
Asia has around 2300 languages that can be grouped in families like Altaic, Austro-Asiatic
0:12
Austronesian, Caucasian, Davidian, Indo-European, Siberian, among others. But a lot of these so-called
0:18
languages are in fact more accurately described as idioms or dialects with very little variation
0:24
between the groups they share the base language with. This doesn't change the fact that there are
0:30
a lot of languages in Asia. India and China alone have a tremendous amount, and in this video
0:36
I want to precisely find out which ones they are. To do this, I also want to look at a cool
0:43
hypothetical question, which is what if Asian countries were divided by language? I already
0:49
did this for Europe and South America, and you seem to like it, so I thought it was time to do
0:54
it for Asia as well. As we know, language is an important factor in defining a country's identity
0:59
and culture, and more often than not, a country's borders are based precisely on the grouping of
1:04
people belonging to a specific culture. But many countries have more than one language within it
1:09
depending on the region, and in opposition, many countries share the same language. So
1:14
what if Asian countries' borders were simply defined by the major language spoken in each
1:20
territory. We would have a new map of the continent with some countries coming together
1:24
while others would lose or gain territories, and new countries altogether emerging. This is the
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question I want to answer today and through it learn and understand which languages are spoken
1:35
where in Asia. Now there's an issue here which is what do we consider as the languages. There's no
1:42
way we can count the 2300 that would create an insane mosaic of countries and a full balkanization
1:48
of the continent if each language was its own country. Besides, many of the 2300 aren't that
1:53
different from each other and can certainly be grouped into a smaller count. However, we can't
1:58
group them up that much. For instance, if you look at the language families map, we only have 11 of
2:04
them. I believe this takes into account the origin of the language, the alphabets, among other things
2:09
But it groups up countries like Russia and India. This is the reference map I used for the thumbnail
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of the video. Now, despite it being too general in the way it groups up countries, I think it's a
2:19
good basis to start with when dividing the continent by languages. So let's go through
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each of these areas and look into them in more detail. Very quickly before that, a quick message
2:29
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If you're interested, feel free to try it out. Now, back to the video and to the languages of Asia
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First, the Middle East Arabic region of the continent. Reddit user TheCarter posted this great map of languages in the Middle East
3:37
As we can see, with the exception of Israel speaking Hebrew, the remaining countries of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia
3:46
Jordan, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE are all marked in yellow for speaking Arab
3:53
which also stretches a little into Turkey and Iran. However, some people pointed out that the
3:58
different types of Arab are tremendously different. So, I found this other map on Wikipedia
4:03
which separated Arabic dialects. According to it, and if we were to follow it, the only three
4:08
countries that would remain the same would be Lebanon, the UAE, and Qatar, with all others
4:14
having at least two types of Arabic spoken. If we were to follow this, a whole new Middle East would
4:19
be drawn on the map. In the first map, we can also see the key presence of Kurdish language speakers
4:24
in the desired location of Kurdistan. A language criteria would finally lead to the creation of
4:29
this new country, stretching from Iraq to Turkey, a bit of Syria and Iran, the area in dark red here
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There's also an area in northern Iran that is Kurdish and a significant one in central Anatolia
4:40
I didn't know about these. Azerbaijan would double or triple its territory as there's a good part of
4:46
Iran that speaks Azeri. And in contrast, a good part of Afghanistan could join Iran
4:51
as Persian, including all its dialects, stretches from one country to the other
4:56
with only a bit of Afghanistan speaking Pashto. Then the Turkish states, where Armenia and Georgia
5:02
along with the Caspian Sea, divide them. Turkic languages do differ a little
5:06
but according to the information I found, they have a very high level of mutual understanding
5:11
only the Siberian Turkic is very different. The word bear is a good example in how similar it is
5:17
in all the languages. This map shows us precisely which areas would be united under this common
5:22
language. Turkey, Azerbaijan, and part of Iran, parts of Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan
5:29
and Kyrgyzstan. A key point here is how the Uyghur region in China would join this new united
5:34
country as it is an area where a Turkic language is also spoken. Interestingly, Tajikistan is the
5:40
only of the Central Asia is Tans that doesn't speak Turkic, they speak Tajik which is closer
5:46
to Farsi and Darcy in Iran and Afghanistan. Russia was left out of the thumbnail but it's
5:52
also in Asia and it is also an interesting case when it comes to internal languages As we saw a small region of it speaks Turkic however as we seen in a previous video the prevalence of non cultures inside Russia is decreasing more and
6:06
more, even in remote regions, and similarly, the reach of the Russian language is almost total over
6:13
the country in modern times. There are, however, still some secondary languages that people speak
6:18
many small local languages, such as Tuvan, the language of a previously existing country near
6:24
Mongolia and a few others in the Far East, especially throughout Siberia. But some have
6:28
literally like a hundred speakers and would not justify a territorial reorganization
6:33
but still it's interesting to know they exist. Another Indo-European language country is next
6:38
Pakistan. Pakistan has a lot of languages. According to Wikipedia, there's at least
6:43
seven relevant ones and this would mean the country would split up into various independent
6:48
regions. Although for instance, Pashto would actually join up two of them. And then India
6:52
is a whole universe of its own too, with thousands of languages existing inside it. Hindi is the most
6:59
common, being the most spoken across these northern states. Other than those, it's almost like each
7:05
state has its own language, save Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. In the northeast too, a few regions
7:11
will join Bangladesh, as they also speak Bengali. Nepal speaks Nepali, and Bhutan speaks Dzongka
7:18
and the region of Tibet speaks Tibetan, which not only occupies the autonomous region ruled by China
7:24
but also some other Chinese territories, as we'll see ahead. For the north is Mongolia, which speaks its own, Mongolian
7:31
but it's important to note that Mongolic languages are a thing of their own too
7:35
As a language group, if you will, Mongolian itself stretches into the outside of Mongolia's southern borders
7:41
taking up some Chinese territory, part of which is actually known as Inner Mongolia
7:45
As we go through the languages of China's neighbors, we understand how if Asia was separated
7:50
by language, China would lose much of its land. Because China, like India, is its own universe
7:56
and has various languages inside it. Most of the country speaks Mandarin, but as we saw
8:01
Inner Mongolia speaks Mongolian and Tibet, plus its surrounding areas speak Tibetan
8:05
A little bit of Manchuria speaks Korean, and a lot of Xinjiang speaks Turkish
8:09
as we saw earlier with the Uyghur language. Much of the Southeast speaks Southern Chinese
8:15
including Taiwan, and the southwest speak many languages related to the old region of Indochina
8:21
Many of these languages are in fact grouped up within the Sinu-Tibetan family, as is the case
8:26
with Burma, where the Burmese language is spoken, although they also vary a lot in dialects. Which
8:32
again shows us that if we were to use the dialects as a basis for these separations, hundreds if not
8:37
thousands of countries would exist in Asia. Thailand and Laos are together in the Kra-Dai
8:42
family where southwestern Thai is the most common here in orange a few other
8:47
of these languages also stretch into southwest China while Vietnam and Cambodia are united in something called Austro languages Vietnamese Banatic and Khmer are the most common despite belonging to the same language family their common heritage dates back like 4 years and from what I found they are not mutually intelligible at all
9:08
This shows us how in some cases, the language families make sense as a language division criteria
9:13
such as the Turkish countries, but in others, like this one, the Austro-Asiatic, they don't
9:19
And then Korean and Japanese. North and South Korea speak the same language, Korean
9:23
regionally and also because of being separated for some time, there are of course some differences
9:28
in the vocabulary and language style, but they are still the same language. A few dialects exist
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three in the north and three in the south, and then a central one that joins both countries. If
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language was the border criteria, either seven new countries would exist or a single one would
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And finally, we have the Austronesian family countries, which also differ a lot between them
9:48
and stretch into Oceania as well. Here we can see all the Austronesian languages
9:53
how they originated from Taiwan, where a small number of native descendants still speak a version
9:58
of it. When it comes to Asia, this is pertinent for the languages of Malaysia, Indonesia
10:03
and the Philippines mostly, but despite this common heritage, the languages are also
10:06
mostly not mutually intelligible. For instance, Indonesian and Tagalog, spoken in the Philippines
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are completely different from each other and within themselves they also have a lot of dialects
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Not to mention the colonial influences that for instance the languages in the Philippines have
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This area of the world is home to a lot of languages too, perhaps due to how many islands exist
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and how many natural divisions there were of these people throughout history
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So, that is a brief overview of Asian languages and the hypothetical scenario of the continent
10:38
being divided on the spaces. In this scenario, I believe the biggest change would be the creation of a united Turkish state
10:45
which, by the way, might actually happen, the separation of India, Pakistan and India
10:50
and of course the creation of a Kurdish state. What do you think? Would these country unions and border changes make sense
10:56
And is this level of language grouping a valid way of listing Asia's main languages
11:01
The thousands of languages in Asia are far too many to count, but there are, of course, important differences within each of these language families
11:09
I believe that using the language families map as a basis and then going through each region for a more detailed look
11:15
We were able to outline the different languages that in fact exist in each area and how it would make sense to divide regions
11:23
By language should that be a chosen criteria in this hypothetical scenario through answering that initial question
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I believe we were able to achieve a basic understanding of which languages exist in this continent and how they differ or are similar to each other
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as well as how the drawn borders often do not match those similarities or differences
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Let me know in the comments if you have any corrections or additional information about this
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Thanks so much for watching this video, subscribe if you want and I will see you next time for
11:52
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