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79-460: Yike ( Khmer : យីកេ , pronounced [ˈjiːkeː] ) is a prominent form of Cambodian musical theater, along with Bassac theater and Niyeai . "Lakhon Yike" (Khmer:ល្ខោន យីកេ, literally Yike theater) incorporates singing and dancing and "an ensemble of both traditional and modern instruments." Yike is believed to originate from Champa , and was imported to Cambodia in the Funan period. Yike

158-646: A minor (fully unstressed) syllable. Such words have been described as sesquisyllabic (i.e. as having one-and-a-half syllables). There are also some disyllabic words in which the first syllable does not behave as a minor syllable, but takes secondary stress . Most such words are compounds , but some are single morphemes (generally loanwords). An example is ភាសា ('language'), pronounced [ˌpʰiəˈsaː] . Words with three or more syllables, if they are not compounds, are mostly loanwords, usually derived from Pali, Sanskrit, or more recently, French. They are nonetheless adapted to Khmer stress patterns. Primary stress falls on

237-530: A minor syllable . The language has been written in the Khmer script , an abugida descended from the Brahmi script via the southern Indian Pallava script , since at least the 7th century. The script's form and use has evolved over the centuries; its modern features include subscripted versions of consonants used to write clusters and a division of consonants into two series with different inherent vowels . Khmer

316-474: A dialect. Western Khmer , also called Cardamom Khmer or Chanthaburi Khmer, is spoken by a very small, isolated population in the Cardamom mountain range extending from western Cambodia into eastern Central Thailand . Although little studied, this variety is unique in that it maintains a definite system of vocal register that has all but disappeared in other dialects of modern Khmer. Phnom Penh Khmer

395-535: A distinct evolution from /p/ and /t/ as well as why the Old Khmer voiceless /p/ and /t/ were the consonants to "reacquire" voicing instead of the originally voiced series. This shift has historically received less attention from linguists than the evolution of registers and the complicated vowel systems. Earlier hypotheses assumed Old Khmer, similar to other languages of Southeast Asia, had, in addition to * /b/ ~ * /p/ ~ * /pʰ/ and * /d/ ~ * /t/ ~ * /tʰ/ ,

474-661: A final consonant. All consonant sounds except /b/, /d/, /r/, /s/ and the aspirates can appear as the coda (although final /r/ is heard in some dialects, most notably in Northern Khmer ). A minor syllable (unstressed syllable preceding the main syllable of a word) has a structure of CV-, CrV-, CVN- or CrVN- (where C is a consonant, V a vowel, and N a nasal consonant). The vowels in such syllables are usually short; in conversation they may be reduced to [ə] , although in careful or formal speech, including on television and radio, they are clearly articulated. An example of such

553-533: A fourth series that was both voiced and either implosive ( [ɓ] , [ɗ] ), preglottalized ( [ˀb] , [ˀd] ) or pre-nasalized ( [ᵐb] , * [ⁿd] ). According to these early hypotheses, since the Indic-based writing system had no symbol for these sounds, the Old Khmer letters for /p/ and /t/ did double duty, also representing this fourth series. As the Old Khmer voiced series became devoiced in Middle Khmer,

632-700: A single value in Old and Early Middle Khmer, this restructuring meant that the register of the preceding consonant symbol indicated different vowel pronunciations. The secondary characteristic of breathy phonation in the high register became redundant with the development of contrasting vowels for each series and was gradually lost in most dialects by the modern era. Breathy voice versus clear voice still contrast in Western Khmer and breathy voice in some high register vowels may still be heard in Central Khmer but it

711-497: A typical Khmer declarative phrase is a steady rise throughout followed by an abrupt drop on the last syllable. Other intonation contours signify a different type of phrase such as the "full doubt" interrogative, similar to yes–no questions in English. Full doubt interrogatives remain fairly even in tone throughout, but rise sharply towards the end. Exclamatory phrases follow the typical steadily rising pattern, but rise sharply on

