LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AMONG ASIAN-PACIFIC ISLANDER COUNTRIESABRIEFLOOKINTOTHEVASTAMOUNTOFLANGUAGESFROMASIATOTHEPACIFIC

ISLANDS

DID YOU KNOW?• There are approximately 2,195 documented languages

spoken throughout the Asian continent, and many language families in Asia link to languages in the Pacific Islands

• Some examples:• South Asia: Hindi, Sinhala, Punjabi• East Asia: Chinese varieties, Burmese, Tibetan• Southeast Asia: Tagalog, Vietnamese, Laotian• Pacific Islands: Rarotongan, Tahitian, Hawai’ian

LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY WITHIN INDIA

• According to the Census of India of 2001, there are 122 major languages spoken in India and over 1599 other languages spoken throughout the country• The languages of India are split into many different

language families, a majority of them belonging to the families of Indo-Aryan languages (Hindu, Punjabi), and the Dravidian languages (Tamil, Telugu)

A GENERAL MAP OF THE

LARGE LINGUISTIC GROUPS IN

INDIA

FUN FACT!• The Austronesian language family, which spans

from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan in Asia to the Pacific Islands, i.e. Fiji, Hawai’i, Samoa to even Madagascar off the coast of Africa, is one of the largest language families in the world, containing more than 1,200 languages spoken by a general population of over 386 million people

GENERAL LANGUAGE MAP

OF THE AUSTRONESIAN

LANGUAGE FAMILY

EXAMPLES OF THE SHARED VOCABULARY

BETWEEN VARIOUS

AUSTRONESIANLANGUAGES

LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY WITHIN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

•OnthestateofPapuaNewGuinea,whichspansfromSoutheastAsiaintothesouthwestPacificOcean,thereareapproximately832languages spokenbyabout3.9millionpeople

MAP OF THE LANGUAGES SPOKEN THROUGHOUT PAPUA NEW GUINEA