Romanization of Khmer

Khmer romanization refers to the romanization of the Khmer (Cambodian) language, that is, the representation of that language using letters of the Latin (Roman) alphabet. This is most commonly done with Khmer proper nouns such as names of people and geographical names, as in a gazetteer.

Cambodian geographical names are often romanized with a transliteration system, where representations in the Khmer script are mapped regularly to representations in the Latin alphabet (sometimes with some additional diacritics). The results do not always reflect standard Khmer pronunciation, as no special treatment is given to unpronounced letters and irregular pronunciations, although the two registers of Khmer vowel symbols are often taken into account.

When transcription is used, words are romanized based on their pronunciation. However, pronunciation of Khmer can vary by speaker and region. Roman transcription of Khmer is often done ad hoc on Internet forums and chatrooms, the results sometimes being referred to as Khmenglish or Khmerlish. These ad hoc romanizations are usually based on English pronunciations of letters, although they may also be influenced by Khmer spelling (as with the use of s rather than h to represent a final aspirate).

Since some sounds can be represented by more than one symbol in Khmer orthography, it is not generally possible to recover the original Khmer spelling from a pronunciation-based Roman transcription. Even transliteration systems often do not preserve all of the distinctions made in the Khmer script.

Some of the more commonly used romanization systems for Khmer are listed below. For full details of the various systems, see the links given in the External Links section.

The Khmer romanization scheme published by the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names is based on the BGN/PCGN system, described below. It is used for Cambodian geographical names in some recent maps and gazetteers, although the Geographic Department's modified system (see below) has come into use in the country since 1995. Correspondences in the UNGEGN system are detailed in the Khmer alphabet article.

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