Khmer

អក្សរខ្មែរ

Abugida · 33 letters

Each consonant carries an implied vowel — ka, not k — and marks hung above, below or around it change that vowel. You learn the consonants, then the vowel marks, then the combinations: three steps instead of one. Every script of India, plus Thai and Khmer.

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What pays off on the road

• ក្រុង, “city”, opens eleven of the eighteen town names in our packs; with ភ្នំ hill, កោះ island and ខេត្ត province, the sign falls apart.
• Only one country writes it: recognising the texture is enough, it is Cambodia.
• Reading a name: the second series first — ង and រ are among the three commonest signs of our names — remembering which series each consonant belongs to.

How it works

Two series, and that is the whole system

ក and គ both read "k". There is no mistake: Khmer sorts its thirty-three consonants into two series, and two consonants from different series may note the same sound.

What separates them is the vowel. A first-series consonant brings an "a"; a second-series one brings an "o". And above all, the series decides how every following vowel is read: ា says "a" after the first, "ea" after the second.

That is why a Khmer vowel cannot be read on its own. You must first know which series the consonant carrying it belongs to — and that is the first thing the table below shows.

The consonants that go under the line

ក្រុង, "city", does not have three consonants side by side: it is a ក with a រ hooked underneath. The small sign between them, ្, is not read — it says the next consonant is written below.

That subscript form does not always resemble the full letter, and it is the main difficulty in reading. But it is easy to spot: anything hanging below the line is a subscript consonant.

Khmer writes no spaces between words. Subscript consonants are therefore one of the few landmarks telling you where a syllable begins.

Vowels written before their consonant

As in Thai, several Khmer vowels are drawn to the left of the consonant pronounced before them: េ ែ ៃ ោ ៅ and ើ.

Reading a sign in the order the marks are painted therefore gives a word that does not exist. ពេញ, the end of Phnom Penh, shows the េ before the ព although it is said "penh". Find the consonant first, then read the vowel set in front of it.

It is only a matter of drawing: the vowel belongs to the consonant that precedes it in speech, and that is how a Khmer keyboard types it.

What we do not transliterate, and why

Word by word, reading works: កំពង់ reads "kampong", ភ្នំពេញ "phnompenh", ក្រុង "krong". The implied vowel drops at the end of a word, as it should.

But Khmer writes no spaces, and a place name is nearly always a compound. ក្រុងសៀមរាប, Krong Siem Reap, then reads "krongosiemorab": the vowel of ង, which ought to drop at the end of "krong", resurfaces in the middle because nothing says where the word stops.

That is why there is no place name quiz here — better one exercise less than an exercise that teaches something false. What remains is what helps in front of a sign: recognising the script, knowing it is used only in Cambodia, and reading the twenty-odd words that turn up everywhere.

Cheat sheet

First series: they bring an "a"

Fifteen consonants. Each arrives with an implied "a", and gives the vowels that follow it their first-series reading.

Second series: they bring an "o"

Eighteen consonants, many noting the same sound as a first-series one. They are not duplicates: they bring an "o", and change how the following vowels are read.

The vowels, and their two readings

Each sign reads two ways depending on the series of the consonant carrying it. That is why a Khmer vowel cannot be read on its own — and it is the script's whole system.

Neither consonant nor vowel

Seven signs, including the commonest in the script: the coeng, which slides a consonant under the line. The last two change not their consonant's sound but its series, and so how everything after it is read.

The words on signs

Countries

Cambodia

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