Khmer language

On this page

1. Classification
2. History
3. Sounds
4. Dialects
5. Loanwords
6. Spelling and the dictionary
7. Official status
8. See also
9. References

On this page

1. Classification
2. History
3. Sounds
4. Dialects
5. Loanwords
6. Spelling and the dictionary
7. Official status
8. See also
9. References

A public information sign written in Khmer

The Khmer language (ភាសាខ្មែរ) is an Austroasiatic language and the official language of Cambodia, written in the Khmer script.

Classification

Khmer belongs to the Austroasiatic family of languages. The linguist Michel Ferlus counted three present-day forms as the only members of its Khmer group: standard Khmer with its dialects, the Khmer of Surin in Thailand, and the Khmer of the Cardamom Mountains. He wrote that the differences among them are recent, no more than four or five centuries old. The Glottolog database lists the main language as Central Khmer and gives Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam as the countries where it is spoken.

History

Scholars have traditionally divided the written record into three periods: pre-Angkorian Old Khmer of the 7th and 8th centuries, Angkorian Old Khmer of the 9th to 13th centuries, and Middle Khmer of the 14th to 18th centuries. Ferlus noted that these divisions rest more on history than on linguistics. On the evidence of sound changes, he dated the start of Middle Khmer to the 16th century, since inscriptions of the 14th century, and perhaps of the 15th, still show the sounds of Angkorian Khmer.

The linguist Philip Jenner described Middle Khmer as the four centuries in which Old Khmer turned into the modern language. Its main mark, in his account, was a simplified system of consonants and the two vowel registers of today. He also wrote that the standard spelling of the Old Khmer period was lost in these centuries, and he linked that loss to the change from Brahmanism to Theravada Buddhism.

Sounds

Khmer has two registers, two sets of vowels that follow the consonant of a syllable. Ferlus traced them to the loss of voicing in the old voiced stops at the start of words. Syllables that began with a tense voiceless consonant took one set of vowels. Those that began with a voiced consonant that lost its voicing took the other. The breathy voice of the second register survives only in scattered places, in outlying regions such as Battambang and in conservative readings. The Khmer of the Cardamom Mountains has a difference of pitch in its place.

Dialects

Ferlus described standard Khmer as the language of writing. It has a written norm that covers the dialects of Cambodia but no fixed norm of pronunciation, and each maker of a dictionary has described a different dialect. The Khmer of Surin keeps vowel contrasts that the standard has lost, and Ferlus thought they may also survive in northern Cambodia. He treated the Khmer of the Cardamom Mountains as a separate line of development, not an older form of the standard. He recorded it at places in Kampot and Pursat and across the border in Chanthaburi, in Thailand.

Loanwords

Khmer has taken many words from Pali and Sanskrit, the languages of Buddhist and Hindu learning. Jenner wrote that Pali was the main source in Middle Khmer, though Sanskrit was never given up, and some words mix the two. Words also moved between Khmer and Thai in both directions. The scholar Sasagawa Hideo writes that Angkorian Khmer words passed into the Thai of Ayutthaya, and that Khmer later took many Thai words, with Thai influence on its grammar by the 18th century at the latest. Some old Khmer words came back from Thai in a new form. The phrases "Kingdom of Cambodia" and "Nation, Religion, King" on government letterheads also reflect Thai usage.

A Cultural Committee founded by royal ordinance on March 24, 1945, set out to replace French loanwords with new Khmer terms, most of them built from Pali.

Spelling and the dictionary

A committee to write a Khmer dictionary was set up by royal ordinance in 1915, but its members split over whether to spell words by their origin or by their sound. A new committee, formed in 1926 with the monk Chuon Nath among its members, chose spelling by origin. The Royal Library brought out the first book of the dictionary in July 1938. Sasagawa writes that this book settled the long dispute over spelling. The Mekong Review notes that the newspaper Nokor Wat reported the first volume in its edition of July 30, 1938. The fifth edition, of 1967, is known as the Chuon Nath dictionary.

Modernist writers rejected the spelling of the Chuon Nath dictionary and used a reformed spelling promoted by the scholar Keng Vannsak (កេង វ៉ាន់សាក់). Shortly after 1970 the Lon Nol government adopted it for official papers. In March 2009, Prime Minister Hun Sen called for schools, the press and official papers to follow the Chuon Nath dictionary again. On September 25, 2023, the National Council of Khmer Language of the Royal Academy of Cambodia released an updated Khmer dictionary in print and as an app.

Official status

The constitution of 1947 made Cambodian the official language, and the National Assembly recognized Khmer as the language of teaching in schools in 1967. Article 5 of the 1993 constitution makes Khmer the official language and script of Cambodia.

See also

• Cambodia