790-452: A word is មនុស្ស mɔnuh, mɔnɨh, mĕəʾnuh ('person'), pronounced [mɔˈnuh] , or more casually [məˈnuh] . Stress in Khmer falls on the final syllable of a word. Because of this predictable pattern, stress is non- phonemic in Khmer (it does not distinguish different meanings). Most Khmer words consist of either one or two syllables. In most native disyllabic words, the first syllable is

869-429: Is a zero copula language, instead preferring predicative adjectives (and even predicative nouns) unless using a copula for emphasis or to avoid ambiguity in more complex sentences. Basic word order is subject–verb–object (SVO), although subjects are often dropped ; prepositions are used rather than postpositions. Topic-Comment constructions are common and the language is generally head-initial (modifiers follow

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948-648: Is a classification scheme showing the development of the modern Khmer dialects. Standard Khmer , or Central Khmer , the language as taught in Cambodian schools and used by the media, is based on the dialect spoken throughout the Central Plain , a region encompassed by the northwest and central provinces. Northern Khmer (called Khmer Surin in Khmer) refers to the dialects spoken by many in several border provinces of present-day northeast Thailand. After

1027-531: Is a member of the Austroasiatic language family, the autochthonous family in an area that stretches from the Malay Peninsula through Southeast Asia to East India. Austroasiatic, which also includes Mon , Vietnamese and Munda , has been studied since 1856 and was first proposed as a language family in 1907. Despite the amount of research, there is still doubt about the internal relationship of

1106-597: Is an Austroasiatic language spoken natively by the Khmer people . This language is an official language and national language of Cambodia . The language is also widely spoken by Khmer people in Eastern Thailand and Isan , Thailand , also in Southeast and Mekong Delta 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

1185-416: Is common, and the perceived social relation between participants determines which sets of vocabulary, such as pronouns and honorifics, are proper. Khmer differs from neighboring languages such as Burmese , Thai , Lao , and Vietnamese in that it is not a tonal language . Words are stressed on the final syllable, hence many words conform to the typical Mon–Khmer pattern of a stressed syllable preceded by

1264-423: Is contrastive before a vowel. However, the aspirated sounds in that position may be analyzed as sequences of two phonemes : /ph/, /th/, /ch/, /kh/ . This analysis is supported by the fact that infixes can be inserted between the stop and the aspiration; for example [tʰom] ('big') becomes [tumhum] ('size') with a nominalizing infix. When one of these plosives occurs initially before another consonant, aspiration

1343-458: Is incidental and conveys no lexical meaning; speakers are unaware of it. [ɡiː] > [ɡi̤ː] > [kiː] [kiː] > [kᵊiː] > [kəi] [ɟɛː] > [ɟɛ̤ː] > [cɛː] [cɛː] > [c ɛː] > [caɛ] ~ [cae] [ɡaːŋ] > [ɡa̤ːŋ] > [ɡ aːŋ] (modern: [kiəŋ] ) [kaːŋ] > [kaːŋ] > [kaːŋ] There is some disagreement as to when this process of devoicing and diphthongization completed, but all estimates fall within

1422-586: Is no longer contrastive and can be regarded as mere phonetic detail: slight aspiration is expected when the following consonant is not one of /ʔ/, /b/, /d/, /r/, /s/, /h/ (or /ŋ/ if the initial plosive is /k/ ). The voiced plosives are pronounced as implosives [ɓ, ɗ] by most speakers, but this feature is weak in educated speech, where they become [b, d] . In syllable-final position, /h/ and /ʋ/ approach [ç] and [w] respectively. The stops /p/, /t/, /c/, /k/ are unaspirated and have no audible release when occurring as syllable finals. In addition,

1501-493: Is performed in nearly every province of Cambodia and by the Khmer Krom communities in southern Vietnam. The Khmer Krom use the term yike , similar to the rest of the Khmer communities, and the term, yuke , which is used to refer to the dance theatre also known as Lakhon Bassac . Performances of the yike are often commenced with a dance performance called robam yike hom rong, which is used for invocation . For most of

