Learning resource
SEAsite Cambodian Language
SEAsite Cambodian Language is the Khmer section of SEAsite, a free online learning site from Northern Illinois University.[1] Its pages cover the Khmer language, culture, song and food.[2]
About the resource
SEAsite offers interactive online lessons in the languages, literatures and cultures of Southeast Asia, among them Khmer, also called Cambodian. Faculty and students at Northern Illinois University built it. It began in 1983 as a federally funded system for computer-aided teaching of Thai and Indonesian, and it later grew into the SEAsite website. As of 2026, SEAsite was being updated to make its lessons and activities easier to use.[1] The university's Center for Southeast Asian Studies offers Foreign Language Area Scholarships for the study of Khmer.[2]
Khmer is the official language of Cambodia and is understood in many of the countries around it. It belongs to the Mon-Khmer family and is not a tonal language. Many of its two-syllable words are formed from one-syllable bases by adding a prefix or an infix, a sound group placed inside the word. Khmer has borrowed words from Sanskrit, Pali and French, and Chinese and Vietnamese words have entered everyday speech.[1] Its writing system was borrowed and adapted from South Indian scripts.[3]
Contents
The Cambodian Language pages have sections for an overview, language, culture, song, food and links, and mobile language apps for any device. Kheang Leang and Kheang Un designed the pages, which were last updated on August 29, 2012.[2]
The site uses Unicode fonts for Khmer, and the old custom SEAsite Khmer fonts are no longer needed and will not work. As of 2012, information on getting and installing a Khmer Unicode font was to be posted for computers that do not display Khmer.[2]