East Asian Languages - Mainland Southeast Asia Linguistic Area

Mainland Southeast Asia Linguistic Area

The Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) linguistic area stretches from Thailand to China and is home to speakers of languages of the Sino-Tibetan, Hmong–Mien (or Miao–Yao), Tai-Kadai, Austronesian (represented by Chamic) and Austro–Asiatic families. Neighbouring languages across these families, though presumed unrelated, often have similar typological features, which are believed to have spread by diffusion.

Read more about this topic:  East Asian Languages

Famous quotes containing the words asia, linguistic and/or area:

    Incarnate devil in a talking snake,
    The central plains of Asia in his garden,
    In shaping-time the circle stung awake,
    In shapes of sin forked out the bearded apple....
    Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)

    It is merely a linguistic peculiarity, not a logical fact, that we say “that is red” instead of “that reddens,” either in the sense of growing, becoming, red, or in the sense of making something else red.
    John Dewey (1859–1952)

    If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains,—if only that the sun shines, and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)