Sino-Tibetan languages summary

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Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Sino-Tibetan languages.

Sino-Tibetan languages, Superfamily of languages whose two branches are the Sinitic, or Chinese, languages and the Tibeto-Burman family, an assemblage of several hundred very diverse languages spoken by some 65 million people from northern Pakistan east to Vietnam and from the Tibetan Plateau south to the Malay Peninsula. They include Tibetan, Burmese, Karen, and many other languages of Nepal, India, Myanmar (Burma), Bangladesh, China, and Thailand. Tibetan and Burmese are the only Tibeto-Burman languages with long literary traditions. Burmese is written in an adaptation of the Mon script (see Mon-Khmer languages).

Distribution of Hmong-Mien language family in China and Southeast Asia.

Hmong-Mien languages Summary

Hmong-Mien languages, family of languages spoken in southern China, northern Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Although some linguists have proposed high-level genetic relationships to several language families—including Sino-Tibetan, Tai-Kadai, Austronesian, and Austroasiatic—no genetic relationships

Chinese languages Summary

Chinese languages, principal language group of eastern Asia, belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese exists in a number of varieties that are popularly called dialects but that are usually classified as separate languages by scholars. More people speak a variety of Chinese as a