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Ancient Khmer script engraved on stone.

The Khmer script (អក្ខរក្រមខេមរភាសា: âkkhârâkrâm khémâraphéasa) is used to write the Khmer language which is the official language of Cambodia. It is generally thought that the Khmer script developed from the Pallava script of India. ^[1] The oldest dated inscription in Khmer was found at Angkor Borei in Takev Province south of Phnom Penh and dates from 611 AD.^[2] Those inscriptions that have survived are engraved in stone and the evolution of Khmer script is as follows: The Proto-Canaanite alphabet is an abjad of twenty-plus acrophonic glyphs, which is found in Levantine texts of the Late Bronze Age (from ca. ... It became one of the most widely used writing systems, and was spread by traders of Phoenicia across Europe and the Middle East, where it became used for a variety of languages and spawned many subsequent scripts. ... The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet is an offshoot of the Phoenician alphabet used to write the Hebrew language from about the 10th century BCE until it began to fall out of use in the 5th century BCE with the adoption of the Aramaic alphabet as a writing system for Hebrew and... Bilingual inscription (Greek and Aramaic) by the Indian emperor Ashoka the Great, 3rd century BC. The Aramaic alphabet is an abjad alphabet designed for writing the Aramaic language. ... BrāhmÄ« refers to the pre-modern members of the Brahmic family of scripts. ... The Brahmic family is a family of abugidas (writing systems) used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Javanese script is the script that Javanese is originally written in (not to be confused with Javascript, which is a programming language). ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... 11th century book in Syriac Serto. ... The Nabatean alphabet is a consonantal alphabet (abjad) that was used by the Nabateans in the 2nd century BC. Important inscriptions are found in Petra. ... The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing languages such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and others. ... The Pahlavi script was used broadly in the Sasanid Persian Empire to write down Middle Persian for secular, as well as religious purposes. ... The Avestan alphabet was created in the 3rd century AD for writing the hymns of Zarathustra (a. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... For other uses, see Rune (disambiguation). ... Note: This article contains special characters. ...   The Gothic alphabet is an alphabetic writing system attributed by Philostorgius to Wulfila, used exclusively for writing the ancient Gothic language. ... The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is actually a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by a wide variety of Slavic languages—Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian—as well as many other languages of the... The Samaritan alphabet is a direct descendant of the paleo-Hebrew variety of the Phoenician alphabet, the more commonly known Hebrew alphabet having been adapted from the Aramaic alphabet under the Persian Empire. ... Photograph of Botorrita 1 (both sides), 1st century BC. The Iberian scripts (or Iberian alphabet) are two scripts (or two styles of the same script) found on the Iberian peninsula, the Northeast and South Iberian script. ... The ancient South Arabian alphabet (also known as musnad) branched from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet in ca. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... The Meroitic script is an alphabet of Egyptian (Hieroglyphic) origin used in Kingdom of Meroë. Some scholars, e. ... Jamo redirects here. ... Zhuyin fuhao (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Tongyong Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chu-yin fu-hao), or Symbols for Annotating Sounds, often abbreviated as Zhuyin, or known as Bopomofo (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ) after the first four letters of this Chinese phonemic alphabet (bo po mo fo), is the national phonetic system of the... Nearly all the segmental scripts (alphabets, but see below for more precise terminology) used around the globe were apparently derived from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Tamil script. ... Takéo is a province of Cambodia. ...

• Han Chey, approximately 6th century
• Veal Kan Teng, end of the 6th or early 7th century
• Ang Chomney Kor, 667 century
• Inn Kor Sey, 970 century
• Preash Keo, 1002 AD
• Nor Korr, 1066 AD
• Banteay Chmar, early 12th or 13th century
• Angkor Wat, 13th century
• Angkor script, 1702 AD

The Khmer alphabet has fewer symbols for vowels than the language has vowel phonemes. To account for this, each consonant belongs to one of two series, and the vowel produced depends on which series the consonant belongs to (making it an abugida rather than a true alphabet). Therefore, most vowel signs have two possible pronunciations, depending on which series the consonant belongs to. When no vowel sign is present, usually the inherent vowel of the consonant is used. Vowels signs can be divided into two groups: dependent vowel signs, which are written around a consonant letter, and independent vowel letters, which can stand alone. Dependent vowel signs are used more frequently than independent vowels and all independent vowel letters can be phonetically rendered with a dependent vowel. Khmer also has a number of diacritics, which can change the series of the consonant or change the pronunciation of the vowel. Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In human language, a phoneme is the theoretical representation of a sound. ... An inscription of Swampy Cree using Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, an abugida developed by Christian missionaries for Aboriginal Canadian languages An abugida, alphasyllabary, or syllabics is a writing system in which consonant signs (graphemes) are inherently associated with a following vowel. ... For other uses, see Alphabet (disambiguation). ... A diacritic mark or accent mark is an additional mark added to a basic letter. ...

Styles

There are several styles of Khmer script which are used for different purposes.

• 'Âksâr chriĕng' refers to slanted (or italic) letters. Slanted letters do not serve the same purpose as italics in English, so entire bodies of text such as novels and other publications may be produced in 'âksâr chriĕng' .

• 'Âksâr chhôr' refers to any style that is "standing" or upright. Upright letters were previously not as common as 'âksâr chriĕng', but now most computer fonts display Khmer text upright by default for ease of reading.

• 'Âksâr mul' is a round style which is used for titles and headings in Cambodian documents, books, or currency, on shop signs or banners. Religious text on palm leaves may be entirely written in this script style. It is sometimes used to write royal names while the surrounding text remains plain. Several consonants and some subscripts in this style take on different forms than their counterparts in the standard orthography.

• 'Âksâr khâm' is a variation of 'âksâr mul', with only minor differences.

The last two styles, when handwritten, are usually pencil-line width, however, in printed form and on computer fonts, they are usually seen in wider widths. Most Khmer computer fonts depict neither style correctly; in fact, some may meld elements of 'âksâr mul' and 'âksâr khâm' into one style, so generally either is referred to as 'âksâr mul'. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...

Consonants

There are 35 Khmer consonants symbols, although modern Khmer only uses 33, two having become obsolete. Subscript consonants are special forms used to form consonant clusters. Also sometimes referred to as "sub-consonants", subscript consonants often resemble the corresponding consonant symbol, only smaller. In Khmer, they are known as 'cheung âksâr' (ជើង​អក្សរ), meaning the foot of a letter. In forming consonant clusters, the second (and where necessary, the third) consonant sound of the cluster is written as a subscript which cancels the inherent vowel of the preceding consonant. Most subscript consonants are written directly below consonant which they follow, although subscript /r/ is written before while a few others have ascending elements which appear after.

Listed in the table below are the pronunciations of the consonants when recited. Although Khmer spelling is very regular, the pronunciation of some consonants may be slightly different from the recited version in a few words. This is especially true in loan words. The IPA values given are for consonants in the initial or medial position. Because of Khmer phonology, in which final stops are unreleased and possible finals are limited, word-final values may differ. For example, word-final /s/ is pronounced /h/ and, in most dialects, word-final /r/ is silent. The inherent vowels of consonants in the final position are almost never pronounced. The two obsolete consonants are highlighted in gray. Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... An unreleased stop or plosive is a plosive consonant without an audible release burst. ...

* The subscript for the consonant lâ is included in Unicode although its usage in modern Khmer is generally non-existent.

For some phonemes in loanwords, the Khmer writing system has 'created' supplementary consonants. Most of these consonants are created by stacking a subscript under the character for/hɑ/ to form digraphs. The consonant for /pɑ/, however, is created by using the diacritical sign called musĕkâtônd over the consonant for /bɑ/. These additional consonants are mainly used to represent sounds in French and Thai loanwords. A loanword (or a borrowing) is a word taken in by one language from another. ... Digraph has several meanings: Directed graph, or digraph Digraph (orthography) Digraph (computing) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Dependent vowels

There are 23 dependent vowel symbols, however this number varies depending on the source, some of which count certain diacritics, and their combination with basic vowel symbols, as unique vowel symbols. Dependent vowels are known in Khmer as srăk nissăy (ស្រៈនិស្ស័យ) or srăk phsâm (ស្រៈផ្សំ). Dependent vowels always have to be combined with a consonant in orthography. For most vowel symbols, there are two phones. The phone used depends on the series (or the inherent vowel) of the dominant consonant in a syllable cluster. Some vowel symbols may even have a regular third or fourth phone after certain consonants. The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of writing in that language. ... Phone (Greek φωνή) is a colloquial term for a device to transmit speech. ...

