Khmer (/kəˈmɛər/kə-MAIR;^[5]ខ្មែរ,UNGEGN:Khmêr[kʰmae]) is anAustroasiatic language spoken natively by theKhmer people. This language is anofficial language andnational language ofCambodia. The language is also widely spoken by Khmer people inEastern Thailand andIsan,Thailand, also inSoutheast andMekong Delta ofVietnam.

Khmer
Cambodian
ភាសាខ្មែរ /ខេមរភាសា Phéasa Khmêr /Khémôrôphéasa
Phéasa Khmêr ('Khmer language') written in Khmer script
Pronunciation	[pʰiəsaːkʰmae] [kʰeːmarapʰiəsaː]
Native to	Cambodia Thailand (East andIsan) Vietnam (Mekong Delta andSoutheast)
Ethnicity	Khmer
Speakers	L1: 19 million (2019)[1] L2: 1 million (2024)[2] Total: 21 million (2019–2024)[3]
Language family	Austroasiatic Khmer
Early forms	Proto-Khmeric Old Khmer Middle Khmer
Writing system	Khmer script Khmer Braille
Official status
Official language in	Cambodia
Recognised minority language in	Thailand  Vietnam
Regulated by	Royal Academy of Cambodia, National Council of Khmer Language[4]
Language codes
ISO 639-1	km Central Khmer
ISO 639-2	khm Central Khmer
ISO 639-3	Either: khm – Khmer kxm – Northern Khmer
Glottolog	khme1253  Khmeric cent1989  Central Khmer
Linguasphere	46-FBA-a
Khmer

This article containsKhmer text. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofKhmer script.

Khmer has been influenced considerably bySanskrit andPali especially in the royal and religiousregisters, throughHinduism and Buddhism,^[6] due toOld Khmer being the language of the historical empires ofChenla andAngkor.

The vast majority of Khmer speakers speakCentral 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, and that of theKhmer Khe inStung 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 theKhmer Empire. TheNorthern Khmer dialect is spoken by over a million Khmers in the southern regions ofNortheast Thailand and is treated by some linguists as a separate language. Khmer Krom, or Southern Khmer, is the first language of theKhmer of Vietnam, while the Khmer living in the remoteCardamom Mountains speak a very conservative dialect that still displays features of theMiddle Khmer language.

Khmer is primarily ananalytic,isolating language. There are noinflections,conjugations orcase endings. Instead,particles and auxiliary words are used to indicate grammatical relationships. General word order issubject–verb–object, andmodifiers follow the word they modify.Classifiers appear after numbers when used to count nouns, though not always so consistently as in languages likeChinese. In spoken Khmer,topic-comment 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 asBurmese,Thai,Lao, andVietnamese in that it is not atonal language. Words arestressed on the final syllable, hence many words conform to the typical Mon–Khmer pattern of a stressed syllable preceded by aminor syllable. The language has been written in theKhmer script, anabugida descended from theBrahmi script via the southern IndianPallava script, 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 writeclusters and a division of consonants into two series with differentinherent vowels.

Khmer is a member of theAustroasiatic language family, the autochthonous family in an area that stretches from the Malay Peninsula through Southeast Asia to East India.^[7] Austroasiatic, which also includesMon,Vietnamese andMunda, has been studied since 1856 and was first proposed as a language family in 1907.^[8] Despite the amount of research, there is still doubt about the internal relationship of the languages of Austroasiatic.^[9]

Diffloth places Khmer in an eastern branch of theMon-Khmer languages.^[10] In these classification schemes Khmer's closest genetic relatives are theBahnaric andPearic languages.^[11] 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.^[9]

Khmer is spoken by some 13 million people inCambodia, 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 southernVietnam (1999 census)^[12] and 1.4 million in northeastThailand (2006).^[13]

Khmerdialects, although mutually intelligible, are sometimes quite marked. Notable variations are found in speakers fromPhnom Penh (Cambodia's capital city), the ruralBattambang area, the areas of Northeast Thailand adjacent to Cambodia such asSurin province, theCardamom Mountains, and southern Vietnam.^[14][15][16] The dialects form acontinuum running roughly north to south. Standard Cambodian Khmer is mutually intelligible with the others but aKhmer Krom speaker from Vietnam, for instance, may have great difficulty communicating with a Khmer native ofSisaket Province in Thailand.