1580-460: Is primarily an analytic , isolating language . There are no inflections , conjugations or case endings. Instead, particles and auxiliary words are used to indicate grammatical relationships. General word order is subject–verb–object , and modifiers follow the word they modify. Classifiers appear after numbers when used to count nouns, though not always so consistently as in languages like Chinese . In spoken Khmer, topic-comment structure

1659-640: Is silent: */kaːr/ > /kaː/. The exact phonetic realization of final /r/ in Middle Khmer has not been proven with certainty. It may have varied by dialect, either being [r], [l] or [Ø] (silent), although rhymes within a single text often suggest all three, indicating the pronunciation wasn't dialectal but rather the shift may have taken place gradually, affecting final /r/ in different environments in stages until /Ø/ gained prominence. Jenner suggests, by inference, that written final /r/ may have been pronounced [ɹl] in Early Middle Khmer. The remainder of

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1738-582: Is spoken in the Se San , Srepok and Sekong river valleys of Sesan and Siem Pang districts in Stung Treng Province . Following the decline of Angkor, the Khmer abandoned their northern territories, which the Lao then settled. In the 17th century, Chey Chetha XI led a Khmer force into Stung Treng to retake the area. The Khmer Khe living in this area of Stung Treng in modern times are presumed to be

1817-421: Is spoken in the capital and surrounding areas. This dialect is characterized by merging or complete elision of syllables, which speakers from other regions consider a "relaxed" pronunciation. For instance, "Phnom Penh" is sometimes shortened to "m'Penh". Another characteristic of Phnom Penh speech is observed in words with an "r" either as an initial consonant or as the second member of a consonant cluster (as in

1896-421: Is still between stages four and five; /b/ and /d/ are present, but many vowels have not diphthongized or are in the early stages of diphthongization (i.e. still consist of a monophthong plus a slight glide) and the breathy versus clear phonation contrast is still prominent in most vowels although it is displaying an increasingly lower functional load. This is taken as further validation of the mechanisms proposed in

1975-549: 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

2054-476: The [r] is dropped and the vowel begins by dipping much lower in tone than standard speech and then rises, effectively doubling its length. Another example is the word រៀន [riən] ('study'), which is pronounced [ʀiən] , with the uvular "r" and the same intonation described above. Khmer Krom or Southern Khmer is spoken by the indigenous Khmer population of the Mekong Delta , formerly controlled by

2133-421: The elision of /r/ . Intonation often conveys semantic context in Khmer, as in distinguishing declarative statements , questions and exclamations. The available grammatical means of making such distinctions are not always used, or may be ambiguous; for example, the final interrogative particle ទេ /teː/ can also serve as an emphasizing (or in some cases negating) particle. The intonation pattern of

2212-533: The "break-up of speech communities" that occurred during the Middle Khmer period. Comparative methods applied to modern varieties, along with the wealth of Middle Khmer texts, have given linguists a good picture of Middle Khmer. However, since there are no other extant descendants of Old Khmer, linguists must rely on analysis of its epigraphy and orthography , as well as the descriptions of Middle Khmer, to internally reconstruct Old Khmer. While this makes understanding Middle Khmer important, it has severely hindered

2291-495: The 16th century, much earlier than Lewitz's estimate. Despite having lost voiced stops, all modern Khmer varieties emerged from the Middle Khmer period with two in their inventory, /b/ and /d/ . In both cases, it is the Old Khmer voiceless stop that is now voiced and their realizations are most commonly implosive [ɓ] and [ɗ] , respectively. A thorough analysis of Middle Khmer must explain both how, if voiced stops merged to voiceless stops, only /b/ and /d/ reemerged and had

