Austroasiatic languages in the context of Southern Brahmic

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.

The Assamese people are a socio-ethnic linguistic identity that has been described at various times as nationalistic or micro-nationalistic. This group is often associated with the Assamese language, the easternmost Indo-Aryan language, and Assamese people mostly live in the Brahmaputra Valley region of Assam, where they are native and constitute around 56% of the valley's population. The use of the term precedes the name of the language or the people. It has also been used retrospectively to the people of Assam before the term "Assamese" came into use. They are an ethnically diverse group formed after centuries of assimilation of Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Aryan and Tai populations, and constitute a tribal-caste continuum—though not all Assamese people are Hindus and ethnic Assamese Muslims numbering around 42 lakh (4,200,000) constitute a significant part of this identity. The total population of Assamese speakers in Assam is nearly 15.09 million which makes up 48.38% of the population of state according to the Language census of 2011.

Santali (ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤ, Pronounced: [santaɽi], সাঁওতালি, ସାନ୍ତାଳୀ, सान्ताली) is a Kherwarian Munda language spoken natively by the Santal people of South Asia. It is the most widely-spoken language of the Munda subfamily of the Austroasiatic languages, related to Ho and Mundari, spoken mainly in the Indian states of Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Mizoram, Odisha, Tripura and West Bengal. It is one of the constitutionally scheduled official languages of the Indian Republic and the additional official language of Jharkhand and West Bengal per the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. It is spoken by around 7.6 million people in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal, making it the third most-spoken Austroasiatic language after Vietnamese and Khmer.

Santali is characterized by a split into at least a northern and southern dialect sphere, with slightly different sets of phonemes: Southern Santali has six phonemic vowels, in contrast with eight or nine in Northern Santali, different lexical items, and to a certain degree, variable morphology. Santali is recognized by linguists as being phonologically conservative within the Munda branch. Unlike many Munda languages that had their vowel systems restructured and shrunk to five such as Mundari, Ho, and Kharia, Santali retains a larger vowel system of eight phonemic cardinal vowels, which is very unusual in the South Asian linguistic area. The language also uses vowel harmony processes in morphology and expressives similar to Ho and Mundari. Morphosyntactically, Santali, together with Sora, are considered less restructured than other Munda languages, having less influence from Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages. Clause structure is topic-prominent by default.

Languages of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by 78.05% of Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians; both families together are sometimes known as Indic languages. Languages spoken by the remaining 2.31% of the population belong to the Austroasiatic, Sino–Tibetan, Tai–Kadai, Andamanese, and a few other minor language families and isolates. According to the People's Linguistic Survey of India, India has the second highest number of languages (780), after Papua New Guinea (840). Ethnologue lists a lower number of 456.

Article 343 of the Constitution of India stated that the official language of the Union is Hindi in Devanagari script, with official use of English to continue for 15 years. Opposition to increased Hindi usage in South India led to the passage of the Official Languages Act in 1963, amending the constitution to allow for the continuation of English alongside Hindi in the Indian government indefinitely. The form of numerals to be used for the official purposes of the Union are "the international form of Indian numerals", which are referred to as Arabic numerals in most English-speaking countries. Despite some misconceptions, Hindi is not the national language of India; the Constitution of India does not give any language the status of national language.

There are more than 600 ethnic groups in the multicultural Indonesian archipelago, making it one of the most diverse countries in the world. The vast majority of these belong to the Austronesian peoples, whose ancestors migrated from Taiwan. They are primarily concentrated in western and central Indonesia (Asia). A significant minority are Melanesian peoples, descendants of some of the earliest the modern humans to inhabit Southeast Asia, mostly found in eastern Indonesia (Oceania). However, genetic studies show that ethnic groups in Java, Bali, and Lombok have significant traces of Austroasiatic ancestry, even though Austroasiatic languages have long been replaced by Austronesian languages in the region.

Based on ethnic classification, the largest ethnic group in Indonesia is the Javanese who make up about 40% of the total population. The Javanese are concentrated on the island of Java, the world's most populous island, particularly in the central and eastern parts, but significant Javanese communities also exist in Sumatra, Borneo, and Sulawesi due to historical migration and government-sponsored transmigration programs. It is also the largest ethnic group in Southeast Asia. The Sundanese are the next largest group; their homeland is located in the western part of the island of Java and the southern edge of Sumatra. The Malays, Batak, Madurese, Betawi, Minangkabau, and Bugis are the next largest groups in the country.

The Mon (Mon: ဂကူမန်listen; Thai Mon: ဂကူမည်; Burmese: မွန်လူမျိုး‌, pronounced [mʊ̀ɰ̃ lù mjó]; Thai: มอญ, pronounced [mɔ̄ːn] listen) are an ethnic group who inhabit Lower Myanmar's Mon State, Kayin State, Kayah State, Tanintharyi Region, Bago Region, the Irrawaddy Delta, and several areas in Thailand (mostly in Pathum Thani province, Phra Pradaeng and Nong Ya Plong). The native language is Mon, which belongs to the Monic branch of the Austroasiatic language family and shares a common origin with the Nyah Kur language, which is spoken by the people of the same name that live in Northeastern Thailand. A number of languages in Mainland Southeast Asia are influenced by the Mon language, which is also in turn influenced by those languages.

The Mon were one of the earliest to reside in Southeast Asia, and were responsible for the spread of Theravada Buddhism in Mainland Southeast Asia. The civilizations founded by the Mon were some of the earliest in Thailand as well as Myanmar and Laos. The Mon are regarded as a large exporter of Southeast Asian culture. Historically, many cities in Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos today, including Yangon, Pathum Thani, Lamphun, Lampang, and Vientiane were founded either by the Mon people or Mon rulers.