The native speakers of Hindi so defined account for 39% of Indians. Bengali is the second most spoken language of South Asia, found in both Bangladesh and Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura. The International Mother Language Day was created by UNESCO to commemorate the Bengali language.

Languages of South Asia at SOAS

• Bengali.
• Hindi.
• Nepali.
• Pali.
• Panjabi.
• Prakrit.
• Sanskrit.
• Sinhala.

Fig. 5-7: Indo-European is the largest of four main language families in South Asia. The country of India has 18 official languages. Indo-Iranian languages spoken in Iran and neighboring countries form a separate group from Indic.

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It has been said that Japanese is the winner, the French of the East, but I propose some competition. IMO, Mandarin is too shrill. Cantonese is too guttural, coarse, and stiff, like German.

Most Common Languages Spoken in Asian Countries

1. Mandarin. The official language of China, Taiwan and Singapore, Mandarin is spoken by nearly 1.1 billion people.
2. Arabic. Many tour packages Asia use Arabic as the commonly spoken language.
3. Malay.
4. Persian.
5. Bangla.
6. Hindi.

West Siberian Plain

A plateau is an elevated flat land. It is considerably higher than the surrounding area. It is a flat-topped table land, standing above the surrounding area.

Plateau is known as the tableland in geological terms as it resembles a table as in having an elevated and flat plain land. Plateaus have different names called ‘mesas’ and ‘buttes’.

Mesa is a Spanish word that means table. This gorgeous mesa towers above the surrounding vegetation of the Guiana Highlands of South America.

: a broad level elevated area : plateau.