Talk:Middle Khmer

Information not in the citations in section on transition
"With the fall of the Khmer Empire, Old Khmer was no longer the dominant language of a powerful centralized state and began to absorb influences from Thai, Lao and, to a lesser extent, Vietnamese and Cham. Heirs to the Cambodian throne were educated and raised in foreign capitals as hostages. Craftsmen and artisans, including scribes and poets, were killed or taken back as prisoners to work in the newly-dominant kingdoms. The effects on the use of the Khmer language were drastic and immediate. Official use fell silent; there are no extant inscriptions for the two hundred years from 1450 to approximately 1650. The effect on common usage is unknown, but the language that emerged by the late Middle Khmer period was so different that rules of Old Khmer could not be used to decipher it. Although the evolution happened gradually from generation to generation, the complete restructuring of a phonology in a relatively short period of 200–300 years is considered rapid by linguistic standards."
 * None of this information is in the citations given. The link to Sidwell 2009 doesn't mention Khmer periodization. Jenner 1974 only writes, "To all appearances, the Middle Khmer period was a time of rapid phonological development. One can conclude that this development, reinforced and perhaps even accelerated by a multiplication of contacts with Mon, Cham, Thai, and Vietnamese, was a form of readjustment to new conditions created by the gradual devoicing of the voiced stops of Old Khmer" (52). Jenner's conjecture doesn't say anything about the sociological context in which influences were exchanged. He is only talking about the devoicing that happened across Chinese and Southeast Asian languages. I will be removing this section. Lafleuve (talk) 10:54, 28 January 2021 (UTC)