Khmer Language Classification

Classification

Khmer is a member of the Austroasiatic language family, the most archaic family in an area that stretches from the Malay Peninsula through Southeast Asia to East India. Austroasiatic, 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 Austroasiatic.  

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 Austroasiatic equidistant from the other 12 branches of the family.

~Info courtesy of Wikipedia~