Middle Khmer

Middle Khmer
An inscription in Middle Khmer
Region	Cambodia, parts of Thailand, Laos and Vietnam
Era	developed into Khmer, Northern Khmer, Western Khmer and Khmer Krom by the 18th century
Language family	Austroasiatic Middle Khmer
Early form	Old Khmer
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xhm
Glottolog	midd1376
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Middle Khmer is the historical stage of the Khmer language as it existed between the 14th and 18th centuries,^[1] spanning the period between Old Khmer and the modern language. The beginning of the Middle Khmer period roughly coincides with the fall of the Angkorian Khmer Empire to the Siamese Ayutthaya Kingdom and the period of Cambodian history popularly referred to as the Post-Angkor Period. The Middle Khmer period was a stage of transition which saw relatively rapid and dramatic changes, especially in phonology,^[2] that ended with the emergence of a language recognizable as Modern Khmer approximately concurrent with the 1777 coronation of Ang Eng, the father of the poet-king Ang Duong.

Khmer has been written in an Indic-based script since the 6th–7th century.^[3] Old Khmer and the changes of Middle Khmer are recorded by an extensive epigraphy which has allowed Middle Khmer to be reconstructed and studied. During the Middle Khmer period, the language lost the voiced stops of Old Khmer which resulted in comprehensive compensatory changes to the vowel system. Old Khmer vowels following the formerly voiced stops remained mostly unchanged while the same vowels following the originally corresponding voiceless initials were lowered by different processes including diphthongization.^[2] Furthermore, the loss of final "-r", all but complete in most modern Khmer dialects, and the merger of syllable-final -/s/ to -/h/ took place during the Middle Khmer period.

Middle Khmer is attested in a wide variety of texts as well as inscriptions of the era. Middle Khmer evolved into three modern languages: Northern Khmer, Western Khmer and the various dialects of Central Khmer, including Standard Khmer and Khmer Krom.