Khmer Language
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Khmer (; , ) is an
Austroasiatic language The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...
spoken by the
Khmer people The Khmer people ( km, ជនជាតិខ្មែរ, ) are a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Cambodia. They comprise over 90% of Cambodia's population of 17 million.
, and the
official An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority, (either their own or that of their ...
and
national language A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a nation. There is little consistency in the use of this term. One or more languages spoken as first languages in the te ...
of
Cambodia Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailand t ...
. Khmer has been influenced considerably by
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
and
Pali Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or ''Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhism ...
, especially in the royal and religious registers, through
Hinduism and Buddhism Hinduism and Buddhism have common origins in the culture of Ancient India. Buddhism arose in the eastern Ganges culture of northern India during the "second urbanisation" around 500 BCE. Hinduism developed out of the ancient Vedic religion, a ...
. It is also the earliest recorded and earliest written language of the
Mon–Khmer The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...
family, predating Mon and
Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...
, due to
Old Khmer Old Khmer is the oldest attested stage of the Khmer language, an Austroasiatic language historically and presently spoken across Cambodia, Southern Vietnam, and parts of Thailand and Laos. It is recorded in inscriptions dating from the early 7th ...
being the language of the historical empires of
Chenla Chenla or Zhenla (; km, ចេនឡា, ; vi, Chân Lạp) is the Chinese designation for the successor polity of the kingdom of Funan preceding the Khmer Empire that existed from around the late sixth to the early ninth century in Indoc ...
,
Angkor Angkor ( km, អង្គរ , 'Capital city'), also known as Yasodharapura ( km, យសោធរបុរៈ; sa, यशोधरपुर),Headly, Robert K.; Chhor, Kylin; Lim, Lam Kheng; Kheang, Lim Hak; Chun, Chen. 1977. ''Cambodian-Engl ...
and, presumably, their earlier predecessor state,
Funan Funan (; km, ហ៊្វូណន, ; vi, Phù Nam, Chữ Hán: ) was the name given by Chinese cartographers, geographers and writers to an ancient Indianized state—or, rather a loose network of states ''(Mandala)''—located in mainla ...
. The vast majority of Khmer speakers speak Central Khmer, the dialect of the central plain where the Khmer are most heavily concentrated. Within Cambodia, regional accents exist in remote areas but these are regarded as varieties of Central Khmer. Two exceptions are the speech of the capital,
Phnom Penh Phnom Penh (; km, ភ្នំពេញ, ) is the capital and most populous city of Cambodia. It has been the national capital since the French protectorate of Cambodia and has grown to become the nation's primate city and its economic, indus ...
, and that of the
Khmer Khe Khmer Khe (or Hakka Khmer; km, ខ្មែរខិ) is a Khmeric language spoken in Stung Treng Province, Cambodia. It has an estimated lexical similarity of between 95-96% with Central Khmer. Names Alternate names for Khmer Khe include Khm ...
in Stung Treng province, both of which differ sufficiently enough from Central Khmer to be considered separate dialects of Khmer. Outside of Cambodia, three distinct dialects are spoken by ethnic Khmers native to areas that were historically part of the Khmer Empire. The
Northern Khmer dialect Northern Khmer (; km, ខ្មែរខាងជើង), also called Surin Khmer ( km, ខ្មែរសុរិន្ទ, link=no), is the dialect of the Khmer language spoken by approximately 1.4 million Khmers native to the Thai provinc ...
is spoken by over a million Khmers in the southern regions of
Northeast Thailand Northeast Thailand or Isan (Isan/ th, อีสาน, ; lo, ອີສານ; also written as Isaan, Isarn, Issarn, Issan, Esan, or Esarn; from Pali ''īsānna'' or Sanskrit ईशान्य ''īśānya'' "northeast") consists of 20 provin ...
and is treated by some linguists as a separate language. Khmer Krom, or Southern Khmer, is the first language of the Khmer of Vietnam, while the Khmer living in the remote
Cardamom Mountains The Cardamom Mountains ( km, ជួរភ្នំក្រវាញ, ; th, ทิวเขาบรรทัด, ), or the Krâvanh Mountains, is a mountain range in the south west of Cambodia and Eastern Thailand. The majority of the range ...
speak a very conservative dialect that still displays features of the
Middle Khmer Middle Khmer is the historical stage of the Khmer language as it existed between the 14th and 18th centuries, spanning the period between Old Khmer and the modern language. The beginning of the Middle Khmer period roughly coincides with the fall ...
language. Khmer is primarily an analytic,
isolating language An isolating language is a type of language with a morpheme per word ratio close to one, and with no inflectional morphology whatsoever. In the extreme case, each word contains a single morpheme. Examples of widely spoken isolating languages a ...
. There are no
inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...
s, conjugations or case endings. Instead,
particles In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...
and auxiliary words are used to indicate
grammatical In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular variety (linguistics), speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the go ...
relationships. General word order is subject–verb–object, and
modifiers In linguistics, a modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure which ''modifies'' the meaning of another element in the structure. For instance, the adjective "red" acts as a modifier in the noun phrase "red ball", provi ...
follow the word they modify. Classifiers appear after numbers when used to count nouns, though not always so consistently as in languages like
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
. In spoken Khmer,
topic-comment In linguistics, the topic, or theme, of a sentence is what is being talked about, and the comment (rheme or focus) is what is being said about the topic. This division into old vs. new content is called information structure. It is generally a ...
structure is common, and the perceived social relation between participants determines which sets of vocabulary, such as pronouns and honorifics, are proper. Khmer differs from neighboring languages such as Burmese,
Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...
, Lao, and
Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...
in that it is not a
tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey empha ...
. Words are stressed on the final syllable, hence many words conform to the typical Mon–Khmer pattern of a stressed syllable preceded by a
minor syllable Primarily in Austroasiatic languages (also known as Mon–Khmer), in a typical word a minor syllable is a reduced (minor) syllable followed by a full tonic or stressed syllable. The minor syllable may be of the form or , with a reduced vowel, as i ...
. The language has been written in the
Khmer script Khmer script ( km, អក្សរខ្មែរ, )Huffman, Franklin. 1970. ''Cambodian System of Writing and Beginning Reader''. Yale University Press. . is an abugida (alphasyllabary) script used to write the Khmer language, the official la ...
, an
abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez language, Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; ...
descended from the
Brahmi script Brahmi (; ; ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system of ancient South Asia. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such as 'lath' o ...
via the southern Indian
Pallava script The Pallava script or Pallava Grantha, is a Brahmic scripts, Brahmic script, named after the Pallava dynasty of South India, attested since the 4th century AD. As epigrapher Arlo Griffiths makes clear, however, the term is misleading as not all o ...
, since at least the 7th century. The script's form and use has evolved over the centuries; its modern features include subscripted versions of consonants used to write clusters and a division of consonants into two series with different
inherent vowel An inherent vowel is part of an abugida (or alphasyllabary) script. It is a vowel sound which is used with each unmarked or basic consonant symbol. For example, if the Latin alphabet used 'i' as an inherent vowel, "Wikipedia" could be rendered as "W ...
s.


