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Top Asian Languages on a Map

Can you name all of the Asian languages with more than 10 million native speakers?
According to Wikipedia
For transcontinental countries the entire country counts
Chinese and Hindustani languages must be guessed separately
Quiz by Jiaozira
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Last updated: September 8, 2020
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First submittedJanuary 12, 2018
Times taken51,158
Average score50.0%
Rating4.87
5:30
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0
 / 46 guessed
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Speakers
Language
918 mil
Mandarin
528 mil
Hindi
310 mil
Arabic
228 mil
Bengali
154 mil
Russian
128 mil
Japanese
125 mil
Punjabi
98.0 mil
Javanese
83.1 mil
Marathi
82.0 mil
Telugu
81.4 mil
Wu
79.4 mil
Turkish
77.0 mil
Malay/Indonesian
77.3 mil
Korean
76.0 mil
Vietnamese
75.0 mil
Tamil
Speakers
Language
73.1 mil
Cantonese
70.0 mil
Persian
68.6 mil
Urdu
56.4 mil
Gujarati
56.0 mil
Thai
50.1 mil
Min Nan
48.2 mil
Hakka
43.6 mil
Kannada
40.0 mil
Pashto
40.0 mil
Sundanese
37.3 mil
Xiang
37.1 mil
Malayalam
34.5 mil
Odia
33.9 mil
Maithili
32.9 mil
Burmese
Speakers
Language
27.0 mil
Uzbek
24.6 mil
Sindhi
23.6 mil
Tagalog
23.0 mil
Azerbaijani
22.1 mil
Gan
21.0 mil
Kurdish
16.6 mil
Khmer
15.9 mil
Cebuano
15.8 mil
Nepali
15.3 mil
Assamese
15.3 mil
Sinhalese
12.9 mil
Kazakh
12.8 mil
Deccan
11.0 mil
Min Bei
10.4 mil
Uyghur
+12
Level 70
Sep 4, 2020

Edit 1: I've updated the map and the data. The latest data avaliable is by Ethnologue and is as of 2019.

As per standards, I've removed dialects entirely, especially affecting Hindi (after much research on the Hindi Belt and languages/dialects such as Bhojpuri and Magahi). I have also replaced a small number of Ethnologue's estimations with figures from the languages' specific Wikipedia pages, if the former estimation was influenced by the splitting of dialects.

I've resized all of the circles, as well as redrawn the map to define the continental borders between Asia and other continents.

Thank you everyone for playing!

