In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with their unaspirated counterparts, but in some other languages, notably most Indian and East Asian languages, the difference is contrastive.
Breathy voice is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape which produces a sighing-like sound. A simple breathy phonation,, can sometimes be heard as an allophone of English between vowels, such as in the word behind, for some speakers.
Khmer is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Khmer people, and the official and national language of Cambodia. Khmer has been influenced considerably by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious registers, through Hinduism and Buddhism. It is also the earliest recorded and earliest written language of the Mon–Khmer family, predating Mon and Vietnamese, due to Old Khmer being the language of the historical empires of Chenla, Angkor and, presumably, their earlier predecessor state, Funan.
The Mon language is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Mon people. Mon, like the related Khmer language, but unlike most languages in mainland Southeast Asia, is not tonal. The Mon language is a recognised indigenous language in Myanmar as well as a recognised indigenous language of Thailand.
Historical Chinese phonology deals with reconstructing the sounds of Chinese from the past. As Chinese is written with logographic characters, not alphabetic or syllabary, the methods employed in Historical Chinese phonology differ considerably from those employed in, for example, Indo-European linguistics; reconstruction is more difficult because, unlike Indo-European languages, no phonetic spellings were used.
The Khmer script is an abugida (alphasyllabary) script used to write the Khmer language, the official language of Cambodia. It is also used to write Pali in the Buddhist liturgy of Cambodia and Thailand.
The Nuer language is a Nilotic language of the Western Nilotic group. It is spoken by the Nuer people of South Sudan and in western Ethiopia. The language is very similar to Dinka and Atuot.
This article is a technical description of the sound system of the Vietnamese language, including phonetics and phonology. Two main varieties of Vietnamese, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, which are slightly different to each other, are described below.
Khmu[kʰmuʔ] is the language of the Khmu people of the northern Laos region. It is also spoken in adjacent areas of Vietnam, Thailand and China. Khmu lends its name to the Khmuic branch of the Austroasiatic language family, the latter of which also includes Khmer and Vietnamese. Within Austroasiatic, Khmu is often cited as being most closely related to the Palaungic and Khasic languages. The name "Khmu" can also be seen romanized as Kmhmu, Khmu', Kammu, or Khamuk in various publications or alternatively referred to by the name of a local dialect.
Dinka is a Nilotic language spoken by the Dinka people, the major ethnic group of South Sudan. There are several main dialects, including Padang, Rek, Agaar, Hol, Twic East, Twic, Athooc, and Gok, which show limited variation. The dialects are all mutually intelligible. It is the only Nilotic language which has its own Wikipedia (din.wikipedia.org). Recently Akutmɛ̈t Latueŋ Thuɔŋjäŋ has proposed a unified written grammar of Dinka.
The nearly thirty Palaungic or Palaung–Wa languages form a branch of the Austroasiatic languages.
In phonology, a register, or pitch register, is a prosodic feature of syllables in certain languages in which tone, vowel phonation, glottalization or similar features depend upon one another.
The Nyah Kur language, also called Chao-bon, is an Austroasiatic language spoken by remnants of the Mon people of Dvaravati, the Nyah Kur people, who live in present-day Thailand.
Chong is an endangered language spoken in eastern Thailand and formerly in Cambodia by the Chong. It is a Western Pearic language in the Mon–Khmer language family. Chong is currently the focus of a language revitalization project in Thailand.
Red karen or Karenni known in Burmese as Kayah, is a Karen dialect continuum spoken by over half a million Kayah people in Burma.
Samre, is a nearly extinct Pearic language of Thailand and, formerly, Cambodia. The language is evidently extinct in Cambodia, but a 1998 survey found 20–30 speakers in Nonsi Subdistrict, Bo Rai District, Trat Province, Thailand and estimated the total number of people able to speak the language to be 200.
Sa'och is an endangered, nearly extinct Pearic language of Cambodia and Thailand spoken only occasionally by a decreasing number of older adults. There are two dialects, one spoken in Veal Renh Village, Prey Nob District, Sihanoukville Province, Cambodia and the other in Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand. "Sa'och" is the Khmer exonym for the people and the language. The Sa'och, however, consider this label, which means "scarlet fever" or "pimply" in Khmer, pejorative and use the autonym "Chung" to refer to themselves and their language.
Tampuan is the language of Tampuan people indigenous to the mountainous regions of Ratanakiri Province in Cambodia. As of the 2008 census there were 31,000 speakers, which amounts to 21% of the province's population. It is closely related to Bahnar and Alak, the three of which form the Central Bahnaric language grouping within the Mon-Khmer language family according to traditional classification. Sidwell's more recent classification groups Tampuan on an equal level with Bahnar and the South Bahnaric languages in a larger Central Bahnar group. The Tampuan language has no native writing. EMU International began linguistic research in 1995 and produced an alphabet using Khmer letters. The alphabet was further refined by linguists from International Cooperation for Cambodia (ICC) and the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport (MOEYS). The modified Khmer script was approved by MOEYS in 2003 for use in bilingual education programs for Tampuan implemented by ICC, UNESCO, and CARE.
Jru' is a Mon–Khmer language of the Bahnaric branch spoken in southern Laos. It is also known as "Loven", "Laven" or "Boloven" from the Laotian exonym Laven or Loven, which is derived from the Khmer name for the Boloven Plateau. The Jru' people engage in coffee and cardamom cultivation, as well as other agricultural activities.
Middle Khmer is the historical stage of the Khmer language as it existed between the 14th and 18th centuries, spanning the period between Old Khmer and the modern language. The beginning of the Middle Khmer period roughly coincides with the fall of the Angkorian Khmer Empire to the Siamese Ayutthaya Kingdom and the period of Cambodian history popularly referred to as the Dark ages of Cambodia. The Middle Khmer period was a stage of transition which saw relatively rapid and dramatic changes, especially in phonology, that ended with the emergence of a language recognizable as Modern Khmer approximately concurrent with the 1777 coronation of Ang Eng, the father of the poet-king Ang Duong.