Classification

Khmer is a member of the
Austroasiatic The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The te ...
language family, the autochthonous family in an area that stretches from the Malay Peninsula through Southeast Asia to East India.Diffloth, Gerard & Zide, Norman
''Austroasiatic Languages''
.
Austroasiatic, which also includes Mon,
Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...
and Munda, has been studied since 1856 and was first proposed as a language family in 1907. Despite the amount of research, there is still doubt about the internal relationship of the languages of Austroasiatic.Sidwell, Paul (2009a)
The Austroasiatic Central Riverine Hypothesis
Keynote address, SEALS, XIX.
Diffloth places Khmer in an eastern branch of the
Mon-Khmer languages The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...
.Diffloth, Gérard (2005). "The contribution of linguistic palaeontology and Austroasiatic". in Laurent Sagart, Roger Blench and Alicia Sanchez-Mazas, eds. ''The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics.'' 77–80. London: Routledge Curzon. In these classification schemes Khmer's closest genetic relatives are the Bahnaric and
Pearic languages The Pearic languages (alternatively called the Chongic languages) are a group of endangered languages of the Eastern Mon–Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family, spoken by Pear people (the ''Por'', the ''Samré'', the ''Samray'', the ...
.Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). ''A Mon–Khmer comparative dictionary''. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. More recent classifications doubt the validity of the Mon-Khmer sub-grouping and place the Khmer language as its own branch of Austroasiatic equidistant from the other 12 branches of the family.


Geographic distribution and dialects

Khmer is spoken by some 13 million people in
Cambodia Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailand t ...
, where it is the official language. It is also a second language for most of the minority groups and indigenous hill tribes there. Additionally there are a million speakers of Khmer native to southern
Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
(1999 census) and 1.4 million in northeast
Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...
(2006). Khmer
dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...
s, although mutually intelligible, are sometimes quite marked. Notable variations are found in speakers from
Phnom Penh Phnom Penh (; km, ភ្នំពេញ, ) is the capital and most populous city of Cambodia. It has been the national capital since the French protectorate of Cambodia and has grown to become the nation's primate city and its economic, indus ...
(Cambodia's capital city), the rural
Battambang Battambang ( km, បាត់ដំបង, UNGEGN: ) is the capital of Battambang Province and the third largest city in Cambodia. Founded in the 11th century by the Khmer Empire, Battambang is the leading rice-producing province of the coun ...
area, the areas of Northeast Thailand adjacent to Cambodia such as Surin province, the
Cardamom Mountains The Cardamom Mountains ( km, ជួរភ្នំក្រវាញ, ; th, ทิวเขาบรรทัด, ), or the Krâvanh Mountains, is a mountain range in the south west of Cambodia and Eastern Thailand. The majority of the range ...
, and southern Vietnam. The dialects form a
continuum Continuum may refer to: * Continuum (measurement), theories or models that explain gradual transitions from one condition to another without abrupt changes Mathematics * Continuum (set theory), the real line or the corresponding cardinal number ...
running roughly north to south. Standard Cambodian Khmer is mutually intelligible with the others but a Khmer Krom speaker from Vietnam, for instance, may have great difficulty communicating with a Khmer native of Sisaket Province in Thailand. The following is a classification scheme showing the development of the modern Khmer dialects.Sidwell, Paul (2009). ''Classifying the Austroasiatic languages: history and state of the art''. LINCOM studies in Asian linguistics, 76. Munich: Lincom Europa. *
Middle Khmer Middle Khmer is the historical stage of the Khmer language as it existed between the 14th and 18th centuries, spanning the period between Old Khmer and the modern language. The beginning of the Middle Khmer period roughly coincides with the fall ...
** Cardamom (Western) Khmer ** Central Khmer *** Surin (Northern) Khmer *** Standard Khmer and related dialects (including Khmer Krom) Standard Khmer, or Central Khmer, the language as taught in Cambodian schools and used by the media, is based on the dialect spoken throughout the Central Plain, a region encompassed by the northwest and central provinces. Northern Khmer (called in Khmer) refers to the dialects spoken by many in several border provinces of present-day northeast Thailand. After the fall of the Khmer Empire in the early 15th century, the Dongrek Mountains served as a natural border leaving the Khmer north of the mountains under the sphere of influence of the Kingdom of
Lan Xang existed as a unified kingdom from 1353 to 1707. For three and a half centuries, Lan Xang was one of the largest kingdoms in Southeast Asia. The meaning of the kingdom's name alludes to the power of the kingship and formidable war machine of the ea ...
. The conquests of Cambodia by
Naresuan King Naresuan the Great (( th, สมเด็จพระนเรศวรมหาราช, , ) or Sanphet II ( th, สรรเพชญ์ที่ ๒), ( my , နရဲစွမ် (သို့) ဗြနရာဇ်); 1555/1556 – ...
the Great for
Ayutthaya Ayutthaya, Ayudhya, or Ayuthia may refer to: * Ayutthaya Kingdom, a Thai kingdom that existed from 1350 to 1767 ** Ayutthaya Historical Park, the ruins of the old capital city of the Ayutthaya Kingdom * Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya province (locally ...
furthered their political and economic isolation from Cambodia proper, leading to a dialect that developed relatively independently from the midpoint of the Middle Khmer period. This has resulted in a distinct accent influenced by the surrounding tonal languages Lao and
Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...
, lexical differences, and phonemic differences in both vowels and distribution of consonants. Syllable-final , which has become silent in other dialects of Khmer, is still pronounced in Northern Khmer. Some linguists classify Northern Khmer as a separate but closely related language rather than a dialect.Phonetic variation of final trill and final palatals in Khmer dialects of Thailand
Suwilai, Premsrirat; Mahidol University; Mon-Khmer Studies 24:1–26; pg 1
Western Khmer, also called Cardamom Khmer or Chanthaburi Khmer, is spoken by a very small, isolated population in the Cardamom mountain range extending from western Cambodia into eastern
Central Thailand Central Thailand (Central plain) or more specifically Siam (also known as Suvarnabhumi and Dvaravati) is one of the regions of Thailand, covering the broad alluvial plain of the Chao Phraya River. It is separated from northeast Thailand (Isan) by ...
. Although little studied, this variety is unique in that it maintains a definite system of
vocal register A vocal register is a range of tones in the human voice produced by a particular vibratory pattern of the vocal folds. These registers include modal voice (or normal voice), vocal fry, falsetto, and the whistle register. Registers originate in ...
that has all but disappeared in other dialects of modern Khmer. Phnom Penh Khmer is spoken in the capital and surrounding areas. This dialect is characterized by merging or complete
elision In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...
of syllables, which speakers from other regions consider a "relaxed" pronunciation. For instance, "Phnom Penh" is sometimes shortened to "m'Penh". Another characteristic of Phnom Penh speech is observed in words with an "r" either as an initial consonant or as the second member of a
consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...
(as in the English word "bread"). The "r", trilled or flapped in other dialects, is either pronounced as a
uvular trill The voiced uvular trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a small capital letter ''R''. This consonant is one of several collectively ...
or not pronounced at all. This alters the quality of any preceding consonant, causing a harder, more emphasized pronunciation. Another unique result is that the syllable is spoken with a low-rising or "dipping" tone much like the "hỏi" tone in
Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...
. For example, some people pronounce ('fish') as : the is dropped and the vowel begins by dipping much lower in tone than standard speech and then rises, effectively doubling its length. Another example is the word ('study'), which is pronounced , with the uvular "r" and the same intonation described above. Khmer Krom or Southern Khmer is spoken by the indigenous Khmer population of the
Mekong Delta The Mekong Delta ( vi, Đồng bằng Sông Cửu Long, lit=Nine Dragon River Delta or simply vi, Đồng Bằng Sông Mê Kông, lit=Mekong River Delta, label=none), also known as the Western Region ( vi, Miền Tây, links=no) or South-weste ...
, formerly controlled by the Khmer Empire but part of Vietnam since 1698. Khmers are persecuted by the Vietnamese government for using their native language and, since the 1950s, have been forced to take Vietnamese names.Unrepresented Peoples and Nations Organizatio
Khmer Krom Profile
Retrieved 19 June 2012
Consequently, very little research has been published regarding this dialect. It has been generally influenced by Vietnamese for three centuries and accordingly displays a pronounced accent, tendency toward monosyllabic words and lexical differences from Standard Khmer.
Khmer Khe Khmer Khe (or Hakka Khmer; km, ខ្មែរខិ) is a Khmeric language spoken in Stung Treng Province, Cambodia. It has an estimated lexical similarity of between 95-96% with Central Khmer. Names Alternate names for Khmer Khe include Khm ...
is spoken in the
Se San SE, Se, or Sé may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Sé'' (album), by Lúnasa, 2006 * Se (instrument), a traditional Chinese musical instrument Businesses and organizations * Sea Ltd (NYSE: SE), tech conglomerate headquartered in Singapore ...
, Srepok and
Sekong Sekong (or ''Xekong''; Lao ເຊກອງ) is the capital city of Sekong Province, Sekong District, Laos. It was created in 1984 after it was ascertained that Ban Phon's unexploded ordnance made it uninhabitable. References Populated ...
river valleys of Sesan and Siem Pang districts in Stung Treng Province. Following the decline of Angkor, the Khmer abandoned their northern territories, which the Lao then settled. In the 17th century, Chey Chetha XI led a Khmer force into Stung Treng to retake the area. The Khmer Khe living in this area of Stung Treng in modern times are presumed to be the descendants of this group. Their dialect is thought to resemble that of pre-modern Siem Reap.


