Origin of the Khmer Language
The History
The first signs of the Khmer language were found as inscriptions in stones carved back in 612 A.D. The inscriptions were mostly religious, discussing rituals and poetic verses. These inscriptions left of no evidence of how the people lived their daily lives, but it has helped us grasp the political and cultural structure. The Khmer language resembles the Sanskrit language, the Indian sacred language used in the region before Khmer. Among the same stones the Khmer language was discovered, Sanskrit was discovered too, but the Sanskrit inscriptions dated as far back as the 5th or 6th century.