The following is a classification scheme showing the development of the modern Khmer dialects.^[17][18]

Standard Khmer, orCentral Khmer, the language as taught in Cambodian schools and used by the media, is based on the dialect spoken throughout theCentral Plain,^[19] a region encompassed by the northwest and central provinces.

Northern Khmer (calledKhmer Surin 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 ofLan Xang. The conquests of Cambodia byNaresuan the Great forAyutthaya 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.^[20]

This has resulted in a distinct accent influenced by the surrounding tonal languagesLao andThai, lexical differences, and phonemic differences in both vowels and distribution of consonants. Syllable-final/r/, 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.^[21][22]

Western Khmer, also called Cardamom Khmer or Chanthaburi Khmer, is spoken by a very small, isolated population in theCardamom mountain range extending from western Cambodia into easternCentral Thailand. Although little studied, this variety is unique in that it maintains a definite system ofvocal register that has all but disappeared in other dialects of modern Khmer.^[7]

Phnom Penh Khmer is spoken in the capital and surrounding areas. This dialect is characterized by merging or completeelision 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 aconsonant cluster (as in the English word "bread"). The "r",trilled orflapped in other dialects, is either pronounced as auvular trill or not pronounced at all.^[23]

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 inVietnamese. For example, some people pronounceត្រី[trəj] ('fish') as[tʰəj]: the[r] 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 wordរៀន[riən] ('study'), which is pronounced[ʀiən], with the uvular "r" and the same intonation described above.^[23]

Khmer Krom orSouthern Khmer is spoken by the indigenous Khmer population of theMekong Delta, 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.^[24] 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.^[25]

Khmer Khe is spoken in theSe San,Srepok andSekong river valleys ofSesan andSiem Pang districts inStung 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.^[26]

Linguistic 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.^[27] Pre-Angkorian Khmer is the Old Khmer language from 600 through 800 CE. Angkorian Khmer is the language as it was spoken in theKhmer Empire from the 9th century until the 13th century.^[28]

The following centuries saw changes inmorphology,phonology andlexicon. 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.^[28] Modern Khmer is dated from the 19th century to today.^[27]

The following table shows the conventionally accepted historical stages of Khmer.^[17]

Just as modern Khmer was emerging from the transitional period represented by Middle Khmer, Cambodia fell under theinfluence ofFrenchcolonialism.^[29] Thailand, which had for centuries claimed suzerainty over Cambodia and controlled succession to the Cambodian throne, began losing its influence on the language.^[30] In 1887 Cambodia was fully integrated intoFrench Indochina, which brought in aFrench-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.^[30]

Many native scholars in the early 20th century, led by a monk namedChuon Nath, 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.^[29][31] Opponents, led byKeng Vannsak, who embraced "total Khmerization" by denouncing the reversion to classical languages and favoring the use of contemporary colloquial Khmer for neologisms, andIeu Koeus, who favored borrowing from Thai, were also influential.^[31]

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.^[29]

The phonological system described here is the inventory of sounds of the standard spoken language,^[19] represented using theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

The voiceless plosives/p/,/t/,/c/,/k/ may occur with or withoutaspiration (as[p] vs.[pʰ], etc.); this difference is contrastive before a vowel. However, the aspirated sounds in that position may be analyzed as sequences of twophonemes:/ph/,/th/,/ch/,/kh/. This analysis is supported by the fact thatinfixes can be inserted between the stop and the aspiration; for example[tʰom] ('big') becomes[tumhum] ('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:^[32][33] slight aspiration is expected when the following consonant is not one of/ʔ/,/b/,/d/,/r/,/s/,/h/ (or/ŋ/ if the initial plosive is/k/).

The voiced plosives are pronounced asimplosives[ɓ,ɗ] by most speakers, but this feature is weak in educated speech, where they become[b,d].^[34]

In syllable-final position,/h/ and/ʋ/ approach[ç] and[w] respectively. The stops/p/,/t/,/c/,/k/ are unaspirated and haveno audible release when occurring as syllable finals.^[19]

In addition, the consonants/ɡ/,/f/,/ʃ/ and/z/ occur occasionally in recentloan words in the speech of Cambodians familiar with French and other languages.