2370-421: The 16th to 18th century range. Jenner, based on internal evidence, gives a basic general range between the 16th to 18th century, concluding it wasn't possible to get anymore specific due to the undated nature of most Middle Khmer texts. Lewitz's argument cite foreign transliterations of "Angkor" (Middle Khmer: [ʔɔŋgɔːr] ), which in the 16th century were written "Angar" or "Angor" with a ⟨g⟩ and, by

2449-418: The 17th century had become "Anckoor" with a ⟨k⟩ , to posit that the actual devoicing of stops took place late in Middle Khmer, between the 16th and 17th century, and was completed by the 18th century. Vickery, using the same method with a larger word list, concluded that Spanish and Portuguese transliterations of Middle Khmer words proved the devoicing of stops culminated in the last two decades of

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2528-407: The 6th–7th century. Old Khmer and the changes of Middle Khmer are recorded by an extensive epigraphy which has allowed Middle Khmer to be reconstructed and studied. During the Middle Khmer period, the language lost the voiced stops of Old Khmer which resulted in comprehensive compensatory changes to the vowel system. Old Khmer vowels following the formerly voiced stops remained mostly unchanged while

2607-451: The 9th century until the 13th century. The following centuries saw changes in morphology , phonology and lexicon . The language of this transition period, from about the 14th to 18th centuries, is referred to as Middle Khmer and saw borrowings from Thai in the literary register. Modern Khmer is dated from the 19th century to today. The following table shows the conventionally accepted historical stages of Khmer. Just as modern Khmer

2686-513: The English word "bread"). The "r", trilled or flapped in other dialects, is either pronounced as a uvular trill or not pronounced at all. This alters the quality of any preceding consonant, causing a harder, more emphasized pronunciation. Another unique result is that the syllable is spoken with a low-rising or "dipping" tone much like the "hỏi" tone in Vietnamese . For example, some people pronounce ត្រី [trəj] ('fish') as [tʰəj] :

2765-603: The Khmer Empire but part of Vietnam since 1698. Khmers are persecuted by the Vietnamese government for using their native language and, since the 1950s, have been forced to take Vietnamese names. Consequently, very little research has been published regarding this dialect. It has been generally influenced by Vietnamese for three centuries and accordingly displays a pronounced accent, tendency toward monosyllabic words and lexical differences from Standard Khmer. Khmer Khe

2844-627: The Standard Khmer system and that of the Battambang dialect on which the standard is based. In addition, some diphthongs and triphthongs are analyzed as a vowel nucleus plus a semivowel ( /j/ or /w/ ) coda because they cannot be followed by a final consonant. These include: (with short monophthongs) /ɨw/ , /əw/ , /aj/ , /aw/ , /uj/ ; (with long monophthongs) /əːj/ , /aːj/ ; (with long diphthongs) /iəj/ , /iəw/ , /ɨəj/ , /aoj/ , /aəj/ and /uəj/ . The independent vowels are

2923-490: The Thais. The Mekong Delta was lost to Vietnam. The center of Khmer culture retreated southeast and eventually was reduced to a small wedge between its powerful neighbors, Thailand and Vietnam, both of which vied for control of the rump polity as a vassal state. It is within this context, the collapse of the Khmer Empire, that Old Khmer began to quickly evolve into Middle Khmer. All modern varieties of Khmer descend directly from

3002-414: The clusters consisting of a plosive followed by /ʔ/, /b/, /d/ , in those beginning /ʔ/, /m/, /l/ , and in the cluster /kŋ-/ . After the initial consonant or consonant cluster comes the syllabic nucleus , which is one of the vowels listed above. This vowel may end the syllable or may be followed by a coda , which is a single consonant. If the syllable is stressed and the vowel is short, there must be

3081-527: The consonants /ɡ/ , /f/ , /ʃ/ and /z/ occur occasionally in recent loan words in the speech of Cambodians familiar with French and other languages. Various authors have proposed slightly different analyses of the Khmer vowel system. This may be in part because of the wide degree of variation in pronunciation between individual speakers, even within a dialectal region. The description below follows Huffman (1970). The number of vowel nuclei and their values vary between dialects; differences exist even between

