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.

# 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.

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.

It was composed of Khmer Communists who had remained in Vietnam after 1975 and officials from the eastern sector — like Heng Samrin and Hun Sen — who had fled to Vietnam from Cambodia in 1978.

The history of the communist movement in Cambodia can be divided into six phases: the emergence of the Indochinese Communist Party ( ICP ), whose members were almost exclusively Vietnamese, before World War II ; the 10-year struggle for independence from the French, when a separate Cambodian communist party, the Kampuchean ( or Khmer ) People's Revolutionary Party ( KPRP ), was established under Vietnamese auspices ; the period following the Second Party Congress of the KPRP in 1960, when Saloth Sar ( Pol Pot after 1976 ) and other future Khmer Rouge leaders gained control of its apparatus ; the revolutionary struggle from the initiation of the Khmer Rouge insurgency in 1967 – 68 to the fall of the Lon Nol government in April 1975 ; the Democratic Kampuchea regime, from April 1975 to January 1979 ; and the period following the Third Party Congress of the KPRP in January 1979, when Hanoi effectively assumed control over Cambodia's government and communist party.

In 1979, after the Cambodian – Vietnamese War, Pol Pot fled to the jungles of southwest Cambodia, and the Khmer Rouge government collapsed.

* Khmer Viet Minh Cambodian communists who lived in exile in North Vietnam after the 1954 Geneva Conference.

Many scholars believe that the Thai script is derived from the Khmer script, which is modeled after the Brahmic script from the Indic family.

Khmer Viet Minh were the 3, 000 to 5, 000 Cambodian communist cadres, left-wing members of the Khmer Issarak movement regrouped in the United Issarak Front after 1950, most of whom lived in exile in North Vietnam after the 1954 Geneva Conference.

His father Lon Hin, was the son of a Khmer Krom from Tay Ninh Province who later served as a district chief in Siem Reap and Kampong Thom, after making a name for himself ' pacifying ' bandit groups in Prey Veng.

The first priority of the Khmer Rouge after conquering Cambodia and overthrowing the Khmer Republic was to execute all its leaders and high officials without delay, a fate that Lon Nol escaped.

Lê Đức Thọ's mission was to ensure that Khmer nationalism would not override Vietnam's interests in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge was overthrown.

Mass graves containing 8, 895 bodies were discovered at Choeung Ek after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime.

The Angkorian period may be said to have begun shortly after 800 AD, when the Khmer King Jayavarman II announced the independence of Kambujadesa ( Cambodia ) from Java and established his capital of Hariharalaya ( now known as Roluos ) at the northern end of Tonlé Sap.

The Khmer Rouge began employing death squads to purge Cambodia of non-communists after taking over the country in 1975.

For example, during the Cambodian Khmer Rouge regime, images of dictator Pol Pot ( Saloth Sar ) were rarely seen in public, and his identity was under dispute abroad until after his fall from power.

The names of the Americans killed, as well as those of three Marines who were left behind on the island of Koh Tang after the battle and who were subsequently executed by the Khmer Rouge, are the last names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

place in Cambodia, a country in desperate need after essentially all of its educated class were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s.

As relations between Cambodia and Vietnam deteriorated, and after visiting refugee camps in 1978, he realised the true situation and condemned the Khmer Rouge.

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.

1218 ), Khmer reached its zenith of political power and cultural creativity.

The Khmer Republic's leadership was plagued by disunity among its three principal figures: Lon Nol, Sihanouk's cousin Sirik Matak, and National Assembly leader In Tam.

* Preah Ko Style ( 877-886 AD ): Hariharalaya was the first capital city of the Khmer empire located in the area of Angkor ; its ruins are in the area now called Roluos some fifteen kilometers southeast of the modern city of Siem Reap.

The Khmer Rouge is remembered mainly for the deaths of an estimated 1. 5 million people or 1 / 5 of the country's total population ( estimates range from 850, 000 to 2. 5 million ) under its regime, through execution, torture, starvation and forced labour.

Laos shares its short — only 541 kilometers — southern border with Cambodia, and ancient Khmer ruins at Wat Pho and other southern locations attest to the long history of contact between the Lao and the Khmer.

* 1971 – In Cambodia, Khmer Rouge forces attack the city of Phnom Penh and its airport, killing 44, wounding at least 30 and damaging nine aircraft.

* October 23 – In Paris, the Vietnam-backed government of the state of Cambodia signs an agreement with the Khmer Rouge to end the civil war and bring the Khmer Rouge into government in spite of its role in the Cambodian genocide.

* November 10 – In Cambodia, Khmer Rouge forces attack Phnom Penh and its airport, killing 44, wounding at least 30 and damaging 9 airplanes.

The Khmer Republic ( 1970 – 1975 ) was founded in order to do away with Cambodia's widespread corruption and to restore Cambodia's sovereignty in its eastern regions, occupied by Vietnamese communist insurgents as a result of Sihanouk's " neutrality " policies.