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.^[35] The description below follows Huffman (1970).^[19] 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.^[36]

In addition, some diphthongs and triphthongs are analyzed as a vowel nucleus plus asemivowel (/j/ or/w/) coda because they cannot be followed by a final consonant. These include: (with short monophthongs)/ɨw/,/əw/,/aj/,/aw/,/uj/; (with long monophthongs)/əːj/,/aːj/; (with long diphthongs)/iəj/,/iəw/,/ɨəj/,/aoj/,/aəj/ and/uəj/.^[37]

The independent vowels are the vowels that can exist without a preceding or trailing consonant. The independent vowels may be used as monosyllabic words, or as the initial syllables in longer words. Khmer words never begin with regular vowels; they can, however, begin with independent vowels. Example: ឰដ៏, ឧទាហរណ៍, ឧត្តម, ឱកាស...។

A Khmersyllable begins with a single consonant, or else with acluster of two, or rarely three, consonants. The only possible clusters of three consonants at the start of a syllable are/str/,/skr/,^[38] and (with aspirated consonants analyzed as two-consonant sequences)/sth/,/lkh/. There are 85 possible two-consonant clusters (including [pʰ] etc. analyzed as/ph/ etc.). All the clusters are shown in the following table, phonetically, i.e. superscriptʰ can mark either contrastive or non-contrastive aspiration (seeabove).

Slight vowelepenthesis occurs in the clusters consisting of a plosive followed by/ʔ/,/b/,/d/, in those beginning/ʔ/,/m/,/l/, and in the cluster/kŋ-/.^{[39]: 8–9}

After the initial consonant or consonant cluster comes the syllabicnucleus, which is one of thevowels listed above. This vowel may end the syllable or may be followed by acoda, 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/b/,/d/,/r/,/s/ and the aspirates can appear as the coda (although final/r/ is heard in some dialects, most notably inNorthern Khmer).^[40]

Aminor syllable (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 bereduced to[ə], although in careful or formal speech, including on television and radio, they are clearly articulated. An example of such a word isមនុស្សmɔnuh, mɔnɨh, mĕəʾnuh ('person'), pronounced[mɔˈnuh], or more casually[məˈnuh].^[39]: 10

Stress in Khmer falls on the final syllable of a word.^[41] Because of this predictable pattern, stress is non-phonemic in Khmer (it does not distinguish different meanings).Primary stress falls on the final syllable, withsecondary stress 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.^{[39]: 10–11} Long polysyllables are not often used in conversation.^[19]: 12

Most Khmer words consist of either one or two syllables. In most native disyllabic words, the first syllable is aminor (fully unstressed) syllable. Such words have been described assesquisyllabic (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 takessecondary stress. Most such words arecompounds, but some are singlemorphemes (generally loanwords). An example isភាសា ('language'), pronounced[ˌpʰiəˈsaː].^[39]: 10Words 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.^[42]

Compounds, however, preserve the stress patterns of the constituent words. Thusសំបុកចាប, the name of a kind of cookie (literally 'bird's nest'), is pronounced[sɑmˌbokˈcaːp], with secondary stress on the second rather than the first syllable, because it is composed of the words[sɑmˈbok] ('nest') and[caːp] ('bird').^[42]

Khmer once had aphonation distinction in its vowels, but this now survives only in the most archaic dialect (Western Khmer).^[7] The distinction arose historically when vowels after Old Khmer voiced consonants becamebreathy voiced and diphthongized; for example*kaa,*ɡaa became*kaa,*ɡe̤a. When consonant voicing was lost, the distinction was maintained by the vowel (*kaa,*ke̤a); later the phonation disappeared as well ([kaː],[kiə]).^[32] These processes explain the origin of what are now called a-series and o-series consonants in theKhmer script.

