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The Austroasiatic languages ( ) 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 language, and Mon language 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 language 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 language, which is poorly attested, as a fourteenth), which have traditionally been grouped into two, as Mon–Khmer,Bradley (2012) notes, MK in the wider sense including the Munda languages of eastern South Asia is also known as Austroasiatic. and Munda languages. However, one recent classification posits three groups (Munda, Mon-Khmer, and Khasi–Khmuic),Diffloth 2005 while another has abandoned Mon–Khmer as a taxon altogether, making it synonymous with the larger family.Sidwell 2009
Scholars generally date the ancestral language to 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 . Genetic and linguistic research in 2015 about ancient people in East Asia suggest an origin and homeland of Austroasiatic in today's South China or even further north.
The Austroasiatic languages are further characterized as having unusually large vowel inventories and employing some sort of pitch register contrast, either between modal voice (normal) voice and breathy voice (lax) voice or between modal voice and creaky voice.Diffloth, Gérard (1989). "Proto-Austroasiatic 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.
Each family written in boldface below is accepted as a valid clade. By contrast, the relationships between these families within Austroasiatic are debated. In addition to the traditional classification, two recent proposals are given, neither of which accepts traditional "Mon–Khmer" as a valid unit. However, little of the data used for competing classifications has ever been published and, therefore, cannot be evaluated by peer review.
In addition, there are suggestions that additional branches of Austroasiatic might be preserved in substrata of Acehnese in Sumatra (Diffloth), the Chamic languages of Vietnam, and the Land Dayak languages of Borneo (Adelaar 1995).Roger Blench, 2009. Are there four additional unrecognised branches of Austroasiatic? Presentation at ICAAL-4, Bangkok, 29–30 October. Summarized in Sidwell and Blench (2011).
Or in more detail,
He therefore takes the conservative view that the thirteen branches of Austroasiatic should be treated as equidistant on current evidence. Sidwell & Roger Blench (2011) discuss this proposal in more detail, and note that there is good evidence for a Khasi–Palaungic node, which could also possibly be closely related to Khmuic.Sidwell, Paul, and Roger Blench. 2011. " The Austroasiatic Urheimat: the Southeastern Riverine Hypothesis ." Enfield, NJ (ed.) Dynamics of Human Diversity, 317–345. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
If this would the case, Sidwell & Blench suggest that Khasic may have been an early offshoot of Palaungic that had spread westward. Sidwell & Blench (2011) suggest Shompen language as an additional branch, and believe that a Vieto-Katuic connection is worth investigating. In general, however, the family is thought to have diversified too quickly for a deeply nested structure to have developed, since Proto-Austroasiatic speakers are believed by Sidwell to have radiated out from the central Mekong river valley relatively quickly.
Subsequently, Sidwell (2015a: 179)Sidwell, Paul. 2015a. "Austroasiatic classification." In Jenny, Mathias and Paul Sidwell, eds (2015). The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages. Leiden: Brill. proposed that Nicobarese subgroups with Aslian languages, just as how Khasian and Palaungic subgroup with each other.
A subsequent computational phylogenetic analysis (Sidwell 2015b)Sidwell, Paul. 2015b. A comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of the Austroasiatic languages . Presented at Diversity Linguistics: Retrospect and Prospect, 1–3 May 2015 (Leipzig, Germany), Closing conference of the Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. suggests that Austroasiatic branches may have a loosely nested structure rather than a completely rake-like structure, with an east–west division (consisting of Munda, Khasic, Palaungic, and Khmuic forming a western group as opposed to all of the other branches) occurring possibly as early as 7,000 years before present. However, he still considers the subbranching dubious.
Integrating computational phylogenetic linguistics with recent archaeological findings, Paul Sidwell (2015c)Sidwell, Paul. 2015c. Phylogeny, innovations, and correlations in the prehistory of Austroasiatic. Paper presented at the workshop Integrating inferences about our past: new findings and current issues in the peopling of the Pacific and South East Asia, 22–23 June 2015, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany. further expanded his Mekong riverine hypothesis by proposing that Austroasiatic had ultimately expanded into Indochina from the Lingnan area of southern China, with the subsequent Mekong riverine dispersal taking place after the initial arrival of Neolithic farmers from southern China.
