Language

Khmer

The official language of Cambodia is Khmer. It originates from the Khmer people and has been influenced considerably by Sanskrit and Pali, particularly in the royal and religious registers, and through Hinduism and Buddhism. The language has come in close contact with Thai, Lao, Vietnamese and Cham due to geographical proximity and cultural connection. Khmer’s main distinction from its neighbouring languages is that it is not a tonal language.

The earliest written and recorded language from the Mon-Khmer family, Khmer is spoken by 90% of the population (some 7 million people) and is used in most social and professional contexts such as government administration, education at all levels and in mass media. After Vietnamese, it is the second most widely spoken Austroasiatic language.

Modern Khmer is used nationwide and is understood by most of the country’s inhabitants. Influence from Sanskrit and Pali is characterised by vocabulary used in administration, and the effect of years of French colonial rule is evident in the language too.

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Khmer is mostly an analytic, isolating language. There are no conjugations, inflections or case endings. Rather, particles and auxiliary words are used to indicate grammatical relationships. General word order is subject-verb-object.

Consonants are split into two forms - a first series syllable (/a/) or a second series syllable (/o/). Vowels are written above, below, in front of, after or around consonants using separate letters or diacritics.

Below is an example of Khmer text taken from Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, followed by a transliteration written in the Roman alphabet and its translation into English, as a brief introduction to the language.