+3
Level ∞
Jan 12, 2018
How did you decide where to place the dot?
+32
Level 70
Jan 13, 2018
The dots are placed on around where the language is considered to have been developed into the modern form as it is today.
+6
Level 67
Feb 27, 2019
Hey QM, did you know that Hindo is a language. At least that's what my brain thought when I took this quiz
+2
Level 64
Aug 17, 2020
Lol haha
+5
Level 55
Jan 30, 2018
Top notch!
+5
Level 66
Jan 30, 2018
Amazing Quiz!
+7
Level 76
Jan 31, 2018
Bit strange for "Min" to be accepted as "Min nan", but to have to type "Min bei" in full. Min nan/Min bei just mean Southern/Northern Min. I think you should either combine the two into "min", or have to type Minnan/Minbei in full for each.
+2
Level 70
Sep 4, 2020
I was using suggested type-ins, and Min Bei didn't have any due to its obscurity. Just Min will work for both languages now.
+9
Level 71
Mar 9, 2018
Pretty tough if you're not a language nerd :)
+4
Level 75
Jul 26, 2018
Another NALN here - not a language nerd. But then I'm also NAWCN (world capitals) and NAFN (not a flag nerd). (I am learning, thanks to these quizzes, but I'll never achieve nerd status on any of them.)
+3
Level 66
Mar 3, 2020
Ask your family, I m nowhere near knowing all the capitals, I think they think I am a geography nerd for even knowing all the countries. And well mainly for keeping on trying to learn things on here. (In a good way, like "man you must be a master at that stuff now" )
+2
Level 85
Mar 14, 2018
If Russian (which originated in European Russia) counts as Asian, why not English, which has over 230 million speakers in India and Pakistan alone?
+1
Level 86
Jul 26, 2018
I'm guessing it's native speakers only.
+3
Level 56
Jul 26, 2018
Now I'm wondering how many people in Asia count English as their native language. (Definitely some in Singapore, probably also in India and maybe Hong Kong. Probably not enough in total to make it into this quiz though.)
+3
Level 70
Sep 27, 2019
It is native speakers only. It's very subjective, the total number of speakers. What counts as fluent? Those kinds of questions need to be asked. I know that a couple hundred thousand people in India speak English natively, can't say about the other countries but the total number is probably no more than 1 to 2 million...? Just an estimate.
+1
Level 57
May 19, 2022
Russia is in both continents. England is not.
+1
Level 75
Mar 18, 2018
I got 20, and there were 5 or 6 others I should've gotten. The rest I have never heard of. Pretty hard!
+1
Level 82
Mar 19, 2018
Great quiz. Very challenging.
+5
Level 74
Jul 26, 2018
This should really help me learn the many languages of India and China now that I can better visualize where they are.
+2
Level 86
Jul 26, 2018
One of these days I really need to work on remembering the names of more than about 4 South Asian languages.
+2
Level 69
Jul 26, 2018
Great quiz, great for learning all the variants that don’t have a country of the same name :)
+4
Level 65
Jul 26, 2018
Maybe consider accepting Nepalese, it is after all Nepal's demonym.
+1
Level 61
Jul 26, 2018
I'll be honest, I'm surprised I got 22 out of 58. Looking at the answers afterwards, I had a shot at maybe 4 more.
+3
Level 82
Jul 26, 2018
I heard that Jim Carrey was fluent in Assamese
+2
Level 88
Jul 26, 2018
When I saw the lower dot in the Philippines, I tried Cebu and then Cebuese. I guess I should have tried a few more forms!
+1
Level 51
Sep 5, 2020
Cebuano?
+2
Level 25
Jul 26, 2018
Why no Armenian or Georgian?
+8
Level 71
Jul 26, 2018
They have less than 10 million speakers.
+1
Level 57
May 19, 2022
Barely-Armenian-speaker here, that honestly surprised me
+1
Level 80
Jul 26, 2018
Good quiz. I did badly.
+2
Level 63
Jul 26, 2018
No Malay? I am shocked.
+1
Level 62
Jul 27, 2018
Great quiz!
+2
Level 68
Jul 29, 2018
Well, I got 31, all of what I could have possibly got. Nice quiz.
+5
Level 66
Oct 3, 2018
Haryanvi is certainly not a language, it's a dialect. Many other "languages" stated for India are actually dialects.
+6
Level 83
Feb 26, 2019
The difference between "language" and "dialect" is very blurry, and usually political rather than based on scientific/linguistic factors.
+5
Level 87
Sep 5, 2020
True, in Europe there's "Serbian" and "Croatian" where there used to be only Serbo-Croatian, and there's "Czech" and "Slovak" which (to a lesser degree) also used to be one language, until politics intervened in both cases.
+2
Level 70
Sep 5, 2020
Hindi and Urdu are under a similar scenario, as they were specifically seperated due to politics/religion. Urdu simply has more Persianised words, while Hindi has more Sanskritised words. The caveat explains you must guess them seperately, however.
+2
Level 82
Sep 5, 2020
Czechoslovak language was a thing?
+2
Level 70
Sep 5, 2020
Czech and Slovak are similar languages with some degree of mutual intelligibility. Although there never existed a Czechoslovak language, there was an effort to create one prior to WWII. To this day, people tend to group Czechs and Slovakia together, however the two nations are on friendly terms unlike the powder keg that was Yugoslavia.
+1
Level 57
Jan 1, 2023
my mum is slovak, and so its my second language. i can honestly tell you theres a difference in the pronunciation of the words and also changes in the words themselves. another thing is that whilst they can for the most part understand each other, it is more slovak speakers being able to understand czech ones, because of czech being a more spoken language (when things are dubbed/subtitled, czech is the more common option, meaning slovak speakers have to adapt).
+1
Level 70
Sep 4, 2020
Updated the quiz under different standards.
+1
Level 93
Nov 13, 2018
Is it just my browser but randomly throughout this site, including this quiz, the map extends on to the answer grid, start button, type in field and other places. Can it be set to that it doesn't do that please? No form of zooming in or out on my screen affects this. In this one 3 of the answers when I finish are covered up (by Australia which doesn't need to be there) so I am clueless about what they were unless I hover over each individual dot to identify them.
+1
Level 65
Sep 11, 2019
2 type-in suggestions:

Marwadi for Marwari and Khazakh for Kazakh

+2
Level 79
Mar 30, 2020
ARGHGH so close... I typed Chittagongian but not Chittagonian...
+2
Level 60
May 10, 2020
And here I always thought Syhleti and Chittagonian are dialects of Bengali cause even I'm a bengi....🤣🤣🤣🤣....so funny....I don't even so this much about my mother tongue.
+1
Level 70
Aug 13, 2020
In future I will update this quiz and remove some dialects. I've come to learn that Chittagongian and Sylheti are part of the greater Bengali language :P
+2
Level 60
Sep 6, 2020
Actually after my research and also studying bengali (which is my compulsory school subject) I have also come to the conclusion that Shyleti is not really a full dialect of Bengali. Modern Bengali and Shyleti are not entirely intangible plus Shyleti uses its own Shyleti Nagari script.

btw, can you accept Dakhini for Deccani? That's what I know it.

+1
Level 70
Sep 6, 2020
Sylheti is, in the words of Wikipedia, 'generally considered to be a dialect of Bengali'. Just because a dialect is not understandable, it does not make it a seperate language. Examples of this include English--Scots, German--Swiss German, etc. While sometimes these dialects are considered seperate languages, and many dialects have movements to be recognised as such, for this quiz and my 'Top European Languages' quiz I am using a more conservative definition as is used across many Jetpunk quizzes. 'Dakhini' is accepted, as it is an automatic type-in.
+2
Level 62
Aug 13, 2020
Good Attempt, but recognising dialects like Haryanvi and Bhojpuri as languages is incorrect. And the anglicizations like "Deccani" and "Magahi" made me cringe.
+1
Level 70
Aug 13, 2020
Haryanvi is basically just Hindi, but Bhojpuri is usually classified as a distinct language despite mutual intelligence with surrounding languages. Sorry about the butchered Anglicisations, that is what us Anglophones do best, haha :P
+2
Level 62
Aug 15, 2020
Haha thanks :thumbsup:
+1
Level 70
Aug 13, 2020
I will remove Haryanvi in future when I update this quiz.
+2
Level 37
Aug 21, 2020
Only 164 test takers have got 100%... Out of 14973, 164 passed. That is actually a very big difference. Well I got 100% though.
+1
Level 70
Aug 21, 2020
I am not surprised, this quiz is tough with all the obscure, yet widely spoken Indian languages. Good job on the 100%!
+1
Level 37
Sep 9, 2020
By the way I do know all Indian Languages, but China really got me thinking. Nice Quiz Anyway ;)
+1
Level 84
Sep 6, 2020
The only passing score is 100 percent? That sounds as crazy as this god character I keep hearing about!
+6
Level 85
Sep 5, 2020
Wow...Malayalam is a long palindrome.
+3
Level 70
Sep 5, 2020
Yes! That's how I came to remember it on these sorts of quizzes.
+2
Level 74
Sep 8, 2020
It's a Dravidian language which I can only assume must be something to do with cricketing great Rahul "The Wall" Dravid
+2
Level 56
Sep 9, 2020
That's my mother tongue.
+2
Level 46
Sep 8, 2020
Deccan is not a language it's a dialect of hindi/urdu spoken in Hyderabad...Kindly remove that from the quiz....
+2
Level 70
Sep 8, 2020
I will not remove it, as I specified above that Hindustani languages are to be guessed seperately. This includes Hindi, Urdu and Deccani.
+2
Level 63
Sep 8, 2020
Could you accept Nepalese for Nepali please?
+1
Level 62
Sep 8, 2020
I put Malay and Indonesian as Bahasa Melayu/Indonesia, but it didn't accept them! Why not?
+2
Level 70
Sep 8, 2020
Bahasa Melayu/Bahasa Indonesia are the local names for the language, not the English names. If I were to accept them, I should also accept 'español', 'français' and 'русский' on this quiz/the European version I made.
+1
Level 63
Sep 8, 2020
Why not accept Nepalese for Nepali?
+1
Level 70
Sep 8, 2020
