Sino-Tibetan family

Sino-Tibetan languages form a hypothetical language family of about 250 languages of East Asia, in number of speakers worldwide second only to Indo-European. These languages tend to be tonal.

• Chinese languages: many of which are 'monosyllabic', analytic languages
• Tibeto-Burman languages:
  • Tibetan languages: some of which are agglutinative languages
  • Burmese language

Some linguists believe the Tai-Kadai languages probably deserve a place within an expanded version of this family, though others favor the Austronesian family to include them.