What language do Buddhist people speak?

Answer 1

The original Buddhist teachings and the original writings were in the languages of the region of India that Siddhartha Gautama was from, near Nepal. They are in Sanskrit and Pali, and those languages are important to studying the original text. However, they have been translated several times. Buddhism has spread around the world and Buddhists speak their own languages. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Viet Namese, Burmese, Thai, English, the languages of India, French, German etc.

Answer 2

The original name of Buddhist is pali. But today, only sangha or the monk who preached Buddhism usually study the scripts of pali also known as Sanskrit.
There is no set language for Buddhism. Buddhists come from all nations and cultures and speak, read and write in the national languages of those locations.
Buddhists can speak any language; a dialect of Chinese, English, Portuguese, Czech, Tagalog, Klingon, or whatever else. Same goes for Christians, Muslims, Wiccans, and the followers of all different religions of the world; they're religions, not countries; language and spirituality are regarded as being two different things. You aren't born speaking Hebrew just because you're born a Christian, and you don't automatically learn Hebrew if you convert to Christianity. So same applies to Buddhism. Even though Gautama Buddha was born and lived in northern India, a Buddhist's mother tongue is determined by his or her country, parents, and/or interests...not necessarily the Buddhist religion.
Buddhism is not a language group any more than Christian is language group. Buddhists speak the language of the country in which they live (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Burmese, Thai, English, the languages of India, French, German etc.)

The Buddhist scriptures are typically seen in two languages - Pali and Sanskrit

The Buddha himself probably spoke a language that no longer exists called "Magadhi"
They don't have a 'main' language they speak many different ones.

Buddhists live in almost every country in the world, and they speak the language of their countries. China, Korea, Japan, Laos, Thailand and India have large Buddhist populations, and they speak more than 1000 languages, including:

• Mandarin
• Cantonese
• Japanese
• Korean
• Thai
• Lao
• Hindi
• Marathi
• Gujarati
• Bengali
• Punjabi
• Arabic
• English

Buddhists speak many languages. That question is similar to asking what languages do American's speak. Your going to get a large and broad list. Research into the languages of South East Asia will help, but even so there are so many tribes w/ languages that are extremely rare and unknown to the overwhelming majority of people outside of the third world. I'm afraid that your not going to get the whole list without a serious amount of time given to research. Norman Chomsky may have some writings on similar topics.

Answer 3

Although many of the original Buddhist tracts are written in Pali and Sanskrit, Buddhism does not have a language any more than Christianity has a language. Buddhists speak the language of the country that they live in.

Answer 4

Buddhism is not a language it is a way of life. There is no Buddhist language. Practicing Buddhists speak the language of the country they live in.

Answer:

Buddhists are not restricted by a language. You may use any language to understand Buddhism. Though Tibetian, Sanskrit and English are preferable because most of the Buddhist books are written in these languages.

Answer 5

The Buddhist Canon is in a litturgical language called Pali. Pali must have been an admixture of the Prakrits(the spoken forms of Sanskrit(unfettered by the Rules of Grammar) somewhat like Esperanto(only that it might not have been as scientific as the Artificial linguistic construct that Esperanto is full of. The Buddha did not intend to record his teachings in his time. The Pali Canon is a collection of his utterances by the later Buddhist Scholars while constituting the Sangha. Unlike Hinduism Buddhism has an originator, a set of books, and a code of ethics, all written down post-Buddha's Nirvana

Answer 6

The Followers of Buddhism speak many languages, and the philosophy has not single language that unifies its followers. The oldest written works of Buddhist philosophy were written in languages of the Indian subcontinent, because that is where the philosophy originated.

Answer 7

There is no official Buddhist language, so Buddhists speak their native language.

Answer 8

Buddhists speak many different languages. The oldest Buddhist liturgical language is Pali, but there are many others, such as Sanskrit, Chinese, etc.

Answer 9

Just as there is no "Christian" language, there is no "Buddhist" language. Buddhists speak the language of the location they live in.