The Chinese script was also adapted to write Vietnamese (as Chữ Nôm), Korean (as Hanja) and Japanese (as Kanji), though in the first two the use of Chinese characters is now restricted to university learning, linguistic or historical study, artistic or decorative works and (in Korean's case) newspapers, rather than daily usage.
These languages were originally spoken in southern China, where the greatest diversity within the family is still found, and possibly as far north as the Yangtze valley.
As Chinese civilization expanded southward from the North China Plain, many Tai–Kadai speakers became sinicized, while others were displaced to Southeast Asia.
Many Hmong–Mien speakers were displaced into Southeast Asia during the Qing Dynasty in the 18th and 19th centuries, triggered by the suppression of a series of revolts in Guizhou.
[3] The Austronesian languages are believed to have spread from Taiwan to the islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, as well as some areas of mainland southeast Asia.
The Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area stretches from Thailand to China and is home to speakers of languages of the Sino-Tibetan, Hmong–Mien (or Miao–Yao), Tai-Kadai, Austronesian (represented by Chamic) and Austroasiatic families.
[8] Characteristic of many MSEA languages is a particular syllable structure involving monosyllabic morphemes, lexical tone, a fairly large inventory of consonants, including phonemic aspiration, limited clusters at the beginning of a syllable, plentiful vowel contrasts and relatively few final consonants.
Their languages absorbed large numbers of Chinese words, known collectively as Sino-Xenic vocabulary, i.e. Sino-Japanese, Sino-Korean and Sino-Vietnamese.
In a similar way to the use of Latin and ancient Greek roots in English, the morphemes of Classical Chinese have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts.
They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin was hidden by their written form.
This way of marking previously mentioned vs. newly introduced information is an alternative to articles, which are not found in East Asian languages.
Okinawan Ryukyuan example: Note that in Okinawan, the topic marker is indicated by lengthening the short vowels and adding -oo to words ending in -N/-n. For words ending in long vowels, the topic is introduced only by や. Vietnamese example: Linguistic systems of politeness, including frequent use of honorific titles, with varying levels of politeness or respect, are well-developed in Japanese and Korean.
In many of the region's languages, including Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Malay/Indonesian, new personal pronouns or forms of reference or address can and often do evolve from nouns as fresh ways of expressing respect or social status.