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KHMER LANGUAGE
KHMER LANGUAGE is the language of the Khmer people of Cambodia, is one of the main Austroasiatic languages. As result of their geographic proximity, the Khmer language has influenced Thai and Laotian and vice versa. Khmer is somewhat unusual among its neighboring languages (Thai, Laotian and Vietnamese) in that it is not a tonal language. Modern Standard Khmer has the following consonant and vowel phonemes. Khmer words are predominantly of one or two syllables. There are 85 possible clusters of two consonants at the beginning of syllables and two three-consonant clusters with phonetic alterations. Syllables begin with one of these consonants or consonant clusters, followed by one of the vowel nuclei. When the vowel nucleus is short, there has to be a final consonant. The most common word structure in Khmer is a full syllable as described above, preceded by an unstressed, “minor” syllable that has a consonant-vowel (CV) structure CV-, CrV-, CVN- or CrVN- (N is any nasal in the Khmer inventory).The vowel in these “minor” syllables is usually reduced in the spoken language. Words with three or more syllables are mostly loanwords from other languages, usually Pali, Sanskrit, or French. Dialects are sometimes quite marked. Northern Khmer, the dialect spoken in Thailand, is referred to in Khmer as Khmer Surin and, although only began divergence from standard Khmer within the last 200 years, is considered by some linguists to be a separate language. This is due to its distinct accent influenced by the surrounding tonal language, Thai, lexical differences and its phonemic differences in both vowels and distribution of consonants. Final "r" which has become silent in other dialects of Khmer, is pronounced in Northern Khmer. Western Khmer, also called Cardamom Khmer, spoken by a small, isolated population in the Cardamom mountain range extending from Cambodia into Thailand, although little studied, is unique in that it maintains a definite system of vocal register that has all but disappeared in other dialects of modern Khmer.
A notable characteristic of Phnom Penh casual speech is merging or complete elision of syllables, considered by speakers from other regions as a "relaxed" pronunciation. For instance, "Phnom Penh" will sometimes be shortened to "m'Penh". Another characteristic of Phnom Penh speech is observed in words with an "r" either as an initial consonant or as the second member of a consonant cluster. The grammatical form of word orders in Khmer is generally Subject Verb Object. Khmer is written with the Khmer alphabet. Khmer numerals, which were inherited from Indian numerals, are used more widely than Hindu-Arabic numerals.
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