Although most Cambodian dialects are nottonal, the colloquial Phnom Penh dialect has developed a tonal contrast (level versus peaking tone) as a by-product of theelision of/r/.^[32]

Intonation often conveyssemantic context in Khmer, as in distinguishingdeclarative statements, questions and exclamations. The available grammatical means of making such distinctions are not always used, or may be ambiguous; for example, the finalinterrogative particleទេ/teː/ can also serve as an emphasizing (or in some cases negating) particle.^[43]

The intonation pattern of a typical Khmer declarative phrase is a steady rise throughout followed by an abrupt drop on the last syllable.^[38]

ខ្ញុំមិនចង់បានទេ   [↗kʰɲommɨncɑŋbaːn|↘teː]    ('I don't want it')^[38]

Other intonation contours signify a different type of phrase such as the "full doubt" interrogative, similar toyes–no questions in English. Full doubt interrogatives remain fairly even in tone throughout, but rise sharply towards the end.

អ្នកចង់ទៅលេងសៀមរាបទេ   [↗neaʔcɑŋ|↗tɨwleːŋsiəmriəp|ꜛteː]    ('do you want to go to Siem Reap?')^[38]

Exclamatory phrases follow the typical steadily rising pattern, but rise sharply on the last syllable instead of falling.^[38]

សៀវភៅនេះថ្លៃណាស់   [↗siəwpʰɨwnih|↗tʰlaj|ꜛnah]    ('this book is expensive!')^[38]

Khmer is primarily ananalytic language with noinflection. Syntactic relations are mainly determined by word order. Old andMiddle Khmer used particles to markgrammatical categories and many of these have survived in Modern Khmer but are used sparingly, mostly in literary or formal language.^[43] Khmer makes extensive use ofauxiliary verbs, "directionals" andserial verb construction. Colloquial Khmer is azero copula 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 issubject–verb–object (SVO), although subjects are oftendropped;prepositions are used rather than postpositions.^[44]

Topic-Comment constructions are common and the language is generallyhead-initial (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 asactor nominalization, should be treated as a morphological process or a purely syntactic device,^{[45]: 46, 74} and some derivational morphology seems "purely decorative" and performs no known syntactic work.^[45]: 53

Lexical categories have been hard to define in Khmer.^[45]: 360Henri Maspero, an early scholar of Khmer, claimed the language had no parts of speech,^[45] while a later scholar, Judith Jacob, posited four parts of speech and innumerable particles.^[46]: 331John Haiman, 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.^[45] Some of the more important lexical categories and their function are demonstrated in the following example sentence taken from a hospital brochure:^[45]: 378

Modern Khmer is anisolating language, which means that it uses littleproductivemorphology. There is somederivation by means ofprefixes andinfixes, but this is a remnant of Old Khmer and not always productive in the modern language.^[47] Khmer morphology is evidence of a historical process through which the language was, at some point in the past, changed from being anagglutinative language to adopting an isolating typology.^[48] Affixed forms arelexicalized and cannot be used productively to form new words.^[39]: 311 Below are some of the most common affixes with examples as given by Huffman.^{[39]: 312–316}

Compounding in Khmer is a common derivational process that takes two forms, coordinate compounds and repetitive compounds. Coordinate compounds join twounbound morphemes (independent words) of similar meaning to form a compound signifying a concept more general than either word alone.^[39]: 296 Coordinate compounds join either two nouns or two verbs. Repetitive compounds, one of the most productive derivational features of Khmer, usereduplication of an entire word to derive words whose meaning depends on the class of the reduplicated word.^[39]: 185 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:^{[39]: 296–297}

Repetitive compounds:^{[39]: 185–185}

Khmernouns do not inflect forgrammatical gender orsingular/plural. There are noarticles, but indefiniteness is often expressed by the word for "one" (មួយ[muəj]) following the noun as inឆ្កែមួយ ([cʰkaemuəj] "a dog"). Plurality can be marked bypostnominal particles, numerals, or reduplication of a following adjective, which, although similar to intensification, is usually not ambiguous due to context.^[49]

[cʰkae dog craən] many [cʰkae craən] dog many "many dogs"

[cʰkae dog piː] two [cʰkae piː] dog two "two dogs"

