Austroasiatic languages in the context of "Languages of Asia"

The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used by various languages in several language families in South, East and Southeast Asia: Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Mongolic, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, and Tai. They were also the source of the dictionary order (gojūon) of Japanese kana.

The history of Southeast Asia covers the people of Southeast Asia from prehistory to the present in two distinct sub-regions: Mainland Southeast Asia (or Indochina) and Maritime Southeast Asia (or Insular Southeast Asia). Mainland Southeast Asia comprises Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (or Burma), Peninsular Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam whereas Maritime Southeast Asia comprises Brunei, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas Island, East Malaysia, East Timor, Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore.

The earliest Homo sapiens presence in Mainland Southeast Asia can be traced back to 70,000 years ago and to at least 50,000 years ago in Maritime Southeast Asia. Since 25,000 years ago, East Asian-related (basal East Asian) groups expanded southwards into Maritime Southeast Asia from Mainland Southeast Asia. As early as 10,000 years ago, Hoabinhian settlers from Mainland Southeast Asia had developed a tradition and culture of distinct artefact and tool production. During the Neolithic, Austroasiatic peoples populated Mainland Southeast Asia via land routes, and sea-borne Austronesian immigrants preferably settled in Maritime Southeast Asia. The earliest agricultural societies that cultivated millet and wet-rice emerged around 1700 BCE in the lowlands and river floodplains of Southeast Asia.

Vietnamese (tiếng Việt) is an Austroasiatic language primarily spoken in Vietnam where it is the official language. It belongs to the Vietic subgroup of the Austroasiatic language family. Vietnamese is spoken natively by around 86 million people, and as a second language by 11 million people, several times as many as the rest of the Austroasiatic family combined. It is the native language of ethnic Vietnamese (Kinh), as well as the second or first language for other ethnicities of Vietnam, and used by Vietnamese diaspora in the world.

Like many languages in Southeast Asia and East Asia, Vietnamese is highly analytic and is tonal. It has head-initial directionality, with subject–verb–object order and modifiers following the words they modify. It also uses noun classifiers. Its vocabulary has had significant influence from Middle Chinese and French. Vietnamese morphemes and phonological words are predominantly monosyllabic, however many multisyllabic words do occur, usually as a result of compounding and reduplication.

The ancestral population of modern Asian people has its origins in the two primary prehistoric settlement centres – greater Southwest Asia and from the Mongolian plateau towards Northern China.

Migrations of distinct ethnolinguistic groups have probably occurred as early as 10,000 years ago. However, around 2,000 BCE early Iranian speaking people and Indo-Aryans arrived in Iran and northern Indian subcontinent. Pressed by the Mongols, Turkic peoples often migrated to the western and northern regions of the Central Asian plains. Prehistoric migrants from South China and Southeast Asia seem to have populated East Asia, Korea and Japan in several waves, where they gradually replaced indigenous people, such as the Ainu, who are of uncertain origin. Austroasiatic and Austronesian people establish in Southeast Asia between 5.000 and 2.000 BCE, partly merging with, but eventually displacing the indigenous Australo-Melanesians.

Malays (Malay: Orang Melayu, Jawi script: اورڠ ملايو‎) are an Austronesian ethnoreligious group native to the Malay Peninsula, eastern Sumatra, coastal Borneo, and the smaller islands that lie between these locations known as Riau Archipelago. These locations are today part of the countries of Malaysia, Indonesia (eastern and southern Sumatra, Bangka Belitung Islands, West Kalimantan, Riau Islands, and the coast of East Kalimantan), the southern part of Thailand (Pattani, Satun, Songkhla, Trang, Yala, and Narathiwat), Singapore, and Brunei Darussalam.

There is considerable linguistic, cultural, artistic and social diversity among the many Malay subgroups, mainly due to hundreds of years of immigration and assimilation of various regional ethnicity and tribes within Maritime Southeast Asia. Historically, the Malay population is descended primarily from the earlier Malayic-speaking Austronesians and Austroasiatic tribes who founded several ancient maritime trading states and kingdoms, notably Brunei, Kedah, Langkasuka, Gangga Negara, Chi Tu, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Pahang, Melayu and Srivijaya.

The Khmer people (Khmer: ជនជាតិខ្មែរ, UNGEGN: Chônchéatĕ Khmêr, ALA-LC: Janajāti Khmaer [cɔn.ciət kʰmae]) are an ethnic group native to Cambodia. They comprise over 95% of Cambodia's population of 17 million. They speak the Khmer language, which is part of the larger Austroasiatic language family alongside Mon and Vietnamese.

The majority of Khmer people follow Theravada Buddhism. Significant populations of Khmers reside in neighboring regions, including Northern Khmer communities in adjacent areas of Thailand and Khmer Krom communities in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam. There are nearly one million Khmers in other diaspora communities, living mainly in the United States, France, and Australia.