Khmer Alphabet & Letters

Khmer, the language of Cambodia, has its own script, descended from the Pallava script of southern India like the other scripts of Southeast Asia. It is read left to right, has no capital and small letters, and puts no spaces between words: ខ្ញុំស្រឡាញ់ភាសាខ្មែរ is one run of letters meaning "I love the Khmer language". A space marks the end of a phrase, and the sign ។ ends a sentence.

Like Hindi's Devanagari, Khmer is an abugida: every consonant already carries a vowel, and other vowels are added as signs around it. What makes Khmer unusual is that the consonants come in two series. A 1st-series consonant carries the vowel â, a 2nd-series consonant ô, and vowel signs can have different values in the two series: តា taa means grandfather, ទា tiə means duck, written with the same sign ា. Khmer has more vowel sounds than letters for them, and the two series let one set of vowel signs write about twice as many sounds.

How many letters is the Khmer alphabet? Cambodian schools teach 33 consonants, around 23 vowel signs and about 14 independent vowels, though charts count the vowels differently, and Guinness World Records lists Khmer, with 74 letters, as the largest alphabet in the world. All the letters a modern writer needs are on this page.

Khmer consonants: the two series and the subscripts

The 33 consonants are learned in rows, as children chant them: ក ខ គ ឃ ង, ច ឆ ជ ឈ ញ, ដ ឋ ឌ ឍ ណ, ត ថ ទ ធ ន, ប ផ ព ភ ម, then យ រ ល វ and ស ហ ឡ អ. The rows follow the Indian order by place in the mouth. In each of the first five rows, the first two letters are 1st series and the next three 2nd series, with ណ the one exception: ក kâ, ខ khâ, គ kô, ឃ khô, ង ngô. Many 2nd-series letters were once voiced, which is why ក and គ now differ only in their vowel. អ represents a glottal stop and can carry a vowel at the start of a word: អរគុណ (thank you).

Two signs move a consonant into the other series. The muusikatoan ៉ (two little teeth) turns a 2nd-series letter into the 1st: ម៉ាក់ (mum), and ប៉ា (dad), where ប with ៉ is also the way Khmer writes a plain p. The triisap ៊ turns a 1st-series letter into the 2nd: ស៊ី (to eat).

When two consonants meet with no vowel between them, the second is written below the first as a subscript, the cheung (foot). Almost every consonant has such a foot form, some quite different from the full letter. You type it with the invisible sign coeng ្ followed by the consonant: ខ + ្ + ម gives ខ្ម in ខ្មែរ (Khmer), ភ + ្ + ន gives ភ្ន in ភ្នំពេញ (Phnom Penh). The foot of រ is drawn to the left of the cluster, as in ស្រី (woman), but it is still typed after the first consonant. Unicode also has ឝ and ឞ, two old letters for Sanskrit sounds that modern Khmer no longer uses.

Khmer vowels: vowel signs, compound vowels and independent vowels

The vowel signs sit after the consonant (ា), above it (ិ ី ឹ ឺ), below it (ុ ូ ួ), before it (េ ែ ៃ) or on both sides (ោ ៅ ើ ៀ ឿ). However they look, you always type them after the consonant and its subscript, in the order you say the syllable. The two-sided vowels are single characters: ោ is one letter, not េ followed by ា, and text built from the pieces looks the same but breaks search and spelling checks.

The nikahit ំ and the reahmuk ះ add a final m sound and a final h sound, and with the vowel signs they make the compound vowels ាំ ុំ េះ ោះ: ចាំ (to wait, to remember), ខ្ញុំ (I), ព្រះ (holy, royal), ភ្នំ (mountain). The yuukaleapintu ៈ, which looks like a colon, writes a short vowel ending in a glottal stop, as in ស្រៈ (vowel).

The independent vowels ឥ ឦ ឧ ឩ ឪ ឫ ឬ ឭ ឮ ឯ ឰ ឱ ឲ ឳ are complete syllables that need no consonant. Only a few words use them, but they are everyday ones: ឥឡូវ (now), ឧទាហរណ៍ (example), ឪពុក (father), ឬ (or), ឮ (to hear), ឯ (at, as for), ឱកាស (chance). ឱ and ឲ are two forms of the same vowel, and the common word for "to give, to let" is spelled both ឱ្យ and ឲ្យ.