[cʰkae dog tʰom large tʰom] large [cʰkae tʰom tʰom] dog large large 'large dogs'

Classifying particles are used after numerals, but are not always obligatory as they are inThai orChinese, 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.^{[39]: 67–68}

Possession is colloquially expressed by word order. The possessor is placed after the thing that is possessed.[45]^: 160 Alternatively, in more complex sentences or when emphasis is required, a possessive construction using the wordរបស់ ([rɔːbɑh]~[lə.bɑh], "property, object") may be employed. In formal and literary contexts, the possessive particleនៃ ([nɨj]) is used:^[39]: 358

[puəʔmaːʔ friend kʰɲom] I [puəʔmaːʔ kʰɲom] friend I "my friend"

[puəʔmaːʔ friend rɔːɓɑh property kʰɲom] I [puəʔmaːʔ rɔːɓɑh kʰɲom] friend property I "my friend"

[puəʔmaːʔ friend nɨj of kʰɲom] I [puəʔmaːʔ nɨj kʰɲom] friend of I "my friend"

Pronouns are subject to a complicated system of social register, the choice of pronoun depending on the perceived relationships between speaker, audience and referent (seeSocial registers below). Khmer exhibitspronoun avoidance, so kinship terms, nicknames and proper names are often used instead of pronouns (including for the first person) among intimates. Subject pronouns are frequentlydropped in colloquial conversation.^[49]

Adjectives, verbs and verb phrases may be made into nouns by the use ofnominalization particles. Three of the more common particles used to create nouns are[kaː],[seckdəj], and[pʰiəp].^{[45]: 45–48} 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[sokʰapʰiəp] ("health") from[sok] ("to be healthy").^[42]

[kaː NMLZ rŭəhnɨw] to live [kaː rŭəhnɨw] NMLZ {to live} 'life'

[sec NMLZ kdəj deik] to lie down [sec {kdəj deik}] NMLZ {to lie down} '[the act of] lying down'

[pʰiəp NMLZ sɑːm rum'] appropriate [pʰiəp {sɑːm rum'}] NMLZ appropriate 'appropriateness'[45]

Adjectives,demonstratives andnumerals 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 acopula.^[39]

Degrees of comparison are constructed syntactically.Comparatives are expressed using the wordជាង/ciəŋ/: "A X/ciəŋ/ [B]" (A is more X [than B]). The most common way to expresssuperlatives is withជាងគេ/ciəŋkeː/: "A X/ciəŋkeː/" (A is the most X).^[49] Intensity is also expressed syntactically, similar to other languages of the region, byreduplication or with the use ofintensifiers.^[49]

/srəj girl nuh DEM sʔaːt/ pretty /srəj nuh sʔaːt/ girl DEM pretty 'That girl is pretty.'

/srəj girl nuh DEM sʔaːt pretty sʔaːt/ pretty /srəj nuh sʔaːt sʔaːt/ girl DEM pretty pretty 'That girl is very pretty.'

/srəj girl nuh DEM sʔaːt pretty nah/ very /srəj nuh sʔaːt nah/ girl DEM pretty very 'That girl is very pretty.'

As is typical of most East Asian languages,^[50] Khmer verbs do not inflect at all;tense,aspect andmood can be expressed using auxiliary verbs, particles (such asកំពុង/kəmpuŋ/, placed before a verb to expresscontinuous aspect) and adverbs (such as "yesterday", "earlier", "tomorrow"), or may be understood from context.Serial verb construction is quite common.^[45]: 253

Khmer verbs are a relativelyopen class and can be divided into two types, main verbs and auxiliary verbs.^[45]: 254 Huffman defined a Khmer verb as "any word that can be (negated)",^[39]: 56 and further divided main verbs into three classes.

Transitive verbs are verbs that may be followed by adirect object:

/kʰɲom I ɲam eat ɓaj/ rice /kʰɲom ɲam ɓaj/ I eat rice "I eat rice."

/kʰɲom I tɨɲ buy ɓaːrəj/ cigarettes /kʰɲom tɨɲ ɓaːrəj/ I buy cigarettes "I buy cigarettes."

Intransitive verbs are verbs that can not be followed by an object:

/kʰɲom I ɗaə walk tɨw DIR pʰsaː/ market /kʰɲom ɗaə tɨw pʰsaː/ I walk DIR market "I walk to the market."

/ʔaɲcəɲ to invite ʔɑŋkuj/ to sit /ʔaɲcəɲ ʔɑŋkuj/ {to invite} {to sit} "Please sit."

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".

Adjective: /proh boy sɑŋ.haː/ handsome /prohsɑŋ.haː/ boyhandsome "handsome boy"

Adverb: /proh boy nuh DEM tʰʋəː kaː to work lʔɑː/ good /proh nuh {tʰʋəː kaː}lʔɑː/ boy DEM {to work}good "That boy works well."

Verb: /proh boy nuh DEM sɑŋ.haː/ handsome /proh nuhsɑŋ.haː/ boy DEMhandsome "That boy is handsome."[39]: 56

Syntax 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.^[51] Khmer syntax is veryanalytic. 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.^[45] Grammatical phenomena such asnegation andaspect are marked by particles whileinterrogative sentences are marked either by particles orinterrogative words 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.^[52] The topic and subject arenoun phrases, predicates areverb phrases and another noun phrase acting as anobject or verbal attribute often follows the predicate.^[52]

When combining these noun and verb phrases into a sentence the order is typically SVO:

When both adirect object andindirect object 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/dɑl/, 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/nəw/ were used:

However, in spoken discourse OSV is possible when emphasizing the object in atopic–comment-like structure.^[45]: 211

The noun phrase in Khmer typically has the following structure:^{[39]: 50–51 [46]: 83}

Noun Phrase = (Honorific)Noun (Adjectival modifiers) (Numeral) (Classifier) (Demonstrative)

The elements in parentheses are optional.Honorifics 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/preah/ ('god') before royal and religious objects.^[45]: 155 The most common demonstratives are/nih/ ('this, these') and/nuh/ ('that, those'). The word/aenuh/ ('those over there') has a more distal or vague connotation.^[42]

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 (/rɔbɑh/) is expected.^[39]: 73

Some examples of typical Khmer noun phrases are:

The Khmer particle/dɑː/ 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.^[45]: 163

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,/tɨw/ 'to go' on its own can mean "I'm going.", "He went.", "They've gone.", "Let's go.", etc.^[39]: 17 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/ciə/; it is used to convey identity with nominal predicates.^[45]: 212 For locative predicates, the copula is/nɨw/.^[45]: 212 The verb/miən/ is the "existential" copula meaning "there is" or "there exists".^[45]: 208

Negation is achieved by puttingមិន/mɨn/ before the verb and the particleទេ/teː/ at the end of the sentence or clause. In colloquial speech, verbs can also be negated without the need for a final particle, by placingឥត/ʔɑt/~/ʔət/ before them.^[49]

/kʰɲom I cɨə/ to believe /kʰɲom cɨə/ I {to believe} 'I believe.'

/kʰɲom I mɨn NEG cɨə to believe teː/ NEG /kʰɲom mɨn cɨə teː/ I NEG {to believe} NEG 'I don't believe.'

/kʰɲom I ʔɑt NEG cɨə/ to believe /kʰɲom ʔɑt cɨə/ I NEG {to believe} 'I don't believe.'

Past tense can be conveyed by adverbs, such as "yesterday" or by the use of perfective particles such as/haəj/

Different senses of future action can also be expressed by the use of adverbs like "tomorrow" or by the future tense marker/nɨŋ/, which is placed immediately before the verb, or both:

Imperatives are often unmarked.^[45]: 240 For example, in addition to the meanings given above, the "sentence"/tɨw/ 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):^[45]: 240

Prohibitives take the form "/kom/ +verb" and also are often softened by the addition of the particle/ʔəj/ to the end of the phrase.[45]^: 242

There are three basic types of questions in Khmer.^[39]: 46 Questions requesting specific information usequestion words.Polar questions are indicated with interrogative particles, most commonly/teː/, a homonym of the negation particle.Tag questions are indicated with various particles and rising inflection.^[39]: 57 The SVO word order is generally notinverted for questions.

In more formal contexts and in polite speech, questions are also marked at their beginning by the particle/taə/.

Khmer does not have a passive voice,^[43] but there is a construction utilizing the main verb/trəw/ ("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.^{[45]: 286–288}

Complex sentences are formed in Khmer by the addition of one or moreclauses to the main clause. The various types of clauses in Khmer include thecoordinate clause, therelative clause and thesubordinate clause. Word order in clauses is the same for that of the basic sentences described above.^[45] 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/nɨŋ/ ("and") and/haəj/ ("and then") or by clause-final conjunction-like adverbs/dae/ and/pʰɑːŋ/, both of which can mean "also" or "and also"; disjunction is indicated by/rɨː/ ("or").^{[45]: 217–218 [53]}

Relative clauses can be introduced by/dael/ ("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".^[45]: 313

/krɛː bed pɛːt hospital miən have kɑŋ wheel ruɲ/ to push /krɛː pɛːt miən kɑŋ ruɲ/ bed hospital have wheel {to push} "the hospital bed that has wheels"

/krɛː bed pɛːt hospital dael REL miən have kɑŋ wheel ruɲ/ to push /krɛː pɛːt dael miən kɑŋ ruɲ/ bed hospital REL have wheel {to push} "the hospital bed that has wheels"

Relative clauses are more likely to be introduced with/dael/ if they do not immediately follow the head noun.^[45]: 314 Khmer subordinate conjunctions always precede a subordinate clause.^[45]: 366 Subordinate conjunctions include words such as/prŭəh/ ("because"),/hakbəj/ ("seems as if") and/daəmbəj/ ("in order to").^{[39]: 251 [45]}

Counting in Khmer is based on abiquinary 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, which were inherited directly from Indian numerals, are used more widely thanWestern numerals, which like Khmer numerals were inherited from Indian, but first passed through the Arabic numerals before reaching the west.

The principal number words are listed in the following table, which gives Western and Khmer digits, Khmer spelling and IPA transcription.^[47]

Intermediate numbers are formed by compounding the above elements. Powers of ten are denoted by loan words:រយrôy/rɔːj/ (100),ពាន់poăn/pŏən/ (1,000),ម៉ឺនmœn/məːn/ (10,000),សែនsên/saen/ (100,000) andលានléan/liən/ (1,000,000) from Thai andកោដិkaôdĕ/kaot/ (10,000,000) from Sanskrit.^[54]

Ordinal numbers are formed by placing the particleទីti/tiː/ before the corresponding cardinal number.^[42]

Khmer employs a system ofregisters 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/siː/. Used in polite reference to commoners, it is/ɲam/. When used of those of higher social status, it is/pisa/ or/tɔtuəltiən/. For monks the word is/cʰan/ and for royals,/saoj/.^[6] 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.^[42]

Khmer is written with the Khmer script, anabugida developed from thePallava script of India before the 7th century when the first known inscription appeared.^[55] 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 toThai andLao, both of which were based on the Khmer system. The Khmer script is also distantly related to theMon–Burmese script.^[55] Within Cambodia, literacy in the Khmer alphabet is estimated at 77.6%.^[56]

Consonant symbols in Khmer are divided into two groups, or series. The first series carries the inherent vowel[ɑː] while the second series carries the inherent vowel[ɔː]. The Khmer names of the series,[akʰoːsaʔ] ('voiceless') and[kʰoːsaʔ] ('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 bydiphthongization.^[32] 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:^[19]

The following text is from Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights.

• Hem Chieu
• Khmer literature
• Romanization of Khmer

• Kheng.info—An online audio dictionary for learning Khmer, with thousands of native speaker recordings andtext segmentation software.
• SEAlang Project: Mon–Khmer languages. The Khmeric Branch
• Khmer Swadesh vocabulary list (from Wiktionary'sSwadesh-list appendix)
• Dictionary and SpellChecker open sourced and collaborative project based onChuon Nath Khmer Dictionary
• How to install Khmer script on a Windows 7 computer
• How to install Khmer script on a Windows XP computer
• Khmer atUCLA Language Materials project
• Online Khmer & English dictionary
• Khmer Online Dictionaries