Historical periods

Linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
study of the Khmer language divides its history into four periods one of which, the Old Khmer period, is subdivided into pre-Angkorian and Angkorian.Sak-Humphry, Channy
''The Syntax of Nouns and Noun Phrases in Dated Pre-Angkorian Inscriptions''
Mon Khmer Studies 22: 1–26.
Pre-Angkorian Khmer is the Old Khmer language from 600 CE through 800. Angkorian Khmer is the language as it was spoken in the Khmer Empire from the 9th century until the 13th century. The following centuries saw changes in
morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
,
phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
and
lexicon A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...
. The language of this transition period, from about the 14th to 18th centuries, is referred to as Middle Khmer and saw borrowings from Thai in the literary register. Modern Khmer is dated from the 19th century to today. The following table shows the conventionally accepted historical stages of Khmer. Just as modern Khmer was emerging from the transitional period represented by Middle Khmer, Cambodia fell under the
influence Influence or influencer may refer to: *Social influence, in social psychology, influence in interpersonal relationships ** Minority influence, when the minority affect the behavior or beliefs of the majority *Influencer marketing, through individ ...
of French
colonialism Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their relig ...
. Thailand, which had for centuries claimed suzerainty over Cambodia and controlled succession to the Cambodian throne, began losing its influence on the language. In 1887 Cambodia was fully integrated into
French Indochina French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China),; vi, Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, , lit. 'East Ocean under French Control; km, ឥណ្ឌូចិនបារាំង, ; th, อินโดจีนฝรั่งเศส, ...
, which brought in a French-speaking aristocracy. This led to French becoming the language of higher education and the intellectual class. By 1907, the French had wrested over half of modern-day Cambodia, including the north and northwest where Thai had been the prestige language, back from Thai control and reintegrated it into the country. Many native scholars in the early 20th century, led by a monk named
Chuon Nath Chuon Nath ( km, ជួន ណាត; 11 March 1883 – 25 September 1969) was a Cambodian monk and the late ''Gana Mahanikaya'' Supreme Patriarch of Cambodia. Amongst his achievements is his effort in conservation of the Khmer language in the ...
, resisted the French and Thai influences on their language. Forming the government sponsored Cultural Committee to define and standardize the modern language, they championed Khmerization, purging of foreign elements, reviving affixation, and the use of Old Khmer roots and historical Pali and Sanskrit to coin new words for modern ideas. Opponents, led by
Keng Vannsak Keng Vannsak ( km, កេង វ៉ាន់សាក់, ; 19 September 1925 – 18 December 2008) was a Cambodian scholar, philosopher and Khmer linguist. He invented the Khmer typewriter keyboard in 1952. He lived in exile in Paris, France, ...
, who embraced "total Khmerization" by denouncing the reversion to classical languages and favoring the use of contemporary colloquial Khmer for neologisms, and
Ieu Koeus Ieu Koeus ( km, អៀវ កើស; 1905 – 14 January 1950) was a Cambodian politician. He served as President of the National Assembly of Cambodia from 1946 to 1949, and as Prime Minister of Cambodia for nine days in September 1949. Conside ...
, who favored borrowing from Thai, were also influential. Koeus later joined the Cultural Committee and supported Nath. Nath's views and prolific work won out and he is credited with cultivating modern Khmer-language identity and culture, overseeing the translation of the entire Pali Buddhist canon into Khmer. He also created the modern Khmer language dictionary that is still in use today, helping preserve Khmer during the French colonial period.


Phonology

The phonological system described here is the inventory of sounds of the standard spoken language,Huffman, Franklin. 1970.
Cambodian System of Writing and Beginning Reader
'. Yale University Press.
represented using the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
(IPA).


Consonants

The voiceless plosives may occur with or without aspiration (as vs. , etc.); this difference is contrastive before a vowel. However, the aspirated sounds in that position may be analyzed as sequences of two
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
s: . This analysis is supported by the fact that
infix An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem (an existing word or the core of a family of words). It contrasts with ''adfix,'' a rare term for an affix attached to the outside of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix. When marking text for int ...
es can be inserted between the stop and the aspiration; for example ('big') becomes ('size') with a nominalizing infix. When one of these plosives occurs initially before another consonant, aspiration is no longer contrastive and can be regarded as mere phonetic detail: slight aspiration is expected when the following consonant is not one of (or if the initial plosive is ). The voiced plosives are pronounced as
implosives Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants (and possibly also some affricates) with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism.''Phonetics for communication disorders.'' Martin J. Ball and Nicole Müller. Rou ...
by most speakers, but this feature is weak in educated speech, where they become . In syllable-final position, and approach and respectively. The stops are unaspirated and have
no audible release A stop with no audible release, also known as an unreleased stop or an applosive, is a stop consonant with no release burst: no audible indication of the end of its occlusion (hold). In the International Phonetic Alphabet, lack of an audible relea ...
when occurring as syllable finals. In addition, the consonants , , and occur occasionally in recent
loan word A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...
s in the speech of Cambodians familiar with French and other languages.


Vowels

Various authors have proposed slightly different analyses of the Khmer vowel system. This may be in part because of the wide degree of variation in pronunciation between individual speakers, even within a dialectal region. The description below follows Huffman (1970). The number of vowel nuclei and their values vary between dialects; differences exist even between the Standard Khmer system and that of the Battambang dialect on which the standard is based.Wayland, Ratree
"An Acoustic Study of Battambang Khmer Vowels."
The Mon-Khmer Studies Journal. 28. (1998): 43–62.
In addition, some diphthongs and triphthongs are analyzed as a vowel nucleus plus a
semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the ...
( or ) coda because they cannot be followed by a final consonant. These include: (with short monophthongs) , , , , ; (with long monophthongs) , ; (with long diphthongs) , , , , and .


Syllable structure

A Khmer
syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
begins with a single consonant, or else with a
cluster may refer to: Science and technology Astronomy * Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft * Asteroid cluster, a small asteroid family * Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study t ...
of two, or rarely three, consonants. The only possible clusters of three consonants at the start of a syllable are , and (with aspirated consonants analyzed as two-consonant sequences) . There are 85 possible two-consonant clusters (including ʰetc. analyzed as /ph/ etc.). All the clusters are shown in the following table, phonetically, i.e. superscript ʰ can mark either contrastive or non-contrastive aspiration (see above). Slight vowel
epenthesis In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable ('' prothesis'') or in the ending syllable (''paragoge'') or in-between two syllabic sounds in a word. The word ''epenth ...
occurs in the clusters consisting of a plosive followed by , in those beginning , and in the cluster . After the initial consonant or consonant cluster comes the syllabic
nucleus Nucleus ( : nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to: *Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom *Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA Nucle ...
, which is one of the
vowels A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
listed above. This vowel may end the syllable or may be followed by a
coda Coda or CODA may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * Movie coda, a post-credits scene * ''Coda'' (1987 film), an Australian horror film about a serial killer, made for television *''Coda'', a 2017 American experimental film from Na ...
, which is a single consonant. If the syllable is stressed and the vowel is short, there must be a final consonant. All consonant sounds except and the aspirates can appear as the coda (although final /r/ is heard in some dialects, most notably in Northern Khmer). A
minor syllable Primarily in Austroasiatic languages (also known as Mon–Khmer), in a typical word a minor syllable is a reduced (minor) syllable followed by a full tonic or stressed syllable. The minor syllable may be of the form or , with a reduced vowel, as i ...
(unstressed syllable preceding the main syllable of a word) has a structure of CV-, CrV-, CVN- or CrVN- (where C is a consonant, V a vowel, and N a nasal consonant). The vowels in such syllables are usually short; in conversation they may be reduced to , although in careful or formal speech, including on television and radio, they are clearly articulated. An example of such a word is ''mɔnuh, mɔnɨh, mĕəʾnuh'' ('person'), pronounced , or more casually .


Stress

Stress Stress may refer to: Science and medicine * Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition * Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
in Khmer falls on the final syllable of a word. Because of this predictable pattern, stress is non-
phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
in Khmer (it does not distinguish different meanings). Most Khmer words consist of either one or two syllables. In most native disyllabic words, the first syllable is a
minor Minor may refer to: * Minor (law), a person under the age of certain legal activities. ** A person who has not reached the age of majority * Academic minor, a secondary field of study in undergraduate education Music theory *Minor chord ** Barb ...
(fully unstressed) syllable. Such words have been described as ''sesquisyllabic'' (i.e. as having one-and-a-half syllables). There are also some disyllabic words in which the first syllable does not behave as a minor syllable, but takes
secondary stress Secondary stress (or obsolete: secondary accent) is the weaker of two degrees of stress in the pronunciation of a word, the stronger degree of stress being called ''primary''. The International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for secondary stress is a ...
. Most such words are compounds, but some are single
morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...
s (generally loanwords). An example is ('language'), pronounced . Words with three or more syllables, if they are not compounds, are mostly loanwords, usually derived from Pali, Sanskrit, or more recently, French. They are nonetheless adapted to Khmer stress patterns.Headley, Robert K.; Chhor, Kylin; Lim, Lam Kheng; Kheang, Lim Hak; Chun, Chen. 1977. ''Cambodian-English Dictionary''. Bureau of Special Research in Modern Languages. The Catholic University of America Press. Washington, D.C. Primary stress falls on the final syllable, with
secondary stress Secondary stress (or obsolete: secondary accent) is the weaker of two degrees of stress in the pronunciation of a word, the stronger degree of stress being called ''primary''. The International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for secondary stress is a ...
on every second syllable from the end. Thus in a three-syllable word, the first syllable has secondary stress; in a four-syllable word, the second syllable has secondary stress; in a five-syllable word, the first and third syllables have secondary stress, and so on. Long polysyllables are not often used in conversation. Compounds, however, preserve the stress patterns of the constituent words. Thus , the name of a kind of cookie (literally 'bird's nest'), is pronounced , with secondary stress on the second rather than the first syllable, because it is composed of the words ('nest') and ('bird').


Phonation and tone

Khmer once had a
phonation The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the defini ...
distinction in its vowels, but this now survives only in the most archaic dialect ( Western Khmer). The distinction arose historically when vowels after Old Khmer voiced consonants became
breathy voice Breathy voice (also called murmured voice, whispery voice, soughing and susurration) is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape which produces a sighing-like ...
d and diphthongized; for example became . When consonant voicing was lost, the distinction was maintained by the vowel (); later the phonation disappeared as well (). These processes explain the origin of what are now called a-series and o-series consonants in the
Khmer script Khmer script ( km, អក្សរខ្មែរ, )Huffman, Franklin. 1970. ''Cambodian System of Writing and Beginning Reader''. Yale University Press. . is an abugida (alphasyllabary) script used to write the Khmer language, the official la ...
. Although most Cambodian dialects are not tonal, the colloquial Phnom Penh dialect has developed a tonal contrast (level versus peaking tone) as a by-product of the
elision In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...
of .


Intonation

Intonation often conveys
semantic Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
context in Khmer, as in distinguishing declarative statements, questions and exclamations. The available grammatical means of making such distinctions are not always used, or may be ambiguous; for example, the final
interrogative particle An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', '' who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most o ...
can also serve as an emphasizing (or in some cases negating) particle. The intonation pattern of a typical Khmer declarative phrase is a steady rise throughout followed by an abrupt drop on the last syllable. :       ('I don't want it') Other intonation contours signify a different type of phrase such as the "full doubt" interrogative, similar to yes-no questions in English. Full doubt interrogatives remain fairly even in tone throughout, but rise sharply towards the end. :       ('do you want to go to Siem Reap?') Exclamatory phrases follow the typical steadily rising pattern, but rise sharply on the last syllable instead of falling. :       ('this book is expensive!')


Grammar

Khmer is primarily an
analytic language In linguistic typology, an analytic language is a language that conveys relationships between words in sentences primarily by way of ''helper'' words (particles, prepositions, etc.) and word order, as opposed to using inflections (changing the ...
with no
inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...
. Syntactic relations are mainly determined by word order. Old and
Middle Khmer Middle Khmer is the historical stage of the Khmer language as it existed between the 14th and 18th centuries, spanning the period between Old Khmer and the modern language. The beginning of the Middle Khmer period roughly coincides with the fall ...
used particles to mark
grammatical categories In linguistics, a grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language. Within each category there are two or more possible values (sometimes called grammemes), which are normally mutually exclusiv ...
and many of these have survived in Modern Khmer but are used sparingly, mostly in literary or formal language. Khmer makes extensive use of
auxiliary verbs An auxiliary verb (abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a p ...
, "directionals" and
serial verb construction The serial verb construction, also known as (verb) serialization or verb stacking, is a syntactic phenomenon in which two or more verbs or verb phrases are strung together in a single clause.Tallerman, M. (1998). ''Understanding Syntax''. London: A ...
. Colloquial Khmer is a
zero copula Zero copula is a linguistic phenomenon whereby the subject is joined to the predicate without overt marking of this relationship (like the copula "to be" in English). One can distinguish languages that simply do not have a copula and languages tha ...
language, instead preferring predicative adjectives (and even predicative nouns) unless using a copula for emphasis or to avoid ambiguity in more complex sentences. Basic word order is subject–verb–object (SVO), although subjects are often dropped;
prepositions Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
are used rather than postpositions.
Topic-Comment In linguistics, the topic, or theme, of a sentence is what is being talked about, and the comment (rheme or focus) is what is being said about the topic. This division into old vs. new content is called information structure. It is generally a ...
constructions are common and the language is generally
head-initial In linguistics, head directionality is a proposed parameter that classifies languages according to whether they are head-initial (the head of a phrase precedes its complements) or head-final (the head follows its complements). The head is th ...
(modifiers follow the words they modify). Some grammatical processes are still not fully understood by western scholars. For example, it is not clear if certain features of Khmer grammar, such as actor nominalization, should be treated as a morphological process or a purely syntactic device, and some derivational morphology seems "purely decorative" and performs no known syntactic work.
Lexical categories In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ass ...
have been hard to define in Khmer.
Henri Maspero Henri Paul Gaston Maspero (15 December 188317 March 1945) was a French sinologist and professor who contributed to a variety of topics relating to East Asia. Maspero is best known for his pioneering studies of Daoism. He was imprisoned by the Naz ...
, an early scholar of Khmer, claimed the language had no parts of speech, while a later scholar, Judith Jacob, posited four parts of speech and innumerable particles.
John Haiman John Michael Haiman (born 1946) is an American linguist and professor at Macalester College. He has done fieldwork on the Hua language of Papua New-Guinea and has published on Khmer, Rhaeto-Romance and Germanic linguistics. In 1989 he received a ...
, on the other hand, identifies "a couple dozen" parts of speech in Khmer with the caveat that Khmer words have the freedom to perform a variety of syntactic functions depending on such factors as word order, relevant particles, location within a clause, intonation and context. Some of the more important lexical categories and their function are demonstrated in the following example sentence taken from a hospital brochure:


Morphology

Modern Khmer is an
isolating language An isolating language is a type of language with a morpheme per word ratio close to one, and with no inflectional morphology whatsoever. In the extreme case, each word contains a single morpheme. Examples of widely spoken isolating languages a ...
, which means that it uses little
productive Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...
morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
. There is some
derivation Derivation may refer to: Language * Morphological derivation, a word-formation process * Parse tree or concrete syntax tree, representing a string's syntax in formal grammars Law * Derivative work, in copyright law * Derivation proceeding, a proc ...
by means of
prefixes A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...
and
infixes An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem (an existing word or the core of a family of words). It contrasts with ''adfix,'' a rare term for an affix attached to the outside of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix. When marking text for ...
, but this is a remnant of Old Khmer and not always productive in the modern language. Khmer morphology is evidence of a historical process through which the language was, at some point in the past, changed from being an
agglutinative language An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) tend to remain ...
to adopting an isolating typology. Affixed forms are
lexicalized In linguistics, lexicalization is the process of adding words, set phrases, or word patterns to a language's lexicon. Whether '' word formation'' and ''lexicalization'' refer to the same process is controversial within the field of linguistics. M ...
and cannot be used productively to form new words. Below are some of the most common affixes with examples as given by Huffman.
Compounding In the field of pharmacy, compounding (performed in compounding pharmacies) is preparation of a custom formulation of a medication to fit a unique need of a patient that cannot be met with commercially available products. This may be done for me ...
in Khmer is a common derivational process that takes two forms, coordinate compounds and repetitive compounds. Coordinate compounds join two unbound morphemes (independent words) of similar meaning to form a compound signifying a concept more general than either word alone. Coordinate compounds join either two nouns or two verbs. Repetitive compounds, one of the most productive derivational features of Khmer, use
reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...
of an entire word to derive words whose meaning depends on the class of the reduplicated word. A repetitive compound of a noun indicates plurality or generality while that of an adjectival verb could mean either an intensification or plurality. Coordinate compounds: : : Repetitive compounds: :


Nouns and pronouns

Khmer
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
s do not inflect for
grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
or singular/plural. There are no
articles Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: G ...
, but indefiniteness is often expressed by the word for "one" ( ) following the noun as in ( "a dog"). Plurality can be marked by
postnominal Post-nominal letters, also called post-nominal initials, post-nominal titles, designatory letters or simply post-nominals, are letters placed after a person's name to indicate that the individual holds a position, academic degree, accreditation, ...
particles, numerals, or reduplication of a following adjective, which, although similar to intensification, is usually not ambiguous due to context. : Classifying particles are used after numerals, but are not always obligatory as they are in
Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...
or
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
, for example, and are often dropped in colloquial speech. Khmer nouns are divided into two groups: mass nouns, which take classifiers; and specific, nouns, which do not. The overwhelming majority are mass nouns. Possession is colloquially expressed by word order. The possessor is placed after the thing that is possessed. Alternatively, in more complex sentences or when emphasis is required, a possessive construction using the word (, "property, object") may be employed. In formal and literary contexts, the possessive particle () is used: :
Pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...
s are subject to a complicated system of social register, the choice of pronoun depending on the perceived relationships between speaker, audience and referent (see Social registers below). Khmer exhibits
pronoun avoidance Pronoun avoidance is the use of kinship terms, titles and other complex nominal expressions instead of personal pronouns in speech.Johannes Helmbrecht. 2013. Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) Th ...
, so kinship terms, nicknames and proper names are often used instead of pronouns (including for the first person) among intimates. Subject pronouns are frequently dropped in colloquial conversation. Adjectives, verbs and verb phrases may be made into nouns by the use of
nominalization In linguistics, nominalization or nominalisation is the use of a word that is not a noun (e.g., a verb, an adjective or an adverb) as a noun, or as the head of a noun phrase. This change in functional category can occur through morphological tr ...
particles. Three of the more common particles used to create nouns are , , and . These particles are prefixed most often to verbs to form abstract nouns. The latter, derived from Sanskrit, also occurs as a suffix in fixed forms borrowed from Sanskrit and Pali such as ("health") from ("to be healthy"). :


Adjectives and adverbs

Adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...
s,
demonstrative Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
s and
numerals A numeral is a figure, symbol, or group of figures or symbols denoting a number. It may refer to: * Numeral system used in mathematics * Numeral (linguistics), a part of speech denoting numbers (e.g. ''one'' and ''first'' in English) * Numerical d ...
follow the noun they modify. Adverbs likewise follow the verb. Morphologically, adjectives and adverbs are not distinguished, with many words often serving either function. Adjectives are also employed as verbs as Khmer sentences rarely use a copula.
Degrees of comparison Comparison is a feature in the morphology or syntax of some languages whereby adjectives and adverbs are inflected to indicate the relative degree of the property they define exhibited by the word or phrase they modify or describe. In languages ...
are constructed syntactically.
Comparative In general linguistics, the comparative is a syntactic construction that serves to express a comparison between two (or more) entities or groups of entities in quality or degree - see also comparison (grammar) for an overview of comparison, as wel ...
s are expressed using the word : "A X (A is more X
han B Han may refer to: Ethnic groups * Han Chinese, or Han People (): the name for the largest ethnic group in China, which also constitutes the world's largest ethnic group. ** Han Taiwanese (): the name for the ethnic group of the Taiwanese ...
. The most common way to express superlatives is with : "A X " (A is the most X).Huffman, F. E., Promchan, C., & Lambert, C.-R. T. (1970). ''Modern spoken Cambodian''. New Haven: Yale University Press. Intensity is also expressed syntactically, similar to other languages of the region, by
reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...
or with the use of
intensifier In linguistics, an intensifier (abbreviated ) is a lexical category (but ''not'' a traditional part of speech) for a modifier that makes no contribution to the propositional meaning of a clause but serves to enhance and give additional emotional co ...
s. :


Verbs

As is typical of most East Asian languages, Khmer verbs do not inflect at all; tense,
aspect Aspect or Aspects may refer to: Entertainment * ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art * Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company * Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England * ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
and mood can be expressed using auxiliary verbs, particles (such as , placed before a verb to express
continuous aspect The continuous and progressive aspects (abbreviated and ) are grammatical aspects that express incomplete action ("to do") or state ("to be") in progress at a specific time: they are non-habitual, imperfective aspects. In the grammars of many l ...
) and adverbs (such as "yesterday", "earlier", "tomorrow"), or may be understood from context.
Serial verb construction The serial verb construction, also known as (verb) serialization or verb stacking, is a syntactic phenomenon in which two or more verbs or verb phrases are strung together in a single clause.Tallerman, M. (1998). ''Understanding Syntax''. London: A ...
is quite common. Khmer verbs are a relatively open class and can be divided into two types, main verbs and auxiliary verbs. Huffman defined a Khmer verb as "any word that can be (negated)", and further divided main verbs into three classes.
Transitive verb A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''. Transitiv ...
s are verbs that may be followed by a
direct object In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
: :
Intransitive verb In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are ...
s are verbs that can not be followed by an object: : Adjectival verbs are a word class that has no equivalent in English. When modifying a noun or verb, they function as adjectives or adverbs, respectively, but they may also be used as main verbs equivalent to English "be + ''adjective''". :


Syntax

Syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
is the rules and processes that describe how sentences are formed in a particular language, how words relate to each other within clauses or phrases and how those phrases relate to each other within a sentence to convey meaning. Khmer syntax is very analytic. Relationships between words and phrases are signified primarily by word order supplemented with auxiliary verbs and, particularly in formal and literary registers, grammatical marking particles. Grammatical phenomena such as
negation In logic, negation, also called the logical complement, is an operation that takes a proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P or \overline. It is interpreted intuitively as being true when P is false, and false ...
and
aspect Aspect or Aspects may refer to: Entertainment * ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art * Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company * Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England * ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
are marked by particles while
interrogative An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...
sentences are marked either by particles or
interrogative word An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', ''who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most o ...
s equivalent to English "wh-words". A complete Khmer sentence consists of four basic elements—an optional topic, an optional subject, an obligatory predicate, and various adverbials and particles. The topic and subject are
noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
s, predicates are
verb phrase In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntactic unit composed of a verb and its arguments except the subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause. Thus, in the sentence ''A fat man quickly put the money into the box'', the words ''quic ...
s and another noun phrase acting as an
object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...
or verbal attribute often follows the predicate.


