# REDIRECT Austro-Asiatic languages

Ethnologue identifies 168 Austro-Asiatic languages.

Austro-Asiatic languages have a disjunct distribution across India, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia, separated by regions where other languages are spoken.

The Austro-Asiatic languages are well known for having a " sesquisyllabic " pattern, with basic nouns and verbs consisting of a reduced minor syllable plus a full syllable.

Despite the amount of research, there is still doubt about the internal relationship of the languages of Austro-Asiatic.

India has more than two thousand ethnic groups, and every major religion is represented, as are four major families of languages ( Indo-European, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman languages ) as well as two language isolates ( the Nihali language spoken in parts of Maharashtra and the Burushaski language spoken in parts of Jammu and Kashmir ).

The original settlers spoke non-Aryan languages — they may have spoken Austric or Austro-Asiatic languages like the languages of the present-day Kola, Bhil, Santal, Shabara and Pulinda peoples.

In India's northeast, people speaking Sino-Tibetan group of languages such as Manipuri ( Meitei-lon ) recognized by the Indian constitution and Austro-Asiatic languages are commonly found.

They are used by languages of several language families: Indo-European, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Mongolic ( Soyombo alphabet ), Austro-Asiatic, Austronesian, Tai.

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

The Khmuic languages are Austro-Asiatic.

Numerous minority languages are spoken by roughly half the population, and include languages of the Austro-Asiatic, Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian and Hmong – Mien language families.

# REDIRECT Austro-Asiatic languages

Together with the Munda languages of India, they are one of the two traditional primary branches of the Austro-Asiatic family.

( See Austro-Asiatic languages for details.

" There are no written examples of Austro-Asiatic languages being spoken further west than Central India during the recent historical era ( i. e., in the era for which we have written records ).

Austro-Asiatic languages

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.

A 2006 CFSL research article which assessed " 3522 individuals belonging to 54 ( 23 belonging to the Austro-Asiatic, 18 to Dravidian, 7 to Tibeto-Burman and 24 to Indo-European linguistic groups ) endogamous Indian populations, representing all major ethnic, linguistic and geographic groups " for genetic variations to support such classifications found no conclusive evidence.

Some cultures associate divinity with whales, such as among Ghanaians and Vietnamese, who occasionally hold funerals for beached whales, a throwback to Vietnam's ancient sea-based Austro-Asiatic culture.

In Assam, Rongali Bihu draws from many different traditions — Austro-Asiatic, Sino-Burmese and Indo-Aryan — and is celebrated with great fervor.

In the essay " Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan " ( with RV in this context referring to Rigvedic, i. e. Indo-Aryan ), Witzel says " As we can no longer reckon with Dravidian influence on the early RV, this means that the language of the pre-Rigvedic Indus civilization, at least in the Panjab, was of ( Para -) Austro-Asiatic nature.

The homeland of the Austro-Asiatic languages ( e. g. Vietnamese, Cambodian ) which are found from Southeast Asia to India is hypothesized to be located " the hills of southern Yunnan in China ," between 4000 BCE and 2000 BCE, with influences from Aryan and Dravidian languages at the Western edge of its expanse in India, and influence from Chinese at the Eastern edge of the regions where it is found.

Ostapirat, by contrast, sees connections with the Austro-Asiatic languages ( in Austric ), as has Benedict.

The forerunners of the modern Tai peoples of Thailand and Laos displaced the indigenous Austro-Asiatic and Negrito inhabitants and established their own kingdoms, with the Lao concentrated along the Mekong River Valley and the predecessors to the Siamese states settling along the Chao Phraya River Valley.

Despite the tenuous lexical evidence, the relationship of Austronesian with either Austro-Asiatic or Tai – Kadai has many proponents to this day, mostly on morphological grounds.

( 2003 ) indicates that: "( 1 ) there is an underlying unity of female lineages in India, indicating that the initial number of female settlers may have been small ; ( 2 ) the tribal and the caste populations are highly differentiated ; ( 3 ) the Austro-Asiatic tribals are the earliest settlers in India, providing support to one anthropological hypothesis while refuting some others ; ( 4 ) a major wave of humans entered India through the northeast ; ( 5 ) the Tibeto-Burman tribals share considerable genetic commonalities with the Austro-Asiatic tribals, supporting the hypothesis that they may have shared a common habitat in southern China, but the two groups of tribals can be differentiated on the basis of Y-chromosomal haplotypes ; ( 6 ) the Dravidian tribals were possibly widespread throughout India before the arrival of the Indo-European-speaking nomads, but retreated to southern India to avoid dominance ; ( 7 ) formation of populations by fission that resulted in founder and drift effects have left their imprints on the genetic structures of contemporary populations ; ( 8 ) the upper castes show closer genetic affinities with Central Asian populations, although those of southern India are more distant than those of northern India ; ( 9 ) historical gene flow into India has contributed to a considerable obliteration of genetic histories of contemporary populations so that there is at present no clear congruence of genetic and geographical or sociocultural affinities.

Languages spoken here include Asuri, an Austro-Asiatic language spoken by approximately 17 000 in India, largely in the southern part of Palamu ; and Bhojpuri, a tongue in the Bihari language group with almost 40 000 000 speakers, written in both the Devanagari and Kaithi scripts.

Shafer ( 1965 ) presented evidence suggesting a distant connection with the Austro-Asiatic languages, which include many of the indigenous languages of Southeast Asia.

Languages spoken include Agariya, an Austro-Asiatic tongue with approximately 72 000 speakers ; Bagheli, a language lexically similar to Hindi and is spoken by about 7 800 000 people in Bagelkhand ; and Bharia, a Dravidian language spoken by at least 200 000 members of the Bharia tribe and written in the Devanagari script.

Languages spoken here include Asuri, an Austro-Asiatic language spoken by approximately 17 000, partly in the north of Ranchi ; Bhojpuri, a tongue in the Bihari language group with almost 40 000 000 speakers, written in both the Devanagari and Kaithi scripts ; and Bijori, a Munda language distantly related to Khmer and Vietnamese, spoken by about 25 000.

Languages spoken include Agariya, an Austro-Asiatic tongue with approximately 72 000 speakers.

Most of the Palaungic languages lost the contrastive voicing of the ancestral Austro-Asiatic consonants, with the distinction often shifting to the following vowel.

Austro-Asiatic, which also includes Mon, Vietnamese and Munda, has been studied since 1856 and was first proposed as a language family in 1907.

The Mon language is part of the Monic group of the Mon – Khmer branch of the Austro-Asiatic family, closely related to the Nyah Kur language and more distantly related to Khmer.

* Funan was a pre-Angkor Cambodian kingdom, located around the Mekong delta, probably established by Mon – Khmer settlers speaking an Austro-Asiatic language.

Funan was a pre-Angkor Cambodian kingdom, located around the Mekong delta, probably established by Mon – Khmer settlers speaking an Austro-Asiatic language.

In the north, there are mountain tribes of Miao – Yao, Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman-Hmong, Yao, Akha, and Lahu who migrated into the region in the 19th century.

The most frequent haplogroup among the Tai – Kadai speaking peoples is haplogroup O2a, which means there was widespread assimilation of Austro-Asiatic peoples.

In contrast, four of the other main language families of East Asia and Southeast Asia outside the Sino-Tibetan language family, Austro-Asiatic, Austronesian, Hmong – Mien and Tai – Kadai, are generally believed to have at origins at some stage of their development in Southern China.

The disjoint distribution of Austro-Asiatic languages suggest that they were once spoken in most of the areas where the Tai – Kadai languages are now dominant.

Other researchers are still searching for the missing lexical link between Austronesian and Austro-Asiatic or Tai – Kadai.

The nearly thirty Palaungic or Palaung – Wa languages form a branch of the Austro-Asiatic languages.