• For technical reasons, the dependent vowels are seen here paired with the letter អ (KHMER LETTER QA in Unicode) as not all browsers will correctly display them by themselves.

Independent vowels

Independent vowels are vowels that do not have to be paired with a consonant in a syllable, hence the name. In Khmer they are called srăk penhtuŏ (ស្រៈពេញតួ) which means complete vowels.

Diacritics

Anusvaara (or anusvaaram) appears in the alphabet of Indian languages like Sanskrit which use the Devanagari script, and in the Dravidian languages. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some stop consonants. ... Visarga () is a Sanskrit word meaning sending forth, discharge. In Sanskrit phonology, (also called, equivalently by earlier grammarians) is the name of a sound, approximately IPA , written as IAST , Harvard-Kyoto H, Devanagari . ... The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. ... Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century) Devanāgarī (देवनागरी — in English pronounced ) (ISCII – IS13194:1991) [1] is an abugida alphabet used to write several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri and Nepali from Nepal. ... In linguistics, the term particle is often employed as a useful catch-all lacking a strict definition. ... Virama is a generic term for the diacritic character in many Brahmic scripts that is used to suppress an inherent vowel sound that occurs with every consonant character. ...

Punctuation marks

The Khmer script uses several unique punctuation marks as well as some borrowed from the Latin script such as the question mark. The period in the Khmer language "។" resembles an eighth rest in music writing. The question mark(?) (also known as an interrogation point, query,[1] or eroteme) is a punctuation mark that replaces the full stop at the end of an interrogative sentence. ... Figure 1. ...

Ligatures

Most consonants, including a few of the subscripts, form ligatures with all dependent vowels that contain the symbol used for the vowel a (ា). A lot of these ligatures are easily recognizable, however a few may not be. One of the more unrecognizable is the ligature for the bâ and a which was created to differentiate it from the consonant symbol hâ as well as the ligature for châ and a. It is not always necessary to connect consonants with the dependent vowel a. In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more letterforms are written or printed as a unit. ...

Examples of ligatured symbols:

Image File history File links Khmerligatures1. ...

Ligatured consonant subscript and vowel combination:

Image File history File links Khmerligatures2. ...

Numerals

Main article: Khmer numerals

The numerals of the Khmer script, similar to that used by other civilizations in Southeast Asia, are also derived from the southern Indian script. Arabic numerals are also used, but to a lesser extent. Khmer numerals are the numerals used in the Khmer language of Cambodia. ... Numerals sans-serif Arabic numerals, known formally as Hindu-Arabic numerals, and also as Indian numerals, Hindu numerals, Western Arabic numerals, European numerals, or Western numerals, are the most common symbolic representation of numbers around the world. ...

Khmer in Unicode

Notes

1. ^ Punnee Soonthornpoct: From Freedom to Hell: A History of Foreign Interventions in Cambodian Politics And Wars. page 29, Vantage Press, Inc
2. ^ Russell R. Ross: Cambodia: A Country Study, page 112, Library of Congress. Federal Research Division, 1990

References

• Dictionnaire Cambodgien, Vol I & II, 1967, L'institut Bouddhique (Khmer Language)
• Huffman, Franklin. 1970. Cambodian System of Writing and Beginning Reader. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-01314-0
• Jacob, Judith. 1974. A Concise Cambodian-English Dictionary. London, Oxford University Press.

See also

• Brahmic family
• Khmer language
• Romanization of Khmer

The Brahmic family is a family of abugidas (writing systems) used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Khmer romanization refers to the representation of the Khmer (Cambodian) language utilizing letters of the Latin (Roman) alphabet. ...

External links

• FAQ and Resources on Khmer in Unicode
• Enabling Khmer Unicode
• How to Install Khmer Unicode on your Windows XP Computer
• Omniglot entry on Khmer
• Geonames Khmer Alphabet Chart
• Khmer Romanization Table (PDF)
• Evolution of the Khmer script
• Authentic Khmer Online (common phrases in Khmer script with audio file examples)