What If Asian Countries Were Divided By Language?

▶ 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)
08:51 Vietnam & Cambodia (Austroasiatic)
09:19 Korean & Japanese
09:43 Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines (Austronesian)
10:32 Summary

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[General.Knowledge]

*Are there any main languages I missed?*

[bitkower]

In India, state borders are largely drawn linguistically and I think it's one of the smartest things it did as a modern nation. Unlike drawing borders based on religion or perceived ethnic identity, language connects people and no war has ever been fought over language alone.

[wonderingwayne]

It would be interesting to see how these line up with natural borders like mountain ranges, river basins, deserts ect.

[alantew]

I am still fascinated how Madagascar, which is so far away from Southeast Asia, shares the same language family, the Austronesian languages.

[alanjyu]

Regarding your map of China, it's not a map of the languages spoken. Instead the map shows the names of the provinces. Also, "Southern Chinese" is not a language. There are some very distinct languages. Hokkien (Min dialectal group) preserves elements of Old Chinese while Cantonese is a derivative of Middle Chinese as is Hakka and Shanghainese (Wu dialectal group). There is extreme diversity and variation in this part of China because it's not so easy to get around when compared to the North where Mandarin is mainly spoken. All this being said, inspite of the variety of Chinese languages, the use of a non-phonetic/visual approach to writing allows different Chinese groups to communicate without necessarily knowing how words were pronounced in different Chinese languages.

[papazataklaattiranimam]

Turkic languages are very similar on the whole, except for the highly divergent Chuvash language of the Volga region of Russia . I would say they differ less on the whole than say, the Germanic languages . They certainly aren’t all mutually intelligible, but it’s still quite easy for speakers of the different Turkic languages to learn one of those which are not immediately intelligible .
For example, there’s probably less difference between the Uighur language and the Turkish of Turkey than between German and Danish despite the fact that German and Danish are geographically right next to each other and Turkish and Uighur are geographically very distant .

[junaid]

In India, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana were initially one state. That's why they both speak Telugu. They split in 2014 to form separate states due to management, political and other socio-economic reasons.

[landove]

Indonesian/Bahasa Indonesia is a National Language created solely for unifying Indonesia post Independence (1945). It is a 2nd/3rd language for most Indonesians.

Take an example, Sundanese spoken by people from West Java is not mutually intelligible with Javanese spoken by people from Central Java. But both can understand each other using Bahasa Indonesia.

Indonesia in fact has the most number of languages in the world, only behind Papua New Guinea. There are approx 700 different languages (not dialects) currently exist in the country.

[viibgzj]

10:10 Indonesian, Malay, and Filipino have a lot of similarities. We don't talk just Tagalog and basic Malay, but other languages around also have many similarities. For example, Javanese and Ilokano. There are many similarities among its words.

[vishwesh_nh]

Indian states were drawn on a linguistic basis
Which is the reason why almost every has its own language
Also the the states which seem like they just speak Hindi have their own dialects

[stevejohnson]

Language is 1 factor, maybe the most important. But history and community of interest are also important. If you had a pocket of speakers located a long way away from the main group they would have many differences from the main group apart from language.

[ayeshaclassesgk]

General knowledge🖤♥️💚💜love your videos, you create lots of positive things. Thank you for creating this lovely content । So kind of you always, keep it up

[kalamagz]

When you were prefacing it with how the you would group the languages, I was so sure you were gonna miss the nuance over in the Philippines where I won’t be able to understand anyone from just a few kilometers north and the next island south. But you captured that so well! Colonial era education taught us that those were just dialects, but all the anthropologists are trying to correct that thinking and telling us that we do speak completely different languages.

[fardiorin]

Indonesian is the only standardized language which was born purely from artifical and conscious intervention to be adopted by all of Indonesians, unlike so many other countries where one special language was chosen as the official language without conscious modification.

[spanking]

FYI: In Indonesia we have 718 languages (The country with the second most spoken language in the world), it's not a dialect but it's a language. Each region in Indonesia has its own language, 1380 ethnic groups have their own language. The language is very different in each area, so it's like a foreign language that is impossible to understand. This regional language is used by Indonesians in everyday life, while our national language is the language used to speak to people from outside our regional area. It can be said that our national language is only a second language after our local language.

[elitettelbach]

This is really fascinating! Loving this series!

[oohaak]

excellent and different content..congratulations and good luck my friend

[BulgarianGeographyAndHistory]

Thank you for the interesting videos! I have watched them all with my family!

[Immortal-Daiki]

In Japan's case, it can also be divided into 4 linguistic regions. Ainu in Hokkaido, Japanese in Mainland Japan, Ogasawara Pidgin in the Ogasawara Islands and the Okinawan languages of Okinawa

[koumoutsa]

Great video as always, keep up the good work, this channel is very interesting!