The nearly thirty Palaungic or Palaung–Wa languages form a branch of the Austroasiatic languages.
Phonological developments
Most of the Palaungic languages lost the contrastive voicing of the ancestral Austroasiatic consonants, with the distinction often shifting to the following vowel. In the Wa branch, this is generally realized as breathy voice vowel phonation; in Palaung–Riang, as a two-way register tone system. The Angkuic languages have contour tone — the U language, for example, has four tones, high, low, rising, falling, — but these developed from vowel length and the nature of final consonants, not from the voicing of initial consonants.
Homeland
suggests that the Palaungic Urheimat was in what is now the borderregion of Laos and Sipsongpanna in Yunnan, China. The Khmuic homeland was adjacent to the Palaungic homeland, resulting in many lexical borrowings among the two branches due to intense contact. Sidwell suggests that the word for 'water', which Gérard Diffloth had used as one of the defining lexical innovations for his NorthernMon-Khmer branch, was likely borrowed from Palaungic into Khmuic.
The Palaungic family includes at least three branches, with the position of some languages as yet unclear. Lamet, for example, is sometimes classified as a separate branch. The following classification follows that of Diffloth & Zide, as quoted in Sidwell.
Sidwell provides a revised classification of Palaungic. Bit–Khang is clearly Palaungic, but contains many Khmuic loanwords. Sidwell believes it likely groups within East Palaungic. On the other hand, Sidwell considers Danaw to be the most divergent Palaungic language.
Danaw
West Palaungic
*Palaung
*Rumai
*Riang
East Palaungic
*Waic
**Wa
**Lawa
**Bulang
*Angkuic: U, Hu, Man Met/Kemie, Muak/Mok, Tai Loi, etc.
Sidwell notes that Palaungic and Khmuic share many lexical items, but considers this phenomenon to be a result of lexical diffusion due to intense language contact. Sidwell lists the following Proto-Palaungic forms as having diffused from Palaungic into Khmuic. ;Palaungic > Khmuic lexical forms
*ʔɔːt ‘wipe’
*ʔiɛk ‘armpit’
*ɓɤs ‘carry on head/back’
*bliɛs ‘spear’
*cəˀŋam ‘clear, clean’
*criːl ‘gold’
*gɔːʔ ‘friend; relative’
*kərɗiŋ ‘navel’
*kɤːŋ ‘to dig’
*kʋɤj ‘above, upper part’
*laj ‘to trade’
*mɔk ‘to fell’
*ɲɤk ‘sticky’
*tjaːk ‘sambar deer’
Sidwell lists the following Proto-Palaungic forms as having diffused from Khmuic into Palaungic. ;Khmuic > Palaungic lexical forms
*ɟɤːl ‘light in weight’
*klaw ‘testicles’
Sidwell lists the following Proto-Palaungic forms that are also shared with Khmuic but not with other Austroasiatic branches, and is unsure of whether they diffused from Palaungic to Khmuic or vice versa.
