Image for Khmer font styles

[xfq]

https://www.w3.org/International/sealreq/khmer/#h_font_styles

There are images for the upright style, the slanted style, and the round style. It would be useful to add another image for the last style.

[r12a]

I had another look, but was unable to find (so far) a font for the អក្សរខម ʔɑːksɑː kʰɑːm style. Wikipedia has an image, but doesn't mention how it was created afaict.

[bact]

Does one of these an Aksar kham style?

• https://khmerfonts.info/fontinfo.php?font=2950
• https://khmerfonts.info/fontinfo.php?font=2896

[r12a]

Thanks, @bact . I'm not sure how to determine whether or not these are in the aksar kham style. @makaraSok @mcDurdin @mhosken @NorbertLindenberg can you help ?

[mcdurdin]

My memory tells me that Aksor Kham was the style where KA had 3 legs, e.g. https://khmerfonts.info/fontinfo.php?font=2876

But I don't have any references for this. https://www.khmerfonts.info/styles.php is a reference which adds confusion for me.

@MakaraSok should have better answers than me.

[patchew]

Leveraging the links in the Wikipedia article on Khmer Scripts ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_script#Styles), the <aksar khâm> link takes one to the article on Khom Thai Script ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khom_Thai_script), which shows that three-legged that Marc mentions:

[image: Khmerscript-khom.png]

That said, most of the other web searches I did (in Khmer, Thai, etc) turned up glyphs that were basically plain muol style (where there's large overlap)... nb: the here is not the three-legged , but the regular muol :

[image: អក្សារខម (ចំណេះដឹងទូទៅ).jpg] [khm] អក្សរខមមានថើង (<aksar khâm> with "legs" (subjoined forms))

[image: อักษรขอม หรือ เขมรโบราณ (រៀនភាសាថៃ เรียน ภาษาไทย).jpg] [tha] อักษรขอม หรือ เขมรปบราณ (<aksǫn khǫm> or Ancient Khmer)

Usually, in order to find <aksar khâm> glyphs, the moniker "Muol Pali" seems to crop up a lot, eg:

• https://khmer-fonts.com/fonts/kh-muol-pali-regular

[image: aksar_khmaemuol_muol_paliods.png]

I'm attaching the .ods that the above screenshot comes from.

Richard, hope this helps!

Best,

• Patrick

On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 2:50 PM Marc Durdin @.***> wrote:

My memory tells me that Aksor Kham was the style where KA had 3 legs, e.g. https://khmerfonts.info/fontinfo.php?font=2876

But I don't have any references for this. https://www.khmerfonts.info/styles.php is a reference which adds confusion for me.

@MakaraSok https://github.com/MakaraSok should have better answers than me.

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[MakaraSok]

According to "CAMBODIAN SYSTEM OF WRITING and BEGINNING READER with Drills and Glossary" by Franklin Huffman (1970 p77-84), អក្សរខម 'Cambodian script' is a variant of អក្សរមូល 'round script'. Please refer to the screenshots below for a quick reference.

And what we have here are 2. Standing, 3. Kham/Khom/Cambodian and 4. Round

At the end of the day, Kham Thai actually means "Cambodian Thai" or "Khmer Thai" kind of script which has been adopted and added to an old way of writing using Khmer script. According to Chuon Nath dictionary (1967), this style of writing is commonly found in palm-leaf manuscripts (aka Sastra Sloek Rith).

@sovichet, do you have a full reference of what all letters in អក្សរខម would look like? Or do we have a font for it?

[MakaraSok]

@danhhong, do you have any comment on how អក្សរខម should look?

[sovichet]

From the "អក្សរផ្ចង់" book, first published in 1957, republished in 1998:

Aksâr Moul (with subconsonants) Aksâr Moul tends to be resemble the letterforms of Old Khmer script from the inscription. The main different letters are: ក គ ង ជ and វ.

Aksâr Khâm (with subconsonants) Aksâr Khâm tends to be a bit simpler than Moul.

[sovichet]

Some text from the book "វេយ្យាករណ៍ខ្មែរទំនើប​ / La Grammaire Khmere Moderne", 1957:

Translation: Aksar Kham is also the Aksar Moul but some characters are different as they tend to be more expressive/cursive. Aksar Kham was mostly used on palm leaves manuscripts in the past, however, these days, it is used for Pali language, yanta, heading/title (sous titre), label (étiquette), or banner (panneau), and bulletin/notice (avis).

Aksar Moul is similar to Aksar Kham, but its form is not too expressive and it has similar function to the Aksar Kham.

[sovichet]

These days, Cambodians mostly recognize these two writing styles as one – Aksar Moul.

Here is a slide from my presentation on the current landscape of Khmer typography, not sure if this would help. 🙂

[ohbendy]

Kham Thai actually means "Cambodian Thai" or "Khmer Thai"

Yes, my understanding is that Kham/Khom/Khoom just means Khmer, but especially for manuscripts (palm leaf manuscrips or bai laan and folding books or samut khoi) and yantras seen in Thailand, where the letterforms are a little different like the examples above, and often with tonemarks and/or intonation marks, like this example:

There's a fuller discussion in Jana Igunma's paper Aksoon Khoom: Khmer Heritage in Thai and Lao Manuscript Cultures where she also mentions 'three more variants have been identified by the Institut bouddhique in Phnom Penh: Aksoon Krasian (believed to refer to Siam), Aksoon Khwiak for rapid writing, and Aksoon Sabda' as well as various subgenres of the main styles. It would be fantastic to identify and classify all the styles of Khmer script.

[MakaraSok]

where the letterforms are a little different like the examples above, and often with tonemarks and/or intonation marks, like this example:

That's interesting. The text in the image has/had been tampered with. Without all the red inks, I do not see any different from what we have written on most of our palm-leaf manuscripts. Can we have more original and clean sample texts of what is called K**m Thai?

[ohbendy]

There are more examples of the red intonation symbols in the digitised collections of the British Library, but unfortunately they had a cyber attack and everything's offline at the moment. The one above I think was from OR 17303.

A couple more examples:

Without intonation marks, a couple of images from my hard drive:

I'm not too certain of specific differences, but Michel Antelme's paper (in French) Inventaire provisoire des caractères et divers signes des écritures Khmères pré-modernes et modernes employés pour la notation du Khmer, du Siamois, des dialectes Thaïs méridionaux, du Sanskrit et du Pāli notes in detail the differences between standard Khmer and Khom, even identifying different styles of Khom.