Page "Austro-Asiatic languages" Paragraph 0

The Austro-Asiatic ( Austroasiatic ) languages, in recent classifications synonymous with Mon – Khmer, are a large language family of Southeast Asia, also scattered throughout India and Bangladesh.

The name Austro-Asiatic comes from the Latin words for " south " and " Asia ", hence " South Asia ".

Among these languages, only Khmer, Vietnamese, and Mon have a long-established recorded history, and only Vietnamese and Khmer have official status ( in Vietnam and Cambodia, respectively ).

The rest of the languages are spoken by minority groups.

Ethnologue identifies 168 Austro-Asiatic languages.

These form thirteen established families ( plus perhaps Shompen, which is poorly attested, as a fourteenth ), which have traditionally been grouped into two, as Mon – Khmer and Munda.

However, recent classifications have abandoned Mon – Khmer as a taxon, either reducing it in scope or making it synonymous with the larger family ( Diffloth 2005, Sidwell 2009 ).