An Austroasiatic language that is widely spoken in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand. Other locations, where Khmer is spoken in the Cambodian minority, is in the USA, France, and South Korea. Many thousands of years earlier, the civilization of the Khmer started around the
Mekong River in present-day
South China and Laos or Thailand. The Khmer are cousins to other Austroasiatic groups, including Mon, Wa,
Munda, and
Javanese. Those tribes were probably the oldest Southeast Asian natives and they stayed together, up until that point that they were pushed down further into Southeast Asia to intermarry or to assimilate many
Australoid tribes, such as Negritos and Melanesians, that they borrowed a small number of Australoid phrases in their languages. While the Khmer established several kingdoms from the Funan Kingdom to the Khmer Empire, the Khmer adopted the Indian script for their written language. The Thai and
Lao people would later adopt the same Indian script as the Khmer do in their own versions to communicate with each other better, despite Thai and Lao being categorized as
Daic languages, unless people travel more south in Thailand and Laos, where the higher the Austroasiatic accent is spoken.
The Khmer made contact with Indians to trade with them and to allow Indians to visit their constructed temples. Angkor Wat is the most recognized temple, it is used the most to symbolize
Cambodia's national flag, and it was the capital city of the Khmer Empire for centralized government affairs. Depressingly, when the Khmer
Empire's centralized government power grew too corrupted and it was diminishing, the Thai and Vietnamese Kingdoms successfully
overthrew the Khmer Empire, resulting in the Khmer shifting their main government from Angkor Wat to
Phnom Penh and Cambodia being reduced to a small country even to this day, despite the alliance with the Chinese-ruled Tang and Song dynasties. In the 1970s,
Pol Pot and the
Khmer Rouge were triggered that they lost so much of their former territories and they were paranoid that Vietnam will take over Cambodia, so the Cambodian holocaust occurred, which ethnic cleansed most Vietnamese-Cambodians and the Khmer Rouge invaded South Vietnam. Being unsuccessful in annexing South Vietnam, Vietnamese soldiers easily wiped the floor with the Khmer Rouge and the
Hanoi government installed Hun Sen as the eternal prime minister of Cambodia from the 1980s to the present day.
