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Sino-Tibetan languages
Sino-Tibetan languages family of languages spoken by over a billion people in central and SE Asia. This linguistic family is second only to the Indo-European stock in the number of its speakers. It is usually said to have three subfamilies: Tibeto-Burman, Chinese , and Tai, or Thai. One school of ...
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Tibetan language
Tibetan language member of the Tibeto-Burman subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages (see Sino-Tibetan languages ). It is spoken by 5 million people in the Tibet autonomous region and the Qinghai and Gansu provinces of China and in Bhutan, Nepal, the Indian state of Sikkim, and part of K...
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Thai language
Thai language , formerly Siamese, member of the Tai or Thai subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages (see Sino-Tibetan languages ). The official language of Thailand, Thai is spoken by approximately 50 million people in Thailand, Vietnam, and the Yunnan province of China. It has several di...
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Native American languages
Native American languages languages of the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere and their descendants. A number of the Native American languages that were spoken at the time of the European arrival in the New World in the late 15th cent. have become extinct, but many of them are still in use to...
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Burmese
Burmese language belonging to the Tibeto-Burman subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages (see Sino-Tibetan languages ). It is spoken by about 30 million people in Myanmar, where it is both the principal and the official language. Burmese can be described as monosyllabic because root words...
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Chinese
Chinese subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages (see Sino-Tibetan languages ), which is also sometimes grouped with the Tai, or Thai, languages in a Sinitic subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan language stock. Chinese comprises a number of variants; those that are mutually unintelligible are co...
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Karens
Karens , members of a Thai-Chinese cultural group, one of the most important minorities in Myanmar, living in the Kayah State , Kayin State, Tanintharyi , and the Ayeyarwady delta. They form 7% of Myanmar's population. The Karen hill tribes have tended to remain animistic, but among those settled ...
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Buddhist literature
Buddhist literature During his lifetime the Buddha taught not in Vedic Sanskrit, which had become unintelligible to the people, but in his own NE Indian dialect; he also encouraged his monks to propagate his teachings in the vernacular. After his death, the Buddhist canon was formulated and transmi...
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Sikkim
Sikkim , state (2001 provisional pop. 540,493), 2,745 sq mi (7,110 sq km), India. It is located in the E Himalayas and bordered by Nepal (W), by the Tibet region of China (N), by Bhutan (E), and by the Indian state of West Bengal (S). The capital and only town is Gangtok. Most of Sikkim is mountaino...
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Tibet
Tibet , Tibetan Bodyul, Mandarin Xizang, autonomous region (1994 est. pop. 2,300,000), c.471,700 sq mi (1,221,700 sq km), SW China. A Chinese autonomous region since 1951, Tibet is bordered on the south by Myanmar, India, Bhutan, and Nepal, on the west by India (including the disputed Kashmir), ...
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