Austroasiatic languages

The Austroasiatic languages (/ˌɒstroʊ.eɪʒiˈætɪk, ˌɔː-/ ^ⓘ 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. Of the Austroasiatic languages, only Vietnamese, Khmer, and Mon have lengthy, established presences in the 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), which 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 BCE – c. 2000 BCE with a homeland in southern China or the Mekong River valley. Sidwell (2022) proposes that the locus of Proto-Austroasiatic was in the Red River Delta area around c. 2500 BCE – c. 2000 BCE. Genetic and linguistic research in 2015 about ancient people in East Asia suggest an origin and homeland of Austroasiatic in today's southern China or even further north.

The name Austroasiatic was coined by Wilhelm Schmidt (German: austroasiatisch) based on auster, the Latin word for "South" (but idiosyncratically used by Schmidt to refer to the southeast), and "Asia". Despite the literal meaning of its name, only three Austroasiatic branches are actually spoken in South Asia: Khasic, Munda, and Nicobarese.

Regarding word structure, Austroasiatic languages are well known for having an iambic "sesquisyllabic" pattern, with basic nouns and verbs consisting of an initial, unstressed, reduced minor syllable followed by a stressed, full syllable. This reduction of presyllables has led to a variety of phonological shapes of the same original Proto-Austroasiatic prefixes, such as the causative prefix, ranging from CVC syllables to consonant clusters to single consonants among the modern languages. As for word formation, most Austroasiatic languages have a variety of derivational prefixes, and many have infixes, but suffixes are almost completely non-existent in most branches except Munda, and a few specialized exceptions in other Austroasiatic branches.

The Austroasiatic languages are further characterized as having unusually large vowel inventories and employing some sort of pitch register contrast, either between modal (normal) voice and breathy (lax) voice or between modal voice and creaky voice. Languages in the Pearic branch and some in the Vietic branch can have a three- or even four-way voicing contrast.

However, some Austroasiatic languages have lost the register contrast by evolving more diphthongs or in a few cases, such as Vietnamese, tonogenesis. Vietnamese has been so heavily influenced by Chinese that its original Austroasiatic phonological quality is obscured and now resembles that of South Chinese languages, whereas Khmer, which had more influence from Sanskrit, has retained a more typically Austroasiatic structure.

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 poorly documented. Proto-Mon–Khmer becomes synonymous with the Proto-Austroasiatic language with their demotion from a primary branch. Paul Sidwell (2005) reconstructs the consonant inventory of Proto-Mon–Khmer as follows: