Asia, famous for being the largest continent in the world, is not home to the most spoken languages. However, Asia has around 2,300 languages spoken, making it the second most linguistically diverse continent after Africa, which is estimated to have between 1,250 and over 3,000 languages, depending on how different dialects are classified.
What’s more fascinating is that half of the languages spoken are in Southeast Asia, with approximately 1,200 languages spread across 11 countries in this region. Indonesia holds the title of the country with the most languages, with more than 800 languages, or about half of the total number of languages in Southeast Asia.
This is followed by the Philippines with 187 languages, and Malaysia with 137 languages. Sino-Tibetan, a major language group in Southeast Asia, includes at least 400 languages. As a Southeast Asian, it is common to be bilingual or trilingual, whether it is a mixture of the official state language with an international language or the official state language with a traditional/regional language.
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The continent's geographic features significantly influence its language diversity, even in remote regions a languages can be developed. According to the Asia Society, almost all languages spoken in Southeast Asia today belong to the Austronesian family.
Linguistically, Mainland Southeast Asia's languages are mainly divided into three key groups, which are Austro-Asiatic (e.g., Cambodian and Vietnamese), Tai (such as Thai and Lao), and Tibeto-Burmese (including Burmese and highland languages). These language families are also found in northeastern India and southwest China.
On the other hand, Nick J. Enfield, in his publication, “Language in the Mainland Southeast Asia Area,” explains that Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) itself is home to five major language families: Sino-Tibetan, Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien, Austroasiatic, and Austronesian. This region broadly encompasses present-day Cambodia, Laos, Peninsular Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, and Vietnam, as well as areas of southern China below the Yangzi River.
Malay is the lingua franca in Southeast Asia, followed by other widely used languages, namely Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Tagalog, and Khmer. However, The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) which includes 10 Southeast Asian countries—Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam—also recognizes English as the lingua franca for the association.
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Meanwhile, other Asian continents have their own number of languages start from East Asia, estimate there are around 300-400 languages in this area. South Asia is home to over 450 languages, with Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Tamil as the major languages.
Around 70-80 languages in West Asia including languages from the Afro-Asiatic, Turkic, and Indo-European families. Central Asia has around 40-50 languages, mainly from the Turkic (Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkmen), Indo-Iranian (Tajik, Pashto), and Mongolic families.
Finally, in North Asia, where Russian dominates, there are only around 30 spoken languages, making it the region with the fewest languages. However, various indigenous languages are spoken by different ethnic groups throughout this vast area.
References:
Andaya.B.W. Introduction to Southeast Asia: History, Geography, and Livelihood. https://asiasociety.org/education/introduction-southeast-asia.
Enfield, N. J. (2017). Language in the mainland Southeast Asia area. In The Cambridge handbook of areal linguistics (Page: 677-702). Cambridge University Press.
