Khmer language
Austroasiatic language of Cambodia
Khmer ( kə-MAIR; ខ្មែរ, UNGEGN: Khmêr [kʰmae] ) is an Austroasiatic language spoken natively by the Khmer people and is an official language and national language of Cambodia. The language is also widely spoken by Khmer people in Eastern Thailand and Isan, Thailand, as well as in the Southeastern and Mekong regions of Vietnam.
Khmer has been influenced considerably by Sanskrit and Pali especially in the royal and religious registers, through Hinduism and Buddhism, due to Old Khmer being the language of the historical empires of Chenla and Angkor.
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. Two exceptions are the speech of the capital, Phnom Penh, and that of the Khmer Khe in Stung Treng province, both of which differ sufficiently enough from Central Khmer to be considered separate dialects of Khmer.
Outside of Cambodia, three distinct dialects are spoken by ethnic Khmers native to areas that were historically part of the Khmer Empire. The Northern Khmer dialect is spoken by over a million Khmers in the southern regions of Northeast Thailand and is treated by some linguists as a separate language. Khmer Krom, or Southern Khmer, is the first language of the Khmer of Vietnam, while the Khmer living in the remote Cardamom Mountains speak a very conservative dialect that still displays features of the Middle Khmer language.
Khmer is primarily an analytic, isolating language.
The public source identifies “Khmer language” as austroasiatic language of Cambodia. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Khmer, language and Austroasiatic.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q9205. The Library of Congress control number is sh85072204. Authority coordinates are 12.000, 104.000. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Khmer language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.