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Official and Regional Languages of Asia on a Map
Can you name these 149 national and regional languages shown on the map of Asia?
Read the extensive caveats in the comments
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Last updated: March 30, 2021
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| First submitted | March 20, 2021 |
| Times taken | 29,289 |
| Average score | 26.8% |
| Rating | 4.99 |
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Asterisks denote that only speakers in Asia are counted for L1 figures, while Indo-European language families are marked with a dagger (†)
Figures for the total speakers of each language family should be taken as estimations and do not include immigrant/'non-European' languages
One big difference between Asia and Europe, is that with Europe I could comfortably cover just about every language spoken as a majority in just about every given area. In Asia, thanks to factors including massive geographic barriers, great amounts of diversity and lower levels of education and thus survival of minority languages, there are several areas of smaller unrecognised languages that have been left grey.
Some areas have been simplified. For example, while people may assume that Israel=Hebrew-speaking, Palestine=Arabic-speaking, the truth is that Hebrew is spoken throughout the West Bank and Arabic is spoken in locations across the north of Israel. I cannot show all detail through this medium.
To generalise, Asian countries are less likely to have the same 'clear-cut' recognition of minority languages as their European counterparts. Some recognise dozens, while others recognise one. There is unavoidable subjectivity here.
English is actually the largest spoken language in Singapore and Christmas Island, however since it and Portuguese are not the majority first language anywhere in Asia, they are automatically filled in.
I tried to choose the flags that fit the language the best. I have done my best to avoid controversial flags, but if there are any flags of guerilla movements for whatever reason I will replace them.
I cannot show it on the map, but sadly many of these languages are in decline, and will soon be transparent (in the likes of Assyrian or Ainu) for a variety of factors including migration, modernisation, etc. (not saying these factors are bad, but rather have unfortunate consequences for the minority languages).
There is too much to say about the quiz, I hope I covered everything important! Will try and do one for the Americas next :)
Also the Chinese provinces don't have flags, unlike Indian states (all of which also don't have official flags in 2021) I believe it is illegal in China.
As for Oceania, I never compiled a list of languages. New Guinea has the most languages by far although few on the island have recognition. Interestingly, Anguar State in Palau has Japanese as an official language. Only one person born on Anguar can speak Japanese, and he or she no longer resides in that state.
EDIT: Also, one more thing, does Hokkien also include Teochew and Hainanese, because I think they're quite different.
Also accept Cebu for Cebuano?
I liked how you completely left New Guinea blank. The Siberian languages were the toughest where I got none, a lot of new languages as well I got to see for the first time in this quiz even in India. Didn't expect to see Ainu as it has a very small population speaking as their L1. It's sad how languages like Ainu will gradually go extinct and probably a lot of Indonesian and Indian languages too. Like approximately 20 languages were spoken in Andaman and the whole language family went extinct when the last L1 speaker died in 2009.
New Guinea is left blank since it is technically in Oceania, but I'm actually not sure any of those languages would be eligible other than Hiri Motu and Tok Pisin (which is simply an English Creole, its name derived from 'Talk Pidgin'). Bit of a shame from the world's most linguistically diverse region.
It is tragic the state of some language at the moment. I noticed how some of the language names in India used Latin alphabets, and that is often a sign that the language is not even written, only spoken. The way the cycle works, it seems people will only turn to language revitalisation when decline is too great and the language becomes a historical language only. Irish has been under revitalisation for over 100 years, and continues to decline at the L1 level. The major Indian state languages seem quite safe however.
Fantastic Quiz! Excellent Map Detail! When I first looked at Indonesia, Philippines, and Nepal, I'm like, can't be too hard right. And when I clicked show unguessed Language, the bruh moment came.
Africa or even Oceania would probably make for better quizzes :P
After playing it at least ten times I can still remember 100 only, what a shame.
I can't even begin to guess what will happen when you get to Oceania. I see you want to do the Americas next, and that will also be interesting, but I'm in love with Oceanian literatures at the moment...
Oceania is a region that I am interested in covering. Most of the languages are from the same language family, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be an interesting quiz.
Would you mind accepting Aceh for Acehnese, Altay for Altai, Iloko for Ilocano, Panjabi for Punjabi, and Winaray for Waray?
Two questions about this (one a question and one a suggestion):
1. In Nepal, Indonesia, and the Phillipines, how do nation-wide languages work? Like is it that everyone who doesn't speak the most prominent language (Nepali, Malay, Tagalog) as a first language learns it in school as a second language? Or is it more that they use colonial languages instead (English, Dutch, Spanish/English)?
2. For some reason, some of the labels of the language families don't show up while I take the quiz. For example, it didn't say "Tibetic," I just saw "1.7 million speakers." The problem resolved itself afterwards, but not during the quiz for some reason :/ I don't know if anyone else is having this problem but it might be worth looking into.
To answer your comment,
1. It seems in those countries that the national language is used in school, alongside English. In Nepal they used to suppress some of the regional languages (such as Newari), but as a result of the Nepalese Civil War the Nepali language's exclusive use in government or courts is being challenged and regional languages are given rights (hence why they made it on this quiz!) When I was in Nepal, everyone could speak Nepali with me even if it was their second language, while English and Hindi were prevelant, but less spoken.
2. Don't worry, the labels are meant to be invisible at first. I hid the ones that gave away the names of individual languages' names. It's not a perfect solution by any means, but thankfully it's not a glitch either.
"You just ruined my family's entire vacation"
"GIVE ME YOUR NINTENDO SWITCH YOUR TOO OLD FOR SILLY VIDEO GAMES ANYWAY"
"You will hear from my lawyers!"
I think I spend too much time on r/entitledparents...
That being said, I'm not touching it with a ten foot pole... ;-)
I don't blame you either, it isn't exactly a free 5 points :)
Glad to hear you enjoyed rediscovering it! :D
Same thing happens to the "Hokkien" languages. I think you are referred to the "Min language", but again, Min is actually a language family that consists of multiple languages.
If it was a quiz purely on Taiwanese languages, I would certainly go into much more detail. Thanks for letting me know about Yami by the way, it is not recognised in the same way, so I cannot include it, but I had no idea there was a Batanic language spoken in Taiwan!
I can fully understand that they are an immense lot of work to make, I'm just asking... please, if possible. :)
Happy new year, by the way!
I have a version for the Americas which I almost finished, however I struggled with drawing some of the Indigenous languages / including both North and South America on one map so the project was put on hold.
As for now I have no plans to continue the series because of time constraints. If I could pick up the series again, I wish I could cover Africa next as it is the most fitting for this style of quiz!