Sidwell (2015c) tentatively suggests that Austroasiatic may have begun to split up 5,000 years B.P. during the Neolithic transition era of mainland Southeast Asia, with all the major branches of Austroasiatic formed by 4,000 B.P. Austroasiatic would have had two possible dispersal routes from the western periphery of the Pearl River watershed of Lingnan, which would have been either a coastal route down the coast of Vietnam, or downstream through the Mekong River via Yunnan. Both the reconstructed lexicon of Proto-Austroasiatic and the archaeological record clearly show that early Austroasiatic speakers around 4,000 B.P. cultivated rice and millet, kept livestock such as dogs, pigs, and chickens, and thrived mostly in estuarine rather than coastal environments.
At 4,500 B.P., this "Neolithic package" suddenly arrived in Indochina from the Lingnan area without cereal grains and displaced the earlier pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer cultures, with grain husks found in northern Indochina by 4,100 B.P. and in southern Indochina by 3,800 B.P. However, Sidwell (2015c) found that iron is not reconstructable in Proto-Austroasiatic, since each Austroasiatic branch has different terms for iron that had been borrowed relatively lately from Tai, Chinese, Tibetan, Malay, and other languages.
During the Iron Age about 2,500 B.P., relatively young Austroasiatic branches in Indochina such as Vietic languages, Katuic languages, Pearic languages, and Khmer language were formed, while the more internally diverse Bahnaric branch (dating to about 3,000 B.P.) underwent more extensive internal diversification. By the Iron Age, all of the Austroasiatic branches were more or less in their present-day locations, with most of the diversification within Austroasiatic taking place during the Iron Age.
Paul Sidwell (2018)Sidwell, Paul. 2018. Austroasiatic deep chronology and the problem of cultural lexicon. Paper presented at the 28th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, held 17–19 May 2018 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. considers the Austroasiatic language family to have rapidly diversified around 4,000 years B.P. during the arrival of rice agriculture in Indochina, but notes that the origin of Proto-Austroasiatic itself is older than that date. The lexicon of Proto-Austroasiatic can be divided into an early and late stratum. The early stratum consists of basic lexicon including body parts, animal names, natural features, and pronouns, while the names of cultural items (agriculture terms and words for cultural artifacts, which are reconstructible in Proto-Austroasiatic) form part of the later stratum.
Roger Blench (2017)Blench, Roger. 2017. Waterworld: lexical evidence for aquatic subsistence strategies in Austroasiatic . Presented at ICAAL 7, Kiel, Germany. suggests that vocabulary related to aquatic subsistence strategies (such as boats, waterways, river fauna, and fish capture techniques) can be reconstructed for Proto-Austroasiatic. Blench (2017) finds widespread Austroasiatic roots for 'river, valley', 'boat', 'fish', 'catfish sp.', 'eel', 'prawn', 'shrimp' (Central Austroasiatic), 'crab', 'tortoise', 'turtle', 'otter', 'crocodile', 'heron, fishing bird', and 'fish trap'. Archaeological evidence for the presence of agriculture in northern Indochina (northern Vietnam, Laos, and other nearby areas) dates back to only about 4,000 years ago (2,000 BC), with agriculture ultimately being introduced from further up to the north in the Yangtze valley where it has been dated to 6,000 B.P.
Sidwell (2022)Sidwell, Paul. 2021. Austroasiatic Dispersal: the AA "Water-World" Extended . SEALS 2021 . ( Video) proposes that the locus of Proto-Austroasiatic was in the Red River Delta area about 4,000-4,500 years before present, instead of the Middle Mekong as he had previously proposed. Austroasiatic dispersed coastal maritime routes and also upstream through river valleys. Khmuic, Palaungic, and Khasic resulted from a westward dispersal that ultimately came from the Red River valley. Based on their current distributions, about half of all Austroasiatic branches (including Nicobaric and Munda) can be traced to coastal maritime dispersals.
