Classification
Khmer is a member of the Austro-Asiatic language family, the most archaic family in an area that stretches from the Malay Peninsula through Southeast Asia to East India. Austro-Asiatic, which also includes Mon, Vietnamese and Munda, has been studied since 1856 and was first proposed as a language family in 1907. Despite the amount of research, there is still doubt about the internal relationship of the languages of Austro-Asiatic. Most classifications place Khmer in the eastern branch of a Mon-Khmer sub-grouping. In these classification schemes Khmer's closest genetic relatives are the Bahnaric and Pearic languages. More recent classifications doubt the validity of the Mon-Khmer sub-grouping and place the Khmer language as its own branch of Austro-Asiatic equidistant from the other 12 branches of the family.
Read more about this topic: Khmer Language