Basic constituent order

When combining these noun and verb phrases into a sentence the order is typically SVO: : When both a
direct object In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
and
indirect object In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
are present without any grammatical markers, the preferred order is SV(DO)(IO). In such a case, if the direct object phrase contains multiple components, the indirect object immediately follows the noun of the direct object phrase and the direct object's modifiers follow the indirect object: : This ordering of objects can be changed and the meaning clarified with the inclusion of particles. The word , which normally means "to arrive" or "towards", can be used as a preposition meaning "to": : Alternatively, the indirect object could precede the direct object if the object-marking preposition were used: : However, in spoken discourse OSV is possible when emphasizing the object in a
topic–comment In linguistics, the topic, or theme, of a sentence is what is being talked about, and the comment (rheme or Focus (linguistics), focus) is what is being said about the topic. This division into old vs. new content is called information structu ...
-like structure. : :


Noun phrase

The noun phrase in Khmer typically has the following structure: : = () () () () () The elements in parentheses are optional.
Honorific An honorific is a title that conveys esteem, courtesy, or respect for position or rank when used in addressing or referring to a person. Sometimes, the term "honorific" is used in a more specific sense to refer to an honorary academic title. It ...
s are a class of words that serve to index the social status of the referent. Honorifics can be kinship terms or personal names, both of which are often used as first and second person pronouns, or specialized words such as ('god') before royal and religious objects. The most common demonstratives are ('this, these') and ('that, those'). The word ('those over there') has a more distal or vague connotation. If the noun phrase contains a possessive adjective, it follows the noun and precedes the numeral. If a descriptive attribute co-occurs with a possessive, the possessive construction () is expected. Some examples of typical Khmer noun phrases are: : The Khmer particle marked attributes in Old Khmer noun phrases and is used in formal and literary language to signify that what precedes is the noun and what follows is the attribute. Modern usage may carry the connotation of mild intensity. :


Verb phrase

Khmer verbs are completely uninflected, and once a subject or topic has been introduced or is clear from context the noun phrase may be dropped. Thus, the simplest possible sentence in Khmer consists of a single verb. For example, 'to go' on its own can mean "I'm going.", "He went.", "They've gone.", "Let's go.", etc. This also results in long strings of verbs such as: : Khmer uses three verbs for what translates into English as the copula. The general copula is ; it is used to convey identity with nominal predicates. For locative predicates, the copula is . The verb is the "existential" copula meaning "there is" or "there exists". : :
Negation In logic, negation, also called the logical complement, is an operation that takes a proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P or \overline. It is interpreted intuitively as being true when P is false, and false ...
is achieved by putting before the verb and the particle at the end of the sentence or clause. In colloquial speech, verbs can also be negated without the need for a final particle, by placing before them. : Past tense can be conveyed by adverbs, such as "yesterday" or by the use of perfective particles such as : Different senses of future action can also be expressed by the use of adverbs like "tomorrow" or by the future tense marker , which is placed immediately before the verb, or both: : Imperatives are often unmarked. For example, in addition to the meanings given above, the "sentence" can also mean "Go!". Various words and particles may be added to the verb to soften the command to varying degrees, including to the point of politeness ( jussives): : Prohibitives take the form " + " and also are often softened by the addition of the particle to the end of the phrase. :


Questions

There are three basic types of questions in Khmer. Questions requesting specific information use question words.
Polar questions Polar may refer to: Geography Polar may refer to: * Geographical pole, either of two fixed points on the surface of a rotating body or planet, at 90 degrees from the equator, based on the axis around which a body rotates * Polar climate, the c ...
are indicated with interrogative particles, most commonly , a homonym of the negation particle. Tag questions are indicated with various particles and rising inflection. The SVO word order is generally not inverted for questions. : In more formal contexts and in polite speech, questions are also marked at their beginning by the particle . :


Passive voice

Khmer does not have a passive voice, but there is a construction utilizing the main verb ("to hit", "to be correct", "to affect") as an auxiliary verb meaning "to be subject to" or "to undergo"—which results in sentences that are translated to English using the passive voice. :


Clause syntax

Complex sentences are formed in Khmer by the addition of one or more
clause In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with ...
s to the main clause. The various types of clauses in Khmer include the
coordinate clause In grammar, a conjunction (abbreviated or ) is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions. That definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech and so what constitutes a ...
, the
relative clause A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phraseRodney D. Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, ''A Student's Introduction to English Grammar'', CUP 2005, p. 183ff. and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments ...
and the subordinate clause. Word order in clauses is the same for that of the basic sentences described above. Coordinate clauses do not necessarily have to be marked; they can simply follow one another. When explicitly marked, they are joined by words similar to English conjunctions such as ("and") and ("and then") or by clause-final conjunction-like adverbs and , both of which can mean "also" or "and also"; disjunction is indicated by ("or"). Relative clauses can be introduced by ("that") but, similar to coordinate clauses, often simply follow the main clause. For example, both phrases below can mean "the hospital bed that has wheels". : Relative clauses are more likely to be introduced with if they do not immediately follow the head noun. Khmer subordinate conjunctions always precede a subordinate clause. Subordinate conjunctions include words such as ("because"), ("seems as if") and ("in order to").


Numerals

Counting in Khmer is based on a
biquinary Bi-quinary coded decimal is a numeral encoding scheme used in many abacuses and in some early computers, including the Colossus. The term ''bi-quinary'' indicates that the code comprises both a two-state (''bi'') and a five-state (''quin''ary) ...
system: the numbers from 6 to 9 have the form "five one", "five two", etc. The words for multiples of ten from 30 to 90 are not related to the basic Khmer numbers, but are Chinese in origin, and probably came to Khmer via Thai.
Khmer numerals Khmer numerals are the numerals used in the Khmer language. They have been in use since at least the early 7th century, with the earliest known use being on a stele dated to AD 604 found in Prasat Bayang, near Angkor Borei, Cambodia. Numera ...
, which were inherited from Indian numerals, are used more widely than
Western Arabic numerals Arabic numerals are the ten numerical digits: , , , , , , , , and . They are the most commonly used symbols to write decimal numbers. They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers such as c ...
. The principal number words are listed in the following table, which gives Western and Khmer digits, Khmer spelling and IPA transcription. Intermediate numbers are formed by compounding the above elements. Powers of ten are denoted by loan words: (100), (1,000), (10,000), (100,000) and (1,000,000) from Thai and (10,000,000) from Sanskrit.
Ordinal number In set theory, an ordinal number, or ordinal, is a generalization of ordinal numerals (first, second, th, etc.) aimed to extend enumeration to infinite sets. A finite set can be enumerated by successively labeling each element with the least n ...
s are formed by placing the particle before the corresponding cardinal number.