3160-411: The descendants of this group. Their dialect is thought to resemble that of pre-modern Siem Reap. Linguistic study of the Khmer language divides its history into four periods one of which, the Old Khmer period, is subdivided into pre-Angkorian and Angkorian. Pre-Angkorian Khmer is the Old Khmer language from 600 CE through 800. Angkorian Khmer is the language as it was spoken in the Khmer Empire from

3239-415: The development of Middle Khmer. Old Khmer allowed 15 consonants in syllable-final position, including /s/ and /r/ in addition to the 13 presently allowed in modern Khmer. Final /s/ and /r/ are still reflected in modern Khmer orthography, but during the Middle Khmer period, syllable-final /s/ simply debuccalized to /h/ and it is now pronounced /h/ in all modern varieties while the fate of syllable-final /r/

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3318-583: The fall of the Khmer Empire in the early 15th century, the Dongrek Mountains served as a natural border leaving the Khmer north of the mountains under the sphere of influence of the Kingdom of Lan Xang . The conquests of Cambodia by Naresuan the Great for Ayutthaya furthered their political and economic isolation from Cambodia proper, leading to a dialect that developed relatively independently from

3397-566: The family. Khmer is spoken by some 13 million people in Cambodia , where it is the official language. It is also a second language for most of the minority groups and indigenous hill tribes there. Additionally there are a million speakers of Khmer native to southern Vietnam (1999 census) and 1.4 million in northeast Thailand (2006). Khmer dialects , although mutually intelligible, are sometimes quite marked. Notable variations are found in speakers from Phnom Penh (Cambodia's capital city),

3476-400: The final syllable, with secondary stress on every second syllable from the end. Thus in a three-syllable word, the first syllable has secondary stress; in a four-syllable word, the second syllable has secondary stress; in a five-syllable word, the first and third syllables have secondary stress, and so on. Long polysyllables are not often used in conversation. Compounds, however, preserve

3555-446: The former series came to take on a secondary characteristic breathy phonation . Thus, when the two consonant series merged in articulation, the contrast was maintained in the following vowels. Vowels following the originally voiceless stops were lowered in quality, in most cases manifesting on-gliding diphthongs. As the shift progressed, the on-glide became the focus of a new vowel nucleus. In words with /aː/ , which can't be lowered, it

3634-404: The government sponsored Cultural Committee to define and standardize the modern language, they championed Khmerization, purging of foreign elements, reviving affixation, and the use of Old Khmer roots and historical Pali and Sanskrit to coin new words for modern ideas. Opponents, led by Keng Vannsak , who embraced "total Khmerization" by denouncing the reversion to classical languages and favoring

3713-607: The intricacies of the vowel system. More recently, there have been two theories as to how this seeming "flip-flop" occurred, both of which elegantly integrate the phenomenon into the devoicing shift and attribute the redevelopment of voiced /b/ and /d/ to the complicated phonological details of that process. Diffloth proposed a five-stage process presented in the table below as given by Wayland and Jongman: The second theory, proposed by Wayland and Jongman, also postulates five stages of development with results similar to Diffloth's but reached by different means. In their second stage,

3792-418: The investigation and reconstruction of Proto-Khmer . Informally, linguists speak of two periods of Middle Khmer based on availability of sources. Evidence of the language dated with surety from the 14th to early 17th century is scant. The many Middle Khmer texts are undated. Internal evidence gives estimates of chronological ordering, but not absolute dates. It is assumed that many of the latest texts date to

3871-469: The language of higher education and the intellectual class. By 1907, the French had wrested over half of modern-day Cambodia, including the north and northwest where Thai had been the prestige language, back from Thai control and reintegrated it into the country. Many native scholars in the early 20th century, led by a monk named Chuon Nath , resisted the French and Thai influences on their language. Forming

