ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses 166 endangered and various recently and not so recently extinct
languages of East Asia including China, Mongolia, Japan and Korea, as well as
mainland Southeast Asia including Burma, Cambodia, Laos, West or peninsular
Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, in the context of the surrounding non-endangered
languages. As the original indigenous languages of Taiwan are Austronesian, and
hence more closely related to the languages of insular Southeast Asia and the Pacific,
they are included in the Australasia and the Pacific chapter. Similarly, some of the
Tungusic minority languages of northeastern China are more widespread in eastern Russia, and hence are discussed mainly in that chapter. Conversely, there are a few
endangered Tai language outliers in northeastern India, all closely related to the Tai
languages of East and Southeast Asia, and these are discussed here.
