History: Central Asia, 140 Years Ago

The Turkic languages may belong to a larger, but controversial, Altaic language family, which includes Mongolian. Mongolian is spoken throughout Mongolia and into Buryatia, Kalmyk, Tuva, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang.
Iranian languages were once spoken throughout Central Asia, such as the once prominent Sogdian, Khwarezmian, Bactrian and Scythian languages are now extinct. The Eastern Iranian language of Pashto is still spoken in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, and other minor East Iranian languages, such as Shughni, Munji, Ishkashimi, Sarikoli, Wakhi, Yaghnobi and Ossetian, are also spoken in various places in Central Asia. Varieties of Persian are also spoken as a major language in the region. Locally known as Darī (in Afghanistan), Tojikī (by Tajiks in Tajikistan), and Bukhori (by the Bukharan Jews all over Central Asia).
Other languages and language groups include the Tibetan language, spoken by around six million people across the Tibetan Plateau and into Qinghai, Sichuan and Ladakh. Dardic languages, such as Shina, Kashmiri and Khowar, are predominant in the northern areas of Pakistan, as well as in Ladakh of India and KP of Pakistan.
As a note, Tocharian, an Indo-European language, was once spoken in Xinjiang and parts of Afghanistan, but is now extinct.