Khmer Language - Writing System

Writing System

Khmer is written with the Khmer script, an abugida developed from the Pallava script of India before the 7th century when the first known inscription appeared. Written left-to-right with vowel signs that can be placed after, before, above or below the consonant they follow, the Khmer script is similar in appearance and usage to Thai and Lao, both of which were based on the Khmer system. The Khmer script is also distantly related to the Mon script, the ancestor of the modern Burmese script. Khmer numerals, which were inherited from Indian numerals, are used more widely than Hindu-Arabic numerals. Within Cambodia, literacy in the Khmer alphabet is estimated at 77.6%.

Consonant symbols in Khmer are divided into two groups, or series. The first series carries the inherent vowel /ɑː/ while the second series carries the inherent vowel /ɔː/. The Khmer names of the series, /aʔkʰosaʔ/ ("voiceless") and /kʰosaʔ/ ("voiced"), respectively, indicate that the second series consonants were used to represent the voiced phonemes of Old Khmer. As the voicing of stops was lost, however, the contrast shifted to the phonation of the attached vowels which, in turn, evolved into a simple difference of vowel quality, oftentimes by diphthongization. This process has resulted in the Khmer alphabet having two symbols for most consonant phonemes and each vowel symbol having two possible readings, depending on the series of the initial consonant: