Khmer phrasebook
Photo: User: (WT-shared) Jpatokal at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Khmer (ភាសាខ្មែរ phiəsaa khmae) is the main and official language of Cambodia, and also spoken by the ethnic Khmer minorities in Thailand and Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, thus making it related to Vietnamese, though the two languages have diverged so much that they are not mutually intelligible. Unlike Vietnamese, which was heavily influenced by Chinese, Khmer was primarily influenced by Sanskrit. Khmer also has numerous loan words from French due to the history of French colonial rule in Cambodia.
Pronunciation guideKhmer is written using an Indic script, similar to Thai, Burmese and Lao.g. with a diacritic mark).
Phrase listAlthough Khmer uses base-10 numbers, the numbers for 1-9 are effectively spoken as base-5.
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Sources and licences
- Guide text adapted from the Wikivoyage article "Khmer phrasebook" by its contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikivoyage · Contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Photo: User: (WT-shared) Jpatokal at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons