Khmer character picker

Reference material:

About the chart

Includes all the characters in the Unicode Khmer and Khmer Symbols blocks (in the advanced panel).

Alphabetic Consonants are in a modified Indian articulatory arrangement. The two l's have been brought together. The sha and so forms have been moved to the advanced section, top middle, since they are not used in modern Khmer. Subscript forms are shown alongside full forms. The subscript forms produce the coeng followed by the normal consonant character. Vowel signs are arranged for easy identification, with independent vowels below. Digits are in keypad order (with the currency symbol). Combining characters are between consonants and vowels. The virama is at the bottom right of the consonant block. Hinting is implemented for visually similar glyphs. Punctuation is below the digits, and includes some common Western punctuation.

Click on the 'Advanced' arrow top right for rare and deprecated characters, as well as divination and lunar characters.

Phonic Characters are grouped and ordered by sound. I set this up for myself to copy Khmer text that was accompanied by a transcription. The sounds are based on Huffman's analysis. Initial consonants are followed by combining characters, then vowels. Alternatives with the same sound are separated by a red dot. Consonants that have different sounds when word final are also listed under those sounds. (Dropped aspiration is not considered significant.) Dashes indicate where consonants are usually required. In three cases, you will need to click twice on the components that make up the sound (when bantoc is used on the following consonant).

Font grid Shows characters in Unicode order, using whatever font is specified in the Font list or Custom font input fields. This allows comparison of fonts (especially useful in IE, which shows if a glyph is missing from a font).

You can start up directly in one of the above views by appending the following to your URI: ?view=, followed by one of, respectively, alphabet, phonic or fontgrid.

Transcribe option

The transcription tool is provided as a means for me to generate phonetic transcriptions based on the rules in Franklin Huffman's Cambodian System of Writing. However, it needs some assistance from the user. This is because Khmer doesn't use spaces between words, and it is often ambiguous as to whether a consonant represents a syllable-final sound or a syllable in its own right. It also needs help to identify unstressed syllables. I don't have the means to do automatic word segmentation, so you will need to provide this information.

After the first syllable on the line, put a zero-width space or ordinary space before each consonant or independent vowel sign that begins a new syllable (not word). (Note that this may split consonant clusters. The Khmer text will look strange but still work.) You should also indicate unstressed syllables by following the syllable with a hyphen, rather than a space. For many bisyllabic words, this means putting a hyphen after the first of the two syllables. For example, converting ប្រកាន់និទៀន to ប្រ-កាន់ និ-ទៀន will produce the following transcription [prɑkannitiən]. Note that, if you don't know Khmer well enough to know when a syllable is unstressed, you can still get an approximation to the pronunciation using only spaces (zwsp or ordinary space). For instance, the previous example separated by spaces only will yield [prɑːkanniʔtiən].

If your system supports OpenType fonts, I recommend, for best results, that you install one of the following fonts for viewing the transcription: Doulos SIL, Charis SIL, Gentium. These exceptionally good, free fonts can be found by searching the Web.

Although the transcription is based on rules by Franklin Huffman in Cambodian System of Writing, some symbols are changed to be more recognizable to those familiar with IPA. While the transcription rules are quite detailed, and Khmer is largely regular, there are a few exceptions, particularly in words from Sanskrit or Pali, or ambiguities, for example in a few independent vowel signs, that cause problems for the transcription. The transcription is non-reversible. I created it to help me quickly reproduce (simple) phonetic alternatives for examples in my notes on Khmer.

Useful URIs

Instructions for use

Downloadable TrueType and OpenType fonts: David McCreedy, Alan Wood

My notes on the Khmer script.

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