Khmer Latin
Type Khmer phonetically, using the Latin letters on your keyboard.
Khmer Latin is a second input source that lets you type Khmer without learning the
Khmer key layout. You spell a word the way it sounds — nhom jong tov phsar — and pick
the Khmer it means: ខ្ញុំចង់ទៅផ្សារ.
It works the way Pinyin does for Chinese, or Romaji for Japanese: you type Latin, the input method offers Khmer candidates, and you choose. Everything happens on your Mac — the word list is a file inside the app, and nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Set up
Khmer Latin installs together with the normal keyboard. In the app, open Keyboard and press Install — that puts two input sources into macOS:
| Source | What it types |
|---|---|
| Khmer Native | The standard NIDA Khmer layout. |
| Khmer Latin | Romanized — the one this page is about. |
If macOS doesn't list them straight away, add them under System Settings › Keyboard › Input Sources › + › Khmer, or log out and back in. macOS only enables a newly installed input method across its login scan.
The two sources share your settings and your learned dictionary, so a word you teach one is known to the other.
How to use it
Switch to Khmer Latin
Press 🌐 or ⌃Space until the menu bar shows the Khmer Latin icon. ⌃Space cycles through your input sources, so it is also how you get back to English.
Spell the word as it sounds
Type chgn, jong, or chong — several spellings reach the same word on purpose,
because people type the same word differently under speed.
Pick the Khmer you meant
Candidates appear beside the cursor. Press 1–5 to insert one, or Tab for the first. Space commits and moves on.
One romanization often maps to several Khmer words — that is what the candidate list is for. Your choice is remembered, so the second time the word you picked comes first.
Limits
- The word list is young. It knows 3,516 Khmer words today, and it will miss words you type. Misses are expected at this stage, not a malfunction.
- A word it doesn't know commits as the Latin you typed, rather than swallowing your keystrokes. You can always finish a sentence, then fix the word.
- One word at a time. Each space-separated word is looked up on its own; there is no whole-sentence conversion yet.
- The spellings are the ones people actually type, not a formal transliteration standard. If a spelling you'd naturally use doesn't work, it simply hasn't been added.
- Khmer Latin is macOS 13 or later on Apple Silicon, like the rest of the app.