Defining Southeast Culture

Southeast Asians are conveniently labeled as such because of the geographical location and their apparent ethnic similarities. In actual fact Southeast Asians are hard to classify as a unified group of people, as is commonly done. Southeast Asia is very diverse in its cultural composition. Southeast Asia is populated by peoples of many different cultures which come from several completely unrelated language families. In order to use Southeast Asian culture as a factor in this investigation a more accurate definition of what exactly Southeast Asian is needs to be made. In the previous section a definition of what Chinese is was made using language as the determining factor, which is supported by genetic research. Just as it was done for the Chinese, a closer look what people fit the category of Southeast Asian for this thesis isgiven below. Again, keep in mind the blurred boundaries between ethnic groups and that occur due to cultural interaction. This is even more of a factor in diverse Southeast Asia.

Whereas the Chinese languages all come from the same branch of the language family, Southeast Asians speak numerous unrelated languages from entirely different language families. Languages from the following language families are spoken in Southeast Asia, Austronesian, Mon-Khmer, Tai-Kadai, Miao-Yao (or previouslycalled Hmong-Mien) and Sino-Tibetan (Diamond, 1999; Katzner, 2002; Keyes, 1995). There is still some debate about the exact relationship between some of the language families, for example Tai-Kadai was once thought to be related to the Sino-Tibetan family. Now the currently accepted classification model puts this group into its own family.

Immediately, the classification of Southeast Asians into a single group runs into trouble. There are so many languages and accompanying ethnicities that it makes it hard to say what is representative of Southeast Asians. Additionally the ethnic groups are not contained by national borders. This being said, the ethnically dispersed pattern of Southeast Asia’s population could lend support to the concept of a Southeast Asian culture since all these groups have been interacting for centuries.

Historically however these groups have often been in conflict which would have prevented integration and the sharing of common values. Below is a country by country outline of Southeast Asia which should help put the diversity of ethnicities present in mainland Southeast Asia into perspective. The information is taken from Katzner’s (2002) book Languages of the World. Language is the mother tongue.

Parentheses indicate the language family a particular language is from Cambodia: Pop. 12 million. About 10.8 million speak Khmer (Mon-Khmer). Half a million speak Chinese (Sino-Tibetan) and another half million speak Vietnamese (Mon-Khmer). Another 250,0000 are Cham (Austronesian). Thailand: Pop. 60 million. There are about 35 million people that speak Thai (Tai-Kadai), 15 million speak Lao (Tai-Kadai), 7 million Chinese (Sino-Tibetan) speakers, 2 million from the South speak Malay (Austronesian), and about ¾ of a million use Khmer (Mon-Khmer). There are additional languages spoken by ethnic groups, each composed of under 100,000 people. These include Mon (Mon-Khmer), Karen (Sino-Tibetan) and Miao (Miao-Yao). Myanmar (previously called Burma): Pop. 50 million. Burmese (Sino-Tibetan) is spoken by about 33.3 million. Shan (Tai-Kadai) speakers number about 4 million. Karen (Sino-Tibetan) has about 3 million speakers. Mon (Mon-Khmer), Chin and Arkanese (both Sino-Tibetan) each have about one million speakers. There are about 500,000 Chingpaw (Sino-Tibetan), 350,000 Palaung (Mon-Khmer) and 50,000 Kawa (Mon-Khmer) speakers. Vietnam: Pop. 80 million. Vietnamese (Mon-Khmer) is spoken by about 70 million. There are an additional 1 million speakers of Chinese (Sino-Tibetan), Thai(Tai-Kadai), and Khmer (Mon-Khmer). There are dozens of native languages. The larger groups include 1.5 million Tho (Tai-Kadai) speakers, 1 million Muong (Mon- Khmer), as well as 750,000 Nung (Tai-Kadai), 500,000 each of Hmong and Yao (both Miao-Yao). In the south there are many other tribes using languages from the Austronesian language family. The larger groups are the Jarai, Rhade, Bahnar, Sedang and Cham all with populations under 250,000. There are several other groups from the with very small populations. Laos: Pop. 5 million. About 4 million speak Lao (Tai-Kadai). Hmong and Yao (both Miao-Yao) are used by about 200,000 and 100,000 people respectively. There are also some speakers of Vietnamese (Mon-Khmer) and Chinese (Sino-Tibetan).

If Malaysia is included in this review there are an additional 20 million people of which 10 million speak Malay (Austronesian). 5 million speak Chinese (Sino- Tibetan) and 1 million speak Tamil (which is another completely different language belonging to the Dravidian family). This brief look at the composition of mainland Southeast Asian nations shows a very diverse ethnic composition. These ethnic groups have been interacting for hundreds if not thousands of years.

These cultures are significantly different from one another, but are in many ways similar, even genetically (Diamond, 1999). Southeast Asian ethnic groups are believed to have come from what is now Southern China. They were displaced by the Southward movement of the Han Chinese. The migration trend shows the ancestral Southeast Asians took over the lands of people that were already present in Southeast Asia, many of which are believed to have spoken languages from the Austronesian language family.