The modern Khmer script differs somewhat from precedent forms seen on the inscriptions of the ruins of Angkor.

Eight or ten years ago, a couple of French hoods stole a priceless Khmer head from the Musee Guimet, in Paris, and a week later crawled into the Salpetriere with unmistakable symptoms of leprosy.

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 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.

Standard Cambodian Khmer is mutually intelligible with the others but a Khmer Krom speaker from Vietnam, for instance, may have great difficulty communicating with a Khmer native to Sisaket Province in Thailand.

The conquests of Cambodia by Naresuan the Great for Ayutthaya furthered the political and economic isolation from Cambodia proper leading to a dialect that developed relatively independently from the midpoint of the Middle Khmer period.

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.

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.

The language of this transition period, from about the 14th to 18th centuries, is referred to as Middle Khmer and saw borrowing from Thai, Lao and, to a lesser extent, Vietnamese.

The language became recognizable as Modern Khmer, spoken from the 19th century till today.

The golden age of Khmer civilization, however, was the period from the 9th to the 13th centuries, when Khmer Empire, which gave Kampuchea, or Cambodia, its name, ruled large territories from its capital in the region of Angkor in western Cambodia.

In neighboring Cambodia, at that time known as the Khmer Republic, the Khmer Rouge used siege tactics to cut off supplies from Phnom Penh to other government-held enclaves in an attempt to break the will of the government to continue fighting.

Unlike the neighboring Khmer and Burmese, the Thai continued to look outward across the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea toward foreign ports of trade.

The kingdom remained independent from the Chinese who controlled Vietnam's north and in its refusal to submit, Champa frequently waged wars against China as well as other neighboring kingdoms, Đại Việt and Khmer Empire.

Significant populations of Khmers reside in adjacent areas of Thailand ( Northern Khmer ) and the Mekong Delta region of neighboring Vietnam ( Khmer Krom ).

Under the Khmer, more than 900 temples were built in Cambodia and in neighboring Thailand.

Under the Khmer, more than 900 temples were built in Cambodia and in neighboring Thailand.

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.

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 ).

By the 1st century CE, the inhabitants had developed relatively stable, organized societies and spoke languages very much related to the Cambodian or Khmer of the present day.

Studies of the " Indo-Chinese " languages of Southeast Asia from the mid-19th century by Logan and others revealed that they comprised four families: Tibeto-Burman, Tai, Mon – Khmer and Malayo-Polynesian.

Albanian, Arabic, Assyrian ( VSO and VOS are also followed, depending on the person ), Berber, Bulgarian, Chinese, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Italian, Ganda, Greek, Hausa, Hebrew, Javanese, Kashmiri, Khmer, Latvian, Macedonian, Polish, Portuguese, Quiche, Rotuman, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swahili, Thai, Vietnamese, Yoruba and Zulu are examples of languages that can follow an SVO pattern.

However, some languages in the region are not tonal at all, including Mongolian, Khmer, and Malay.

Other languages of this family, such as Mon, Khmer, and the Munda languages, are non-tonal.

* Khmer script, the script used to write the Khmer and Khmer Loeu languages

Other vernacular names include Nimm ( Punjabi ), Vembu ( Tamil ), Arya Veppu ( Malayalam ), Azad Dirakht ( Persian ), Nimba, Arishta, Picumarda ( Sanskrit, Oriya ), Limdo ( Gujarati language ) Kadu-Limba ( Marathi ), Dongoyaro ( in some Nigerian languages ), Margosa, Neem ( نيم ) ( Arabic ), Nimtree, Vepu ( వ ే ప ు), Vempu ( வ ே ம ் ப ு), Vepa ( వ ే ప ) ( Telugu ), Bevu ( ಕಹ ಿ ಬ ೇ ವ ು ( Kannada ), Kodu nimb ( Konkani ), ක ො හ ො ඹ ( Kohomba, Sinhala ), Tamar ( Burmese ), sầu đâu, xoan Ấn Độ ( Vietnamese ), ស ្ ដ ៅ ( Sdao, Khmer ), สะเดา ( Sadao, Thai ), אזדרכת ( Hebrew ), " Maliyirinin " ( Bambara language ) and Paraiso ( Spanish ).

Tai speakers in what is now Laos pushed out or absorbed earlier groups of Mon – Khmer and Austronesian languages.

The Mon – Khmer ( Austro-Asiatic ) languages are the original languages of Southeast Asia.

