Austroasiatic

American  

[aw-stroh-ey-zhee-at-ik, -shee-] / ˌɔ stroʊˌeɪ ʒiˈæt ɪk, -ʃi- /

noun

1. a family of languages spoken in SE Asia and the landsaround the Bay of Bengal and consisting principally of Vietnamese, Khmer, Mon, Khasi, Nicobarese, and the Munda languages.

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adjective

1. of or relating to Austroasiatic.

Etymology

Origin of Austroasiatic

First recorded in 1920–25; austro- + Asiatic

Example Sentences

They numbered some 400,000, spoke a language of the Austroasiatic family—unlike India’s mainstream Indo-European and Dravidian languages—and lay largely outside the Hindu world.

From Scientific American

His family belongs to an ethnic minority, the Wa, who speak an Austroasiatic language that is also widespread in parts of China.

From The New Yorker

Those early farmers may have left another legacy: a language that developed into today’s Austroasiatic family of languages, which are scattered across Southeast Asia.

From Science Magazine

Hence East Asia’s linguistic upheavals raise a corresponding question: what enabled Sino-Tibetan speakers to spread from North China to South China, and speakers of Austroasiatic and the other original South China language families to spread south into tropical Southeast Asia?

From Literature

The Semang Negritos persisted as hunter-gatherers trading with neighboring farmers but adopted an Austroasiatic language from those farmers—much as, we shall see, Philippine Negrito and African Pygmy hunter-gatherers adopted languages from their farmer trading partners.

From Literature