East

East (from Latin, orĭens, participle of orīri: "to appear", "to be born") is the name given to since ancient times to the direction where the sun (and the other stars) is seen to appear, that is, the plane that contains the east. By extension, it refers to those regions that are to the east of the reference point. In Western culture, this name was given to Asia. Conventionally, three parts are distinguished: the Near East, the Middle East and the Far East.

The notion of the Orient

In the days of Ancient Greece, the world was conceived as divided into two great continental masses: Europe and Asia, both separated by the Aegean Sea. However, this separation devised by the Greek sailors would prove childish when they themselves discovered that both continents were linked to the north of the Black Sea, through the plains that they called Scythia, and which currently correspond to the south of Russia..

In any case, the notion caught on as a reflection of the messianic mood of Western culture, broadly defined (that is, as the cultural tradition that emerged in Egypt and Sumer, developed in Ancient Greece, Rome, and completed in Western Christian Europe, thus creating the myth of the Immutable Orient, which historically persisted well into the 19th century.

Nowadays it can be admitted that the notion of the Orient has a merely symbolic character, since what we generically call the Orient is not really the most oriental point in the world. We must not lose sight of the fact that there are several well-differentiated cultural traditions in the territory located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Japanese archipelago. Among them are those of Mesopotamia, the Hebrew people, the Islamic world, India, China, the Korean People, the Indonesian peoples, the Khmer, Japan, the Mongols, etc.

Predominant languages

The languages that predominate in the East come from different language families, including the Indo-European, Afroasiatic, and Altaic languages. However, Arabic in its numerous variants, Persian or Farsi, and Turkish are the most widely spoken in the region.

Other languages spoken in the East include Kurdish, Azerbaijani, Georgian, Hebrew, Armenian, Syfriac (formed from Aramaic), Berbeal languages, Caucasian, Turquoise languages, Greek, Hindi, and Urdu. Other non-native languages of the East also widely used are English, French, Ladino or Judeo-Spanish.