3950-829: 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

4029-569: The languages of Austroasiatic. Diffloth places Khmer in an eastern branch of the Mon-Khmer languages . In these classification schemes Khmer's closest genetic relatives are the Bahnaric and Pearic languages . More recent classifications doubt the validity of the Mon-Khmer sub-grouping and place the Khmer language as its own branch of Austroasiatic equidistant from the other 12 branches of

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4108-517: The last syllable instead of falling. Khmer is primarily an analytic language with no inflection . Syntactic relations are mainly determined by word order. Old and Middle Khmer used particles to mark grammatical categories and many of these have survived in Modern Khmer but are used sparingly, mostly in literary or formal language. Khmer makes extensive use of auxiliary verbs , "directionals" and serial verb construction . Colloquial Khmer

4187-471: The letters previously used for /b/ and /d/ came to be indicate pronunciations of /p/ and /t/ , respectively, so the letters for original /p/ and /t/ became redundant and were used only for the fourth series, which then normalized to /b/ ( [ɓ] ) and /d/ ( [ɗ] ) as part of the Middle Khmer consonant restructuring. These hypotheses, based on assumptions about Proto-Mon-Khmer and orthographic conjecture, did not take into account phonation or account for

4266-510: The midpoint of the Middle Khmer period. This has resulted in a distinct accent influenced by the surrounding tonal languages Lao and Thai , lexical differences, and phonemic differences in both vowels and distribution of consonants. Syllable-final /r/ , which has become silent in other dialects of Khmer, is still pronounced in Northern Khmer. Some linguists classify Northern Khmer as a separate but closely related language rather than

4345-504: The modern Khmer language dictionary that is still in use today, helping preserve Khmer during the French colonial period. The phonological system described here is the inventory of sounds of the standard spoken language, represented using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The voiceless plosives /p/, /t/, /c/, /k/ may occur with or without aspiration (as [p] vs. [pʰ] , etc.); this difference

4424-401: The most time to develop and there is overlap between the stages. According to the authors, this theory best accounts for all the shifts and phonological processes involved as well as explains the current situation in Modern Khmer. The shift is complete in Central Khmer, Northern Khmer and Khmer Krom, the three modern varieties representing the overwhelming majority of Khmer speakers. Western Khmer

4503-598: The new vowel inventory was beginning to take shape. The phonological inventory of the earliest Middle Khmer closely resembles that of Old Khmer. The consonants and vowels of the language before the major sound changes occurred are listed below. The voiced implosives [ ɓ ] and [ ɗ ] may have contrasted with [ b ] and [ d ], which is rather rare, or the two sets may have evolved during different stages of Middle Khmer and never have contrasted. The vowels in parentheses are assumed to have been used in early Middle Khmer but this has never been proved nor disproved. In addition to

4582-479: The performance, a dancing style similar to rom kbach is lightly incorporated. The stories are often of various Jatakas or tales of the Buddha 's life. Performances of the story of Tum Teav in the yike are also common. It is performed in a circle so viewers could see it from every angle. The performances gained popularity with Cambodian farmers, thus it have changed over time into a theatrical art form to promote

4661-578: The rural Battambang area, the areas of Northeast Thailand adjacent to Cambodia such as Surin province , the Cardamom Mountains , and southern Vietnam. The dialects form a continuum running roughly north to south. Standard Cambodian Khmer is mutually intelligible with the others but a Khmer Krom speaker from Vietnam, for instance, may have great difficulty communicating with a Khmer native of Sisaket Province in Thailand. The following

4740-494: The same vowels following the originally corresponding voiceless initials were lowered by different processes including diphthongization . Furthermore, the loss of final "-r", all but complete in most modern Khmer dialects, and the merger of syllable-final -/s/ to -/h/ took place during the Middle Khmer period. Middle Khmer is attested in a wide variety of texts as well as inscriptions of the era. Middle Khmer evolved into three modern languages: Northern Khmer , Western Khmer and

