Khmer is the national language of Cambodia. It belongs to the Mon-Khmer language family. Most of the language of this family is spoken in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. Cambodia is unique in enjoying the status of a national language and is one of the very few Mon-Khmer languages to have a written form.

Unlike neighbouring Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, Khmer is not a tonal language. It does however share many common grammatical features with other South East Asian languages. Word order in Khmer follows a familiar subject + verb + object pattern.

Native Khmer words tend to consist of either one or two syllables, but a large number of foreign words have been borrowed from Sanskrit, Pali, Thai and French. For the Western learner, perhaps the most notable feature of the language is the lack of verb and noun inflections. The following words & phrases have been ‘romanised’ to help in pronunciation.