Khmu language

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.

Suwilai Premsrirat (2002)[8] reports the following locations and dialects of Kmhmu' in Laos, Vietnam, China, and Thailand.

The phoneme /f/, present in dialects of both Eastern and Western Khmu', is a result of borrowings from the surrounding Tai languages.

[9] The vowels of the Khmu' language show little variation across the dialects with all varieties having 19 monophthongs and three diphthongs (/iə/, /ɨə/ and /uə/).

Approximate location of Khmu dialects in Laos