Khmer Alphabet Chart: Every Symbol Group at a Glance

The full Khmer script is more than 100 symbols, but it is not 100 random shapes. Everything you will ever read in Khmer comes from a handful of groups: 33 consonants split into two sound families, subscript forms of those consonants, more than 20 dependent vowels, a smaller set of independent vowels, a few diacritics, and ten numerals. This page puts the whole map on one screen, with charts for the consonants and numerals and pointers to deeper guides for the rest.

One convention before the charts. Throughout this site, blue marks a-series consonants and red marks o-series consonants. The colors are not decoration. Which series a consonant belongs to decides how every vowel attached to it is pronounced, so your eyes should start sorting letters into families from the first day.

How many symbols does the Khmer script have?

Khmer has 33 consonants, and the complete script runs past 100 symbols once you add subscript consonants, dependent vowels, independent vowels, diacritics, and numerals. That number sounds intimidating, but the groups are small and regular, and most of the later groups reuse knowledge from the earlier ones.

Here is the whole inventory at a glance:

• 33 consonants, each belonging to the a-series or the o-series.
• Subscript consonants, often called the feet: a smaller form of nearly every consonant, stacked under another letter to write consonant clusters.
• More than 20 dependent vowels, signs that attach to a consonant and take one of two readings depending on its series.
• Independent vowels, a small group of standalone letters that carry their own vowel sound.
• Diacritics, a handful of small marks that adjust sounds, mute letters, or flip a consonant between series.
• 10 numerals, the digits zero through nine.

If you want the groups in learning order rather than chart order, the beginner's roadmap to reading Khmer walks through what to study first and why.

The 33 consonants at a glance

The 33 consonants are the foundation of the script: every one belongs to either the a-series (blue, carrying a built-in "aw" sound) or the o-series (red, carrying a built-in "ow" sound). The chart below follows the traditional order, five letters to a row, with the last row collecting the final eight.

The final eight consonants sit outside the five main rows:

Count the colors and you get 15 blue a-series letters and 18 red o-series letters. Notice the pattern inside each row: the first two letters tend to be a-series and the next three o-series, which is one of several regularities that make the chart easier than it looks. For the sound of each letter, the pairs that trip beginners up, and a mnemonic for every glyph, see the full guide to the 33 Khmer consonants and the two series.

Khmer numerals: the digits 0 to 9

Khmer has its own ten digits, and they work exactly like Western digits: position by position, so ១២ is 12 and ១០០ is 100. You will see them on price tags, license plates, and clocks all over Cambodia, usually alongside Western numerals.

The names from six to nine give away a nice bit of history: Khmer counting is built on five, so seven is literally "five-two" (pram-pi). Ten symbols, one afternoon of practice, and every menu price in Phnom Penh becomes readable.

What else is in the script?

Beyond the consonants and numerals, three more groups complete the script: subscript consonants, vowels (dependent and independent), and diacritics. Each is small enough to deserve its own focused chart, so this section gives you the shape of each group and where to study it properly.

Subscript consonants (the feet)

Nearly every consonant has a second, smaller form that stacks underneath another consonant to write clusters, the way the word ខ្មែរ (Khmer) stacks a small ម under ខ. Most feet look like shrunken versions of their parent letter, and a few look surprisingly different. The guide to Khmer subscript consonants charts every foot next to its parent.

Dependent and independent vowels

Dependent vowels are the largest group after the consonants: more than 20 signs that attach above, below, before, after, or around a consonant. Each one has two readings, one for a-series consonants and one for o-series, which is exactly why the series colors matter. Independent vowels are a much smaller set of standalone letters used in a modest number of common words. Both groups are charted with both readings in the guide to Khmer vowels.

Diacritics

A handful of small marks rounds out the script. Some shorten a vowel, one mutes a letter entirely, and two convert a consonant from one series to the other, which patches the gaps where a sound only exists in one family. They are quick to learn once the consonants and vowels are in place, and they come last in the study order for a reason.

How do you actually memorize a chart?

Not by staring at it. A chart is a map, and a map is for reference, not for memorization. The letters that stick are the ones tied to a picture: ក drawn as a giraffe with its neck craned, គ as a gopher popping out of its burrow. Give each glyph one vivid mnemonic and the shape stops being an abstract squiggle and starts being a story you already know.

So use this page the way you would use a wall map. Study letters in small batches with a mnemonic each, let the blue and red do the series work in your peripheral vision, and come back to the chart to see how far you have traveled. For keeping the letters fresh once you have met them, spaced repetition is the right tool, and the guide to learning the Khmer alphabet with Anki flashcards shows how to set it up without falling into the brute-force trap.

If you would rather start writing than keep reading, the free sample PDF teaches the first eight consonants exactly this way: one mnemonic per letter, color-coded by series, with writing practice built in.