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UNIT 2 CONSONANTS AND VOWELS 2

CONSONANTS AND VOWELS

Let me introduce another 10 Khmer consonants. How to write the 10 consonants is illustrated in the images below.

ច ជ ឆ and ដ are respectively the most commonly used consonants of the 10 consonants. ឌ and ណ have probably a few dozen words each while ឍ has very few words. I arbitrarily divide the consonants into two groups: female and male groups. ច ឆ ដ ថ ណ are in the female group, whereas the rest of the consonants in this unit belong to the male group. Observe how the sound of a vowel is changed when it is associated with a male group consonant. Now let me introduce 3 more Khmer vowels.

Let’s see how the consonants and vowels are combined. Note the difference of vowel sounds between black and red combinations. The difference is not true all the time depending on actual words. But for now, let’s just note this general rule. The vowel ួ in the last row of the image below doesn’t change its sound in whatever cases; therefore, all the combinations are in black.