Bahnaric languages

Bahnaric
Geographic
distribution
Mainland Southeast Asia
Linguistic classificationAustroasiatic
  • Bahnaric
Proto-languageProto-Bahnaric
Subdivisions
  • Central Bahnaric
  • North Bahnaric
  • West Bahnaric
Glottologbahn1264
  Bahnaric

The Bahnaric languages are a group of about thirty Austroasiatic languages spoken by about 700,000 people in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Paul Sidwell notes that Austroasiatic/Mon–Khmer languages are lexically more similar to Bahnaric and Katuic languages the closer they are geographically, independently of which branch of the family they belong to, but that Bahnaric and Katuic do not have any shared innovations that would suggest that together they form a branch of the Austroasiatic family, rather forming separate branches.