I have updated the quiz to include 'Nepalese' as a type in. However, 'Nepalese' generally refers to the people rather than the language. Wikipedia lists it as an alternative name for the language, along with Gorkhali, Khas Kura and Parbate.
+1
Level 74
Sep 8, 2020
Hahaha I missed Mandarin but got 34/46. I beat 85.9% of users but was too stupid to think of the most-spoken language on earth. XD XD XD
+1
Level 66
Sep 8, 2020
Maybe change the caveat to say Chinese and Hindustani dialects?
+2
Level 70
Sep 8, 2020
I don't believe the Chinese languages can be reasonably called dialects, I am not sure why they are sometimes grouped together. On the other hand, while I do believe than Hindi and Urdu (and less importantly Deccani) can be called a single language, many would seperate them as distinct languages. Therefore I see no reason to have anything else as the caveat.
+1
Level 37
Sep 9, 2020
The language I think you are Talking about is Deccan.
+1
Level 37
Sep 14, 2020
Hey Jiaozira, I think you should add Tagalog. There are 28 Million Tagalog Speakers.
+1
Level 70
Sep 14, 2020
Tagalog is already on this quiz, as per my source!
+2
Level 55
Sep 22, 2020
Great job! I don't know why but the large dots make me laugh :)
+1
Level 70
Sep 22, 2020
Thank you! The dots used to be much larger, actually. Mandarin Chinese is staggeringly popular compared to so many other languages, it's incredible!
+2
Level 30
Dec 12, 2020
Are the differences between the Indian languages large? Do they communicate to each other in English?
+3
Level 70
Dec 12, 2020
North Indian languages (Punjabi, Gujarati, etc.) are typically Indo-Aryan and closely related Hindi is the second language (with English being a third language especially amongst the educated). Meanwhile there isn't really a dominant South Indian language, they are mostly Dravidian and not related to the North Indian languages at all. Therefore South Indians will learn English and knowledge of Hindi is less common. In Northeast India you can find Sino-Tibetan languages, and it's another story altogether.
+3
Level 71
Apr 19, 2021
Expanding on that (as a semi-fluent Bengali speaker), Indo-Aryan languages often have similar vocabulary and grammar but can sound completely different. When I hear spoken Hindi or Punjabi, I can't keep track of the words for the life of me, but when I see it transliterated into English, I see the resemblance to Bengali. South Indian languages, on the other hand, are completely different. Comparing Hindi to Tamil, for example, would be like comparing English to Arabic--maybe some loan words and a few glancing similarities, but otherwise not alike in any way.

Also, among the upper classes of South Asian society, code-switching between English and the regional language is very common. My cousins don't even usually speak pure Bengali to each other--there's almost always some English mixed in. This changes when you start talking about older people or poorer people though--one of my grandmothers has lived in the countryside her whole life and can't speak a word of English.

+2
Level 70
Apr 20, 2021
I find this really interesting about some of the Indo-Aryan languages. Between Hindi and Nepali, many of the words are the exact same, yet the accent sounds very different. I guess if people are really used to hearing the words of another language, then they become quicker at identifying them and understanding.

I have Nepali friends who consume a lot of Hindi media (songs, Bollywood films, serials) and so they understand it well, even if their speaking skills are not so high. Once they went to an event with Gujarati speakers, and not only could they not understand anything, but they found the speech quite funny because a lot of the words had vastly different meanings in Nepali.

They code-switch a lot too. I guess when you interact in multiple languages (or even accents) frequently enough, you don't even have to think about it!