Hence, this points to a relatively late riverine dispersal of Austroasiatic as compared to Sino-Tibetan, whose speakers had a distinct non-riverine culture. In addition to living an aquatic-based lifestyle, early Austroasiatic speakers would have also had access to livestock, crops, and newer types of watercraft. As early Austroasiatic speakers dispersed rapidly via waterways, they would have encountered speakers of older language families who were already settled in the area, such as Sino-Tibetan.
Other languages with proposed Austroasiatic substrata are:
John Peterson (2017)Peterson, John (2017). " The prehistorical spread of Austro-Asiatic in South Asia ". Presented at ICAAL 7, Kiel, Germany. suggests that "pre-Munda languages" (early languages related to Proto-Munda) languages may have once dominated the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plain, and were then absorbed by Indo-Aryan languages at an early date as Indo-Aryan spread east. Peterson notes that eastern Indo-Aryan languages display many morphosyntactic features similar to those of Munda languages, while western Indo-Aryan languages do not.
According to Cai (et al. 2011), Hmong–Mien people are genetically related to Austroasiatic speakers, and their languages were heavily influenced by Sino-Tibetan, especially Tibeto-Burman languages.
A full genomic study by Lipson et al. (2018) identified a characteristic lineage that can be associated with the spread of Austroasiatic languages in Southeast Asia and which can be traced back to remains of Neolithic farmers from Mán Bạc () in the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam, and to closely related Ban Chiang and Vat Komnou remains in Thailand and Cambodia respectively. This Austroasiatic lineage can be modeled as a sister group of the Austronesian peoples with significant admixture (ca. 30%) from a deeply diverging eastern Eurasian source (modeled by the authors as sharing some genetic drift with the Onge people, a modern Andamanese hunter-gatherer group) and which is ancestral to modern Austroasiatic-speaking groups of Southeast Asia such as the Mlabri people and the Nicobarese, and partially to the Austroasiatic Munda-speaking groups of South Asia ( e.g. the Juang people). Significant levels of Austroasiatic ancestry were also found in Austronesian-speaking groups of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo.
A 2020 study states that present Austroasiatic groups in Mainland Southeast Asia can be modeled as an admixture of Hoabinhian hunter-gatherers and ancestral East Asians associated with the Neolithic farming expansion, with the exception of Kinh and Muong who share more drift with Tai-Kadai and Hmong-Mien groups. Kinh and Muong are also more related to Dongsonian culture and are implied to have roots in southern China instead of Southeast Asia. However, there is evidence of Tai-Kadai groups having Austroasiatic admixture, originating from local Chinese groups. Austroasiatic-speaking groups in southern China (such as the Wa people and Blang people in Yunnan) predominantly carry the same Mainland Southeast Asian Neolithic farmer ancestry, but with additional geneflow from northern and southern East Asian lineages that can be associated with the spread of Tibeto-Burman and Kra-Dai languages, respectively.
Huang et al. (2020) states that Austroasiatic ancestry most likely originated from southwest China and that the 'core Austroasiatic' population derives most of their ancestry from Mekong Neolithic (58.0%–75.2%) instead of Late Neolithic Fujian, which is more common in the 'core Austronesian' population. Austroasiatic-related ancestry is widespread in Mainland Southeast Asia. Hmong-Mien groups in southern China also show closer affinities with Austroasiatic groups but there is evidence of Kra-Dai admixture, which increases in groups that live further east. This admixture is also present in Mainland Southeast Asians. Another study states that Mekong Neolithic-related ancestry peaks in present Austroasiatic-speaking groups and ancient individuals from Guangxi such as Dushan and Baojianshan.
According to Mishra et al. (2024), modern Nicobarese have the highest 'ancestral Austroasiatic' ancestry. This component is found in Austroasiatic populations from South Asia and Southeast Asia.
Wang et al. (2025) states that present Austroasiatic groups are genetically similar to ancient central Yunnan populations, represented by the Late Neolithic Xingyi individual. This individual has a closer genetic relationship with the northern East Asian Boshan and the southern East Asian Qihe3. They also do not exhibit Basal Asian Xingyi ancestry, which is found in ancient Tibetans, suggesting significant demographic replacement.
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