Bibliotheca Austroasiatica- A Classified and Annotated Bibliography of the Austroasiatic People and Languages

Book Description

Foreword

Shri Arun Ghosh, the author and a Fellow in the Department of Ethnolinguistics, has thoroughly examined the literature on Austroasiatic languages and systematically classified it. His work has received commendations from respected academics, including Professor Devipada Bhattacharya, who noted its meticulous planning and satisfactory chapter division. This publication aims to reach a wider audience of interested scholars.

Introduction
The Austric group of languages, encompassing the Austroasiatic and Austronesian families, is spoken across a vast area from Madagascar to Easter Island, and north into the Himalayas. Southeast Asia is divided into a mainland subregion, south of China and east of India, and an insular subregion, including Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. While the languages of insular Southeast Asia belong to the homogenous Austronesian family, the mainland features a diverse linguistic landscape, including Austroasiatic, Tai, and Sino-Tibetan languages.

The Austroasiatic family consists of about 150 languages, spoken by around 40 million people in Southeast Asia and Southeast India. The Mon-Khmer group, with over fifty languages, is the largest family primarily centered in Southeast Asia, spanning from Burma to Vietnam. Khmer serves as the official language in Cambodia, while Mon (Talaing) is spoken in both Burma and Thailand. The most widely spoken language in mainland Southeast Asia is Vietnamese, which is the official language of Vietnam and has speakers in Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos.