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- Khmer (khm)

Khmer is the official language of Cambodia. It is also spoken in Vietnam and Thailand. There are about 16 million Khmer speakers in Cambodia, and 1.2 million speakers of the language in Vietnam. In Thailand a variety of Khmer known as Northern Khmer is spoken by 1.4 million people. This is considered a separate language by some people.

Khmer shares many features and much vocabulary with Thai as a result of centuries of two-way borrowing. Khmer has been influenced considerably by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious registers, through Hinduism and Buddhism. It is also the earliest recorded and earliest written language of the Mon–Khmer family, predating Mon and Vietnamese, due to Old Khmer being the language of the historical empires of Chenla, Angkor and, presumably, their earlier predecessor state, Funan.

Khmer is also known as Cambodian. The official name of Cambodia is the Kingdom of Cambodia. In the past it has been known as the Khmer Republic (1970-1975), Democratic Kapuchea (1975-1979), the People's Republic of Kampuchea (1979-1989) and the State of Cambodia (1989-1993). The name Kampuchea comes from the Sanskrit "land of Kambuja". The name Cambodia is an English version of the French Cambodge, which is a version of Kampuchea

Varieties of Khmer include: Standard or Central Khmer, - spoken mainly in central Cambodia, and used as the language of instruction in schools Northern Khmer (Khmer Surin) - spoken in northeast Thailand Western Khmer - spoken in western Cambodia and eastern Thailand Phnom Penh Khmer - spoken in Phnom Penh and nearby areas Southern Khmer (Khmer Krom) - spoken in southwest Vietnam Khmer khe - spoken in Stung Treng Province in northern Cambodia

The vast majority of Khmer speakers speak Central Khmer, the dialect of the central plain where the Khmer are most heavily concentrated. Within Cambodia, regional accents exist in remote areas but these are regarded as varieties of Central Khmer

The language has been written in the Khmer script. The script's form and use has evolved over the centuries; its modern features include subscripted versions of consonants used to write clusters and a division of consonants into two series with different inherent vowels.

Sources: Wikipedia
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