Austroasiatic

The Austroasiatic languages ( OSS-troh-ay-zhee-AT-ik, AWSS-) are a large language family spoken throughout Mainland Southeast Asia, South Asia, and East Asia. These languages are natively spoken by the majority of the population in Vietnam and Cambodia, and by minority populations scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China. Approximately 117 million people speak an Austroasiatic language, of which more than two-thirds are Vietnamese speakers. Among the Austroasiatic languages, only Vietnamese, Khmer, and Mon have lengthy, established presences in the written, historical record. Only two are presently considered to be the national languages of sovereign states: Vietnamese in Vietnam, and Khmer in Cambodia. The Mon language is a recognized indigenous language in Myanmar and Thailand, while the Wa language is a "recognized national language" in the de facto autonomous Wa State within Myanmar. Santali is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. The remainder of the family's languages are spoken by minority groups and have no official status.

Ethnologue identifies 168 Austroasiatic languages. These form thirteen established families (plus perhaps Shompen, which is poorly attested, as a fourteenth) that have traditionally been grouped into two, as Mon–Khmer, and Munda. However, one recent classification posits three groups (Munda, Mon–Khmer, and Khasi–Khmuic), while another has abandoned Mon–Khmer as a taxon altogether, making it synonymous with the larger family.

Scholars generally date the ancestral language to c. 3000 BC – c. 2000 BC with a homeland in Mainland Southeast Asia or southern China. Sidwell (2022) proposes that the locus of Proto-Austroasiatic was in the Red River Delta area around c. 2500 BC – c. 2000 BC.

From Wikipedia · Austroasiatic languages · CC BY-SA 4.0