World Language Map

Where is Northern Khmer spoken?

Northern Khmer is an Austroasiatic language, spoken in Thailand and Cambodia. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
  • Tai-Kadai
  • Pama-Nyungan

Everything else

  • All other families Smaller families, isolates and unclassified languages.
  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where Northern Khmer is spoken

Northern Khmer is spoken in 2 countries: Thailand and Cambodia. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
Thailand1.7%1,188,657
CambodiaNot givenNot given

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

Northern Khmer has no area on the map because no open area map covers it. The ringed point is the position Glottolog gives for the language.

How many people speak Northern Khmer?

Wikidata gives about 1.4 million speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2006). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where Northern Khmer sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Northern Khmer as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Austroasiatic
  2. Khmeric
  3. Northern Khmer

Related languages

Other languages in the Khmeric group:

More about Northern Khmer

Codes: ISO 639-3 kxm, Glottolog nort2684. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Northern Khmer

Where is Northern Khmer spoken?

Northern Khmer is spoken in Thailand and Cambodia. Unicode CLDR puts it at 1.7% of the population of Thailand, which is about 1,188,657 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Northern Khmer?

Wikidata gives about 1.4 million speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2006). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.

Which language family is Northern Khmer in?

Glottolog places Northern Khmer in the Austroasiatic family, in the branch Khmeric.

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