4819-417: The start of a syllable are /str/, /skr/ , and (with aspirated consonants analyzed as two-consonant sequences) /sth/, /lkh/ . There are 85 possible two-consonant clusters (including [pʰ] etc. analyzed as /ph/ etc.). All the clusters are shown in the following table, phonetically, i.e. superscript ʰ can mark either contrastive or non-contrastive aspiration (see above ). Slight vowel epenthesis occurs in

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4898-628: The stress patterns of the constituent words. Thus សំបុកចាប , the name of a kind of cookie (literally 'bird's nest'), is pronounced [sɑmˌbok ˈcaːp] , with secondary stress on the second rather than the first syllable, because it is composed of the words [sɑmˈbok] ('nest') and [caːp] ('bird'). Khmer once had a phonation distinction in its vowels, but this now survives only in the most archaic dialect ( Western Khmer ). The distinction arose historically when vowels after Old Khmer voiced consonants became breathy voiced and diphthongized; for example *kaa, *ɡaa became *kaa, *ɡe̤a . When consonant voicing

4977-459: The teachings of Buddhism and Brahmanism. In a Yike drama, the skor mei (the largest of the yike drum family) starts and ends the music. There may be from 2 to 13 drums in the ensemble. The largest skor mei drum plays first, as others gradually join. Finally, the instruments fall away until only the skor mei is playing. Khmer language Khmer ( / k ə ˈ m ɛər / kə- MAIR ; ខ្មែរ , UNGEGN : Khmêr [kʰmae] )

5056-403: The time of King Ang Duong (1789–1859), to whom is attributed the cbap srei ("Conduct for Ladies"). Analysis of metrical rhymes in the cbap literature indicated that among the earliest cbap were the ker kala and kuna cau which could have dated from the early middle period. Much of the phonological changes that mark Middle Khmer were already established and many others were well underway by

5135-482: The time of Late Middle Khmer and the processes occurring in the early period oftentimes must be inferred by comparing Late Old Khmer with the language of later Middle Khmer texts. Late Middle Khmer is the period for which we have the most evidence. In addition to inscriptions, there are palm-leaf manuscript from multiple genres or disciplines, including chronicles , romances, ethical treatises and technical manuals. The devoicing of stops were complete by this time and

5214-471: The use of contemporary colloquial Khmer for neologisms, and Ieu Koeus , who favored borrowing from Thai, were also influential. Koeus later joined the Cultural Committee and supported Nath. Nath's views and prolific work won out and he is credited with cultivating modern Khmer-language identity and culture, overseeing the translation of the entire Pali Buddhist canon into Khmer. He also created

5293-604: The various dialects of Central Khmer, including Standard Khmer and Khmer Krom. "Old Khmer" describes the language as it existed until the 14th century. It was the language of three successive polities in the region, Funan , Chenla and the Khmer Empire (Angkor), which, at its zenith, ruled much of mainland Southeast Asia from the Mekong Delta west to the Andaman Sea and from the Gulf of Thailand north to China. Old Khmer

5372-420: The very early years of Middle Khmer, indicating that Old Khmer final /r/ was already weakening by the beginning of Middle Khmer. This trend continued gradually throughout the Middle Khmer period so that by the transition to Early Modern Khmer, /-r : -Ø/ rhymes were used instead of /-r : -l/, which agrees with the fact that written final /r/ is unpronounced in modern Central Khmer. The loss of final /r/

5451-401: The voiced implosives /ɓ/ and /ɗ/ while slack voiced /b̥/ and /d̥/ become /p/ and /t/. The redundant breathy phonation is minimized and lost in most dialects in the fifth phase. In this proposal, /b/ and /d/ never contrast with /ɓ/ and /ɗ/ and most dialects are never truly "register languages" as vowel phonation is never the sole contrastive element. In this theory, stage two and stage four take

