Mekong

The Mekong is one of the world’s major rivers. It is the 11th-longest river in the world, and 7th longest in Asia. . Its estimated length is 4,350 km , and it drains an area of 795,000 km2 . From the Tibetan Plateau it runs through China's Yunnan province, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. All except China and Burma belong to the Mekong River Commission. A South Asian regional association, Mekong-Ganga Cooperation is named after this river. The extreme seasonal variations in flow and the presence of rapids and waterfalls have made navigation extremely difficult.

Names

The river was originally named by the local Tai peoples as Mae Nam Khong meaning "Mother-River Khong"; Mae Khong for short, meaning "Mother Khong". This was picked up and phoneticised in Chinese as M?ig?ng H? for the external part, without realising this translates as "Mother-Khong River", with Mae-Nam Khong River literally translated as "Mother-River Khong River."

In English it is called "the Mekong River", but in the Tai languages it is essentially the "Khong River." Such is the case with the Mae Nam Ping in Chiang Mai which is known as the "Ping River", and the Tonle Sap in Cambodia - where Tonle translates as "Great lake or river", making the Tonle Sap River an unnecessary repetition of what is in fact the "Sap River."

In Thai, ??? IPA: [k????] is a species of crocodile; some believe this is tone-shifted from ?? IPA: [k??t] or ???? IPA: [k????], both adjectives to describe curves or meanders of a river or road. Tibetan: ?????? rDza chu Chinese: ???, ??? L?nc?ng Ji?ng , ??? M?ig?ng h? Burmese: ????????????? M?‘kaung Myit Thai: ????????? IPA: [m??? n??m k????], ?????? IPA: [m??? k????] Laotian: ????????? IPA: [m?? n??m k?????], ?????? IPA: [n??m k?????] Khmer: ?????? Mekongk, ??????????? Tonle Mekongk, ???????? Tonle Thom Vietnamese: S?ng M? K?ng, S?ng L?n , S?ng C?u Long Fauna

The biodiversity of the Mekong mountains is one of the richest in the world