Social registers

Khmer employs a system of registers in which the speaker must always be conscious of the social status of the person spoken to. The different registers, which include those used for common speech, polite speech, speaking to or about royals and speaking to or about monks, employ alternate verbs, names of body parts and pronouns. As an example, the word for "to eat" used between intimates or in reference to animals is . Used in polite reference to commoners, it is . When used of those of higher social status, it is or . For monks the word is and for royals, . Another result is that the pronominal system is complex and full of honorific variations, just a few of which are shown in the table below.


Writing system

Khmer is written with the Khmer script, an
abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez language, Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; ...
developed from the
Pallava script The Pallava script or Pallava Grantha, is a Brahmic scripts, Brahmic script, named after the Pallava dynasty of South India, attested since the 4th century AD. As epigrapher Arlo Griffiths makes clear, however, the term is misleading as not all o ...
of India before the 7th century when the first known inscription appeared. Written left-to-right with vowel signs that can be placed after, before, above or below the consonant they follow, the Khmer script is similar in appearance and usage to
Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...
and Lao, both of which were based on the Khmer system. The Khmer script is also distantly related to the
Mon–Burmese script The Mon-Burmese script (မွန်မြန်မာအက္ခရာ)( mnw, အက္ခရ်မန်ဗၟာ, links=no) (also called the Mon script, Old Mon script and Burmese script) is an abugida that derives from the Pallava Grantha ...
. Within Cambodia, literacy in the Khmer alphabet is estimated at 77.6%. Consonant symbols in Khmer are divided into two groups, or series. The first series carries the inherent vowel while the second series carries the inherent vowel . The Khmer names of the series, ('voiceless') and ('voiced'), respectively, indicate that the second series consonants were used to represent the voiced phonemes of Old Khmer. As the voicing of stops was lost, however, the contrast shifted to the phonation of the attached vowels, which, in turn, evolved into a simple difference of vowel quality, often by
diphthongization In historical linguistics, vowel breaking, vowel fracture, or diphthongization is the sound change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong. Types Vowel breaking may be unconditioned or conditioned. It may be triggered by the presence of ...
. This process has resulted in the Khmer alphabet having two symbols for most consonant phonemes and each vowel symbol having two possible readings, depending on the series of the initial consonant:


Examples

The following text is from Article 1 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal De ...
.


See also

*
Hem Chieu Hem Chieu ( km, ហែម ចៀវ; 1898 - 1943) was a Cambodian Buddhist monk and a prominent figure in the development of Khmer nationalism. Chieu was a professor at the Higher School of Pali in Phnom Penh, and strongly objected to attempts by ...
*
Khmer literature Cambodian literature ( km, អក្សរសាស្ត្រខ្មែរ, ), also Khmer literature, has a very ancient origin. Like most Southeast Asian national literatures its traditional corpus has two distinct aspects or levels: *The ...
*
Romanization of Khmer The romanization of Khmer is a representation of the Khmer (Cambodian) language using letters of the Latin alphabet. This is most commonly done with Khmer proper nouns, such as names of people and geographical names, as in a gazetteer. Romanizat ...


References and notes


Further reading

* Ferlus, Michel. (1992). ''Essai de phonétique historique du khmer'' (Du milieu du premier millénaire de notre ère à l'époque actuelle)", Mon–Khmer Studies XXI: 57–89) * Headley, Robert and others. (1977). ''Cambodian-English Dictionary''. Washington, Catholic University Press. * Herington, Jennifer and Amy Ryan. (2013)
Sociolinguistic Survey of the Khmer Khe in Cambodia
. Chiang Mai: Linguistics Institute, Payap University. * Huffman, F. E., Promchan, C., & Lambert, C.-R. T. (1970). ''Modern spoken Cambodian''. New Haven: Yale University Press. * Huffman, F. E., Lambert, C.-R. T., & Im Proum. (1970). ''Cambodian system of writing and beginning reader with drills and glossary''. Yale linguistic series. New Haven: Yale University Press. * Jacob, Judith. (1966). ‘Some features of Khmer versification’, in C. E. Bazell, J. C. Catford, M. A. K. Halliday, and R. H. Robins, eds., In Memory of J. R Firth, 227–41. London: Longman. ncludes discussion of the two series of syllables and their places in Khmer shymes* Jacob, Judith. (1974). ''A Concise Cambodian-English Dictionary''. London, Oxford University Press. * Jacob, J. M. (1996). ''The traditional literature of Cambodia: a preliminary guide''. London oriental series, v. 40. New York: Oxford University Press. * Jacob, J. M., & Smyth, D. (1993). ''Cambodian linguistics, literature and history: collected articles''. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. * Keesee, A. P. K. (1996). ''An English-spoken Khmer dictionary: with romanized writing system, usage, and indioms, and notes on Khmer speech and grammar''. London: Kegan Paul International. * Meechan, M. (1992). ''Register in Khmer the laryngeal specification of pharyngeal expansion''. Ottawa: National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada. * Sak-Humphry, C. (2002). ''Communicating in Khmer: an interactive intermediate level Khmer course''. Manoa, Hawai'i: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies, University of Hawai'i at Manoa. OCLC: 56840636 * Smyth, D. (1995). ''Colloquial Cambodian: a complete language course''. London: Routledge. * Stewart, F., & May, S. (2004). ''In the shadow of Angkor: contemporary writing from Cambodia''. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. * Tonkin, D. (1991). ''The Cambodian alphabet: how to write the Khmer language''. Bangkok: Trasvin Publications.


External links


Kheng.info
An online audio dictionary for learning Khmer, with thousands of native speaker recordings an
text segmentation software



Khmer Swadesh vocabulary list
(from Wiktionary'
Swadesh-list appendix

Dictionary and SpellChecker
open sourced and collaborative project based on
Chuon Nath Chuon Nath ( km, ជួន ណាត; 11 March 1883 – 25 September 1969) was a Cambodian monk and the late ''Gana Mahanikaya'' Supreme Patriarch of Cambodia. Amongst his achievements is his effort in conservation of the Khmer language in the ...
Khmer Dictionary
How to install Khmer script on a Windows 7 computer

How to install Khmer script on a Windows XP computer
*
Khmer
' a


Online Khmer & English dictionary

Khmer Online Dictionaries
* Khmer audio lessons at Wikiotics * http://unicode-table.com/en/sections/khmer/ * http://unicode-table.com/en/sections/khmer-symbols/ {{Authority control Languages attested from the 9th century Analytic languages Isolating languages Languages of Cambodia Languages of Thailand Languages of Vietnam Subject–verb–object languages