Khmer signs, punctuation and Khmer numbers

A few more marks complete the spelling. The bantoc ់ shortens the vowel before a final consonant: កាត់ (to cut). The toandakhiat ៍ silences the letter it sits on, usually the end of a word borrowed from Pali or Sanskrit: ឧទាហរណ៍, ព្រឹត្តិការណ៍ (event). The robat ៌ stands for an r in Sanskrit words such as ធម៌ (dharma), and the samyok sannya ័ writes a short a in Pali and Sanskrit words, both seen in ព័ត៌មាន (news). The ahsda ៏ appears in a handful of words, above all ក៏ (also, so) and ដ៏ (which is, very), and the kakabat ៎ marks exclamations and particles such as ចា៎ (yes, said by women).

The khan ។ is the Khmer full stop, and the bariyoosan ៕ closes a whole text, a chapter or a poem. The camnuc pii kuuh ៖ is the Khmer colon, and the lek too ៗ, a small seven-like sign, repeats the word before it: ផ្សេងៗ (various), តិចៗ (little by little). "And so on" is written ។ល។, a khan, ល and another khan. Khmer texts typically use “ ” for quotations; ASCII quotation marks are also used. Old books open with the phnaek muan ៙ and close with the koomuut ៚.

Khmer has its own digits, ០ ១ ២ ៣ ៤ ៥ ៦ ៧ ៨ ៩, used for dates, page numbers, banknotes and market prices alongside 0–9. The number words count in fives above five: ៦ is ប្រាំមួយ (five-one), ៧ ប្រាំពីរ (five-two). Traditional calendars go further and write the day of the lunar month with a single sign, from ᧡ (1st waxing day) to ᧿ (15th waning day); you meet them in almanacs and on the dates of Buddhist holidays. The riel sign ៛ follows the amount: ២០០០៛ is 2,000 riel.

How to type Khmer on a computer, phone and Mac

Windows: Settings → Time & language → Language & region → Add a language → Khmer, then switch keyboards with Windows + Space. Mac: System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources → Edit → + → Khmer. iPhone: Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard → Khmer. Android: add Khmer in Gboard's languages. Cambodia's standard layout is the NiDA keyboard, where most letters sit on a key with a similar sound (k is ក, s is ស, m is ម) and the coeng ្ is on j, so k j m types ក្ម.

Type in the order you speak: the consonant, then any subscript (្ and the second consonant), then the vowel sign, then signs such as ់ or ៍, even when the vowel is drawn to the left. ខ្មែរ is typed ខ ្ ម ែ រ. Because Khmer has no spaces between words, many typists put an invisible zero-width space (U+200B) between words so that lines can wrap neatly; it does not show on screen.

If Khmer turns into Latin gibberish when you paste it, the text was typed in an old Limon font, which draws Khmer shapes over Latin letters. Retype it with a Unicode Khmer keyboard or convert it with a Limon to Unicode converter; Unicode Khmer text can be copied; correct display depends on font support. Free Unicode fonts such as Khmer OS and Khmer OS Battambang cover the whole script. To type the riel sign ៛ without a Khmer keyboard: in Word type 17DB and press Alt + X; on a Mac, use the Unicode Hex Input source and hold Option while typing 17DB; in HTML write ៛.

Where Khmer is spoken

Khmer is the national language of Cambodia, spoken by about 15 million people there (CLDR estimate), and the language of Cambodian schools, government, television and the monarchy. Cambodians call it ភាសាខ្មែរ, and their country កម្ពុជា (Kampuchea). More than a million Khmer Krom live in the Mekong Delta of southern Vietnam, and in northeastern Thailand about 1.2 million people speak Northern Khmer (CLDR estimate), which has its own collection. Large Cambodian communities live in the United States, in Long Beach and Lowell above all, in France and in Australia.

Khmer is an Austroasiatic language, distantly related to Vietnamese and to Kuy, spoken in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. It is not related to Thai or Lao, but their scripts grew out of the Old Khmer script, and Thai and Lao took many royal and Buddhist words from Khmer. The Cambodia collection includes the flag 🇰🇭, the Hindu temple emoji 🛕 used here to represent Angkor Wat, and emoji used in Khmer New Year greetings; Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, Western Cham and Kuy have collections of their own.