Khmer character picker

Reference material:

Quick start

(You must have JavaScript enabled.) Choose a view (see below). Click on characters/shapes to insert text into the output field or use your keyboard for Latin characters, delete, etc. You can also add codepoints and escapes via the "Add codepoint" field (hit return to add to the output field).

Then cut & paste the result to your document, or use the tabs to get further information about the characters. You can also paste text into the output field to get information about it. Use the yellow box to set preferences or search (regular expressions allowed - for example, to find the letter GA surrounded by spaces in the name, enter \bga\b, or the short form :ga:).

About the chart

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

All text is output in Unicode normalisation form NFC by default. You can change to NFD or no normalisation by clicking on the buttons in the yellow area. Note that normalization only takes place when you click on a character - text pasted into the box won't be normalised until you click on another character above, or click on a button in the yellow area. (Note: normalization is turned off for Han characters in this application.)

Alternative views are available. You can start up directly in one of the views by appending the following to your URI: ?view=, followed by one of, respectively, default, shape, transcript, huffman, gilbert or fontgrid.

Default This view is likely to be most useful to people who are somewhat familiar with the alphabet and characters of Khmer. Characters are arranged to assist in input. Simple consonants are to the left in mostly alphabetic order. To their right are combining characters that follow the initial consonant, then subscript consonants, then vowels and other symbols. Independent vowels appear at the top, then combining vowel signs, then other combining marks. At the bottom are digits and the currency symbol, and various other symbols and punctuation. Clicking on the subscript characters produces a coeng sign followed by a consonant.

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

Shape This view is purely based around shape, and is therefore good when you don't know the script well at all, or to find shapes you don't know.

Characters are grouped and ordered by visual similarity. The orange shapes at the top typically indicate a fundamental part of a character shape; characters and combinations that include that shape are arranged together. Within a group I attempted to put easily confusable characters close to each other. The 'misc' section at the bottom lists a mixed bag of characters that didn't fit elsewhere. Just above are three sets of characters that combine above, below, and surrounding two sides.

A small orange plus sign to the right of a shape indicates that there are similar shapes outside the current group. These will be highlighted when you mouse over the shape with the plus sign.

Transcript I use this for typing in text for which I have a transcription, or for creating phonemic transcriptions. Although the Khmer script is mostly phonetic if you know the rules behind it, there are quite a lot of rules. This transcription therefore aims to provide at least 80% of the work needed, and you may need to tweak the remainder.

Two different transcriptions are supported. One is that used by Huffman in Cambodian System of Writing. The other is used by Gilbert and Hang in Cambodian for Beginners. An attempt has been made to ensure that the phonetic transcription the produced by clicking on characters in both views is the same, but there will be small differences.

The consonant characters used for transliteration are arranged in groups, similarly to where that transliteration character would typically appear in a standard IPA chart. (So, for example, if 'zh' were actually pronounced 'p', you would look for it under the fricatives, not the plosives.) The large characters on a grey background represent the transcription, and the small Latin letters on white background indicate IPA characters, where they vary from the former. (In the case of multiple alternatives, tooltips often explain usage contexts.)

You can use the transcription letters to find a Khmer character and add it to the output area (by clicking on the Khmer character), or you can click directly on the transcription letter to produce a transcription.

For less common characters, switch to the Default view.

In a small number of cases, you will need to click twice on the components that make up the sound (eg. when bantoc is used on the following consonant). These cases are indicated by a small red plus sign between two clickable shapes (one of which may be just a hyphen).

While you click on Khmer characters in the Transcript view, the picker automatically records in a buffer the associated phonemic character (ie. the nearest transciption character to the left of each character you click on). Clicking on this icon will dump those characters into the output area at the current cursor position, and clear the buffer. It is quite basic (for example, it doesn't take into account backspacing), but is offered as a way of speeding up text entry where you want to type both the Khmer characters and the phonemic transcription.

Hyphens are provided for the silent or inherent sounds (eg. 'o') to help produce these transcriptions. They produce no output in Khmer script, but the phonemic value is stored in the buffer.

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).

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: Wazu Japan, Alan Wood

Other pickers

Khmer script notes (my rough notes)

Khmer block in UniView

If something is missing

... let me know.