Introduction

The Sino-Tibetan languages form a hypothetical language family composed of, at least, the Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman languages, including some 400 languages of East Asia. They are second only to the Indo-European languages in terms of their number of speakers.

Sino-Tibetan's relationship with other families have been suggested, such as the "Sino-Caucasian" hypothesis by Sergei Starostin, which finds the Yeniseian languages and the Caucasian languages to form a clade with Sino-Tibetan languages. The Sino-Caucasian hypothesis has been expanded by other workers to the "Dené-Caucasian" hypothesis, which also includes Burushaski, Basque, and at least the Na-Dené languages of North America.

Sino-Tibetan languages map

This map shows the geographic distribution of Sino-Tibetan languages

Language Family Tree

Sino-Tibetan

Languages Sorted Alphabetically