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 Va language belongs to the Mon – Khmer group of the Austroasiatic family.

The Tai assimilated or pushed out indigenonus Austroasiatic Mon – Khmer peoples, and settled on the fringes of the Indianised kingdoms of the Mon and Khmer Empire.

The Funanese may have been Cham or from another Austronesian group, or they may have been Khmer or from another Austroasiatic group.

Six indigenous Nicobarese languages are spoken on the islands, which are part of the Mon – Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family, which includes Mon, Khmer and Vietnamese languages of Southeast Asia, and the Munda languages of India.

Systems of numeral classification in the Mon – Khmer, Nicobarese and Aslian subfamilies of Austroasiatic.

The reason they migrated into Southeast Asia is generally debated, but scholars believe that Mon – Khmer were pushed down by invading Sino-Tibetans from the north as evident by Austroasiatic vocabulary in Chinese or because of agricultural purposes as evident by their migration routes along major rivers.

He notes that Austroasiatic / Mon – Khmer languages are lexically more similar to Katuic and Bahnaric the closer they are geographically, independently of which branch of the family they belong to, but that Katuic and Bahnaric do not have any shared innovations that would suggest that together they form a branch of the Austroasiatic family.

Halang, also known as Salang, is a Bahnaric language of the Mon – Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family.

The Tais from the north gradually settled in the Chao Phraya valley from the tenth century onwards, in lands of the Dvaravati culture, assimilating the earlier Austroasiatic Mon and Khmer people, as well as coming into contact with the Khmer Empire.

Paul Sidwell notes that Austroasiatic / Mon – Khmer languages are lexically more similar to Bahnaric and Katuic the closer they are geographically, independently of which branch of the family they belong to, but that Bahnaric and Katuic do not have any shared innovations that would suggest that together they form a branch of the Austroasiatic family.

The Pearic languages are a group of endangered languages of the Eastern Mon – Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family, spoken by Pear people ( the Por, the Samré, the Samray, the Suoy, and the Chong ) living in western Cambodia and southeastern Thailand.

# REDIRECT Khmer language

Khmer (, ; or more formally,, ), or Cambodian, is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia.

It is also the earliest recorded and earliest written language of the Mon – Khmer family, predating Mon and by a significant margin Vietnamese.

The Khmer language has influenced, and also been influenced by, Thai, Lao, Vietnamese and Cham, all of which, due to geographical proximity and long-term cultural contact, form a sprachbund in peninsular Southeast Asia.

Khmer is primarily an isolating language.

The Khmer language is written with an abugida known in Khmer as អក ្ សរខ ្ ម ែ រ ().

Khmer differs from neighboring languages such as Thai, Lao and Vietnamese in that it is not a tonal language.

Khmer is a member of the Austro-Asiatic language family, the most archaic family in an area that stretches from the Malay Peninsula through Southeast Asia to East India.

More recent classifications doubt the validity of the Mon-Khmer sub-grouping and place the Khmer language as its own branch of Austro-Asiatic equidistant from the other 12 branches of the family.

Khmer is spoken by approximately 12. 6 million people in Cambodia where it is the official language.

Standard Khmer, or Central Khmer, the language as taught in schools and used by the media is based on the Battambang dialect spoken throughout the plains of the northwest and central provinces.

Some linguists classify Northern Khmer as a separate, but closely related language rather than a dialect.

Linguistic study of the Khmer language divides its history into four periods one of which, the Old Khmer period, is subdivided into pre-Angkorian and Angkorian.

Pre-Angkorian Khmer, the language after its divergence from Proto-Mon – Khmer until the ninth century, is only known from words and phrases in Sanskrit texts of the era.

Old Khmer ( or Angkorian Khmer ) is the language as it was spoken in the Khmer Empire from the 9th century until the weakening of the empire sometime in the 13th century.

Much work has been done on the reconstruction of Proto-Mon – Khmer in Harry L. Shorto's Mon – Khmer Comparative Dictionary.

Little work has been done on the Munda languages, which are not well documented ; with their demotion from a primary branch, Proto-Mon – Khmer becomes synonymous with Proto-Austro-Asiatic.

Khmer has been considerably influenced by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious registers, through the vehicles of Hinduism and Buddhism.

Additionally, syllable-final, which has become silent in other dialects of Khmer, is still pronounced in Northern Khmer.

Western Khmer, also called Cardamom Khmer or Chanthaburi Khmer, spoken by a very small, isolated population in the Cardamom mountain range extending from western Cambodia into eastern Central Thailand, although little studied, is unique in that it maintains a definite system of vocal register that has all but disappeared in other dialects of modern Khmer.

Old Khmer is attested by many primary sources and has been studied in depth by a few scholars, most notably Saveros Pou, Phillip Jenner and Heinz-Jürgen Pinnow.

This measure taken by the short-lived governmental authority would be popular and long-lasting, for since then no government in Cambodia has tried to romanize the Khmer language again.

The relationship between the massive carpet bombing of Cambodia by the United States and the growth of the Khmer Rouge, in terms of recruitment and popular support, has been a matter of interest to historians.

The Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia, launched at the request of the Khmer Rouge, has also been cited as a major factor in their eventual victory, including by Shawcross.

Modern research has located 20, 000 mass graves from the Khmer Rouge era all over Cambodia.

Jacques Vergès ( born 5 March 1925 ) is a French-Vietnamese lawyer who has earned fame continually since the 1950s, first as an anticolonialist communist figure and then for defending a long string of well-known clients from anticolonialist Algerian militant Djamila Bouhired ( his future wife ) in 1957-1962 to former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan ( 2008 ).

Much like the Burmese adopted the Mon script ( which also has Indic origins ), the Thais adopted and modified the Khmer script to create their own writing system.

Internationally, it has influenced many communists around the world, including third world revolutionary movements such as Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, Peru's Shining Path and the revolutionary movement in Nepal.

Some ethnomusicologists believe that Laos is a country where the ancient art music of the Khmer people has been best preserved -- as well as diverse forms of folk music related to the oldest types of Indian music, music that has largely disappeared in India itself.

The province is rich in Khmer culture and has a long history.

Despite absence of compelling evidence as to the ethnicity of the Funanese, modern scholar Michael Vickery has stated that " on present evidence it is impossible to assert that Funan as an area and its dominant groups were anything but Khmer ".

Breathy voicing has since been lost in standard Khmer, although the vowel changes triggered by it still remain.