5530-468: The voiced stops take on a slack voice quality which causes following vowels to become breathy voiced while the voiceless stops become stiff voiced . In the third stage, slack vs stiff voice stops still contrast and the formant transitions from stiff voiced stops to following vowels begin to affect the vowels by lowering and then were reinterpreted as diphthongization. In stage four, the abrupt release of stiff voice gradually conditions /p/ and /t/ to become

5609-520: The vowel nuclei listed, there were two diphthongs inherited from Old Khmer, [iə] and [uə], and a third, [ɨə], entered the language via loanwords from Thai. The impetus for the major changes that took place during Middle Khmer was the devoicing of the Old Khmer voiced stops. Unlike the modern language, Old Khmer contrasted voiced stops /ɡ ɟ d b/ with unvoiced /k c t p/ and had a simple vowels system consisting of eight or nine long monophthongs with short counterparts and two diphthongs. Vowels following

5688-470: The vowels that can exist without a preceding or trailing consonant. The independent vowels may be used as monosyllabic words, or as the initial syllables in longer words. Khmer words never begin with regular vowels; they can, however, begin with independent vowels. Example: ឰដ៏, ឧទាហរណ៍, ឧត្តម, ឱកាស...។ A Khmer syllable begins with a single consonant, or else with a cluster of two, or rarely three, consonants. The only possible clusters of three consonants at

5767-455: The words they modify). Some grammatical processes are still not fully understood by western scholars. For example, it is not clear if certain features of Khmer grammar, such as actor nominalization , should be treated as a morphological process or a purely syntactic device, and some derivational morphology seems "purely decorative" and performs no known syntactic work. Middle Khmer Khmer has been written in an Indic-based script since

5846-438: Was emerging from the transitional period represented by Middle Khmer, Cambodia fell under the influence of French colonialism . Thailand, which had for centuries claimed suzerainty over Cambodia and controlled succession to the Cambodian throne, began losing its influence on the language. In 1887 Cambodia was fully integrated into French Indochina , which brought in a French -speaking aristocracy. This led to French becoming

5925-407: Was lost, the distinction was maintained by the vowel ( *kaa, *ke̤a ); later the phonation disappeared as well ( [kaː], [kiə] ). These processes explain the origin of what are now called a-series and o-series consonants in the Khmer script . Although most Cambodian dialects are not tonal , the colloquial Phnom Penh dialect has developed a tonal contrast (level versus peaking tone) as a by-product of

6004-484: Was not as complete as the loss of final /s/, however. Final /r/ is still pronounced prominently in Northern Khmer and by some speakers of Western Khmer. Also remnants of the early Middle Khmer /r/ > /l/ merger are still evident in Central Khmer where Middle Khmer */kɑntor/ ("rat") is pronounced /kɑndol/ ~ /kɑndao/, */prampiːr/ ("seven") as /prampɨl/, and */her/ ("hot, spicy") as /hɨl/ ~ /haə/. Excepting few similar examples, written final /r/ in modern Central Khmer dialects

6083-405: Was not so simple. Texts written in verse throughout the Middle Khmer era demonstrate that the sound of written final /r/ was confused with, and probably pronounced as or similar to, final /l/. In the poetic meters, words written with final /r/ were often used as if they rhymed with words written with final /l/. In fact, /-r : -l/ rhymes were more common than /-r : -r/ rhymes, especially in

6162-537: Was the language of the ruling Khmers and the language of administration throughout the empire. After the 14th century sack of Angkor by the Siamese Ayutthaya Kingdom , the Khmer Empire was terminally weakened and steadily lost both its hegemony and prestige in the region. Territory north of the Dangrek mountains was lost to Lao kingdoms while the west and northwest succumbed to the forerunners of

6241-441: Was the vowel following the formerly voiced consonants that diphthongized. This left the language with two redundant series of consonants and a complementary set of contrasting vowels for each consonant series, effectively doubling the number of vowel nuclei in the language. The formerly voiced stops are referred to as "high register" while the formerly voiceless stops are called "low register". While each vowel symbol represented

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