There is some debate as to whether the Khmuic languages are of the Mon – Khmer branch, but the majority opinion is that they are not.

Burmese, Thai, Khmer, Lao and Vietnamese are all major isolating languages spoken in mainland southeast Asia.

There are also a number of immigrant languages, such as Khmer, Portuguese, English, etc.

The 30 or so Degar tribes in the Central Highlands comprise more than six different ethnic groups who speak languages drawn primarily from the Malayo-Polynesian, Tai, and Mon – Khmer language families.

The area stretches from southern Thailand to northern China and is home to speakers of languages of the Sino-Tibetan, Hmong – Mien ( or Miao – Yao ), Tai-Kadai, Austronesian ( represented by Chamic ) and Mon – Khmer families.

A well-known example is the similar tone systems in Sinitic languages ( Sino-Tibetan ), Hmong – Mien, Tai languages ( Kadai ) and Vietnamese ( Mon – Khmer ).

Nāgas were also characters in other well-known legends and stories depicted in Khmer art, such as the churning of the Ocean of Milk, the legend of the Leper King as depicted in the bas-reliefs of the Bayon, and the story of Mucalinda, the serpent king who protected the Buddha from the elements.

In East and Southeast Asia, these are forms such as Korean, Khmer or Mongolian wrestling and Japanese Sumo, in South and Southwest Asia Indo-Persian Pehlwani, in Central and Western Asia Turkic ( Uzbek, Tatar ) styles ; in Europe, there are Icelandic, Swiss and various English wrestling traditions.

Communist regimes were established in Vietnam's neighbour states in 1975, such as in Laos and the creation of the Khmer Rouge regime of Democratic Kampuchea ( Cambodia ).

Indianized kingdoms such as the Mon, Khmer and Malay kingdoms had ruled the region.

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.

Empires such as Bagan, Ayutthaya, Champa, Khmer, Srivijaya and Majapahit are known as " mandala " in this sense.

In addition to the interpretation given above, a broader definition of bumiputra include groups such as the Indonesian Pribumis, Malaysian Siamese, Muslim Indian Malaysians, Straits Chinese or Peranakan, Khmer people and the Kristang people of Portuguese-Eurasian descent.

Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple mountain and the later galleried temple, based on early Dravidian Architecture, with key features such as the Jagati.

A statue of Lord Brahma ( background ) at a temple in VientianeHinduism was the primary influence over much of the Khmer Empire, and examples of Hindu themes can be found on their temples, such as Vat Phou from that era.

A related syllable structure found in some languages, such as the Mon – Khmer languages, is the sesquisyllable, consisting of a stressed syllable with approximately the above structure, preceded by a simpler, unstressed syllable consisting only of a consonant, a schwa (, and possibly a nasal consonant ( usually homorganic to the following consonant ).

This structure is present in many conservative Mon – Khmer languages such as Khmer ( Cambodian ), as well as in Burmese, and is reconstructed for the older stages of a number of Sino-Tibetan languages.

The earliest engraved record of the Khmer during the 6th century AD was found in the north east of Thailand such as in Surin where the Sanskrit inscription in the stone has also been found.

Locally developed scripts such as Grantha and Pallava script induced the development of many native scripts such as Khmer, Javanese and Thai.

People were encouraged to call each other " friend ", or " comrade " ( in Khmer, ម ិ ត ្ ដ mitt ), and to avoid traditional signs of deference such as bowing or folding the hands in salutation.

Different ministries, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Industry, were controlled and exploited by powerful Khmer Rouge families.

Aside from the Thai, ethnic minorities such as the Lao, Lawa, Hmong, Akha, Khmer, Lisu, Karen and Lahu peoples have retained traditional musical forms.

Seen in its most basic formulation, the classical Thai orchestras are very similar to the Cambodian ( Khmer ) pinpeat and mahori ensembles, and structurally similar to other orchestras found within the widespread Southeast Asian gong-chime musical culture, such as the large gamelan of Bali and Java, which most likely have their common roots in the diffusion of Vietnamese Dong-Son bronze drums beginning in the first century ACE.

The climate of opinion in Cambodia at the time was such that if he did not achieve full independence quickly, the people were likely to turn to Son Ngoc Thanh and the Khmer Issarak, who were fully committed to attaining that goal.

General Sutsakhan stated: " the seeds of democratization, which had been thrown into the wind with such goodwill by the Khmer leaders, returned for the Khmer Republic nothing but a poor harvest.