Online Language Lessons & Language Training

The Sino-Tibetan languages form a language family composed of, at least, the Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman languages, including some 250 languages of East Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia. They are second only to the Indo-European languages in terms of the number of native speakers.

The Sino-Tibetan language family has been defined as also including the Tai and Hmong-Mien languages. In the past, Vietnamese and other Mon-Khmer languages were classified under the Sino-Tibetan tree, however, their similarities to Chinese are currently credited to language contact.

In the Western scholarly community, the other tonal language families of East Asia, Kradai and Hmong-Mien (Miao-Yao), are no longer classified under the Sino-Tibetan tree. However, in the Chinese scholarly community, Kradai and Hmong-Mien are still commonly included in the Sino-Tibetan family.