+2
Level 65
Jan 17, 2022
Yeah, I also code-switch a lot, it's pretty normal in India. Most of the words that get replaced with English is Sanskrit vocabulary from my observation, as it is seen as obscure and archaic, even though it shouldn't be. I hope that I and other Indians can be able to speak fully in our own languages again. I'm fine with loan words entering and code-switching for convenience but also forgetting native words is sad.
+2
Level 65
Jan 17, 2022
You can divide them into 2 groups, south and north. These are 95% unintelligible, except for the occasional common Sanskrit word. South Indian languages have similar grammar between each other but otherwise are very different, so South Indians like me usually speak English as a second language. English is almost always used to communicate between people who know English and speak different languages. I speak Telugu so I don't know about the differences between North Indian languages, but I know a bit of Hindi and even less of Marathi, and I think a comparison could be English with Dutch and German. You sometimes find a familiar or the same noun or verb, but the grammar and sounds are pretty different and there are of course many false friends.

So unfortunately for us Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam speakers, we have to start almost from scratch when learning a new language.

+2
Level 74
May 12, 2021
According to Wikipedia Dari has 20.5 m native speakers. Shouldn't it be included?
+2
Level 74
May 12, 2021
If you are going to add Dari, I would recommend putting the circle in the centre of Hazarajat.
+2
Level 70
May 14, 2021
Dari is considered as a Persian dialect for the purpose of this quiz (although as a non-Persian speaker I cannot comment on the differences between Iranian Farsi and Dari).
+3
Level 64
May 21, 2021
I had never heard of the Deccan language till this quiz. Learn something new everyday..
+1
Level 70
May 24, 2021
It is very obscure, but the Deccani language is a variety of Hindustani (closely related to Hindi and Urdu).
+1
Level 60
Aug 10, 2021
Wow! A map of asia i always wanted!
+2
Level 60
Aug 10, 2021
Poor Maldives
+1
Level 18
Nov 3, 2021
Please add pashtu as a correct way to type pashto
+2
Level 23
Nov 9, 2021
lmao quiz is relatively easier if you´re indian
+1
Level 70
Jan 4, 2022
A little spelling leniency would be nice on some of the Indian languages.
+2
Level 55
Apr 10, 2022
Great quiz! How did you determine exactly where the language originated from? I am working on a map of every Wikipedia language and am unsure where I should place the dots. I haven't found any good sources detailing the exact cities/areas where the languages' origins came from
+1
Level 70
Apr 10, 2022
Thank you! That is a good question, I had to do less original research on this quiz as opposed to my European languages quiz, since another quiz by relessness had already done that for me. Research involves pretty much just scrolling through Wikipedia articles on each of the languages under the history section, although it is highly debatable when the 'modern version' of each language truly began.

For example, I have one source claiming the Nepali language originated in northwestern Nepal, but Wikipedia claims it was first institutionalised by the Gorkha Kingdom which is where the dot is placed on my map.

It is a little subjective, but I prefer this method to placing the dot over the largest city that speaks X language. The placements are not exact. Best of luck with your Wikipedia quiz and I hope I was able to help :D

+1
Level 55
Apr 14, 2022
I wrote Tajik and it gave me Persian..?? probably needs to be fixed
+4
Level 70
Apr 15, 2022
It's intentional. Tajik is considered a 'variant' of Persian along with Dari and Farsi.
+1
Level 57
May 19, 2022
How was that not obvious enough for you to know it was intentional
+1
Level 52
Jun 12, 2022
deccan is not language, i live in pune and i never heard of anything called deccan
+1
Level 70
Jun 12, 2022
It is a language closely related to Urdu and Hindi (although the name 'Deccan' is very anglicised)
+2
Level 87
Jan 30, 2023
Top quiz, thanks a lot
+1
Level 70
Jan 30, 2023
Thanks for playing :D
+2
Level 61
Jan 29, 2024
Shocked about the lack of Hmong. I could've sworn there were more!
+1
Level 70
Jan 30, 2024
Hmong has a strong representation in parts of the US, although it only has around 8 million speakers worldwide.