When you’re sliding into someone’s DMs, how often do you think about the history of the letters you’re typing with on your phone’s keyboard? What history is embedded within them, where did they come from, and what stories do they tell in themselves? When it comes to the Khmer script—which the Thai alphabet is based on—it’s an early history of Southeast Asia itself, one that Sungil Noh breaks down in his book Khmer Character Travels. And it’s a history that’s still in flux.
Sungil is a Korean graphic designer and publisher who hopes to raise awareness about Southeast Asian culture in his home country and internationally. As a student, he felt frustrated that schools only teach Western visual culture when expanding beyond their own region and decided to do something about that. He wrote Khmer Character Travels as a thesis for graduate school and it was also the first book for his publishing company sojanggak. (The book was published in 2017 but he hopes to publish an English translation by the end of the year.) To write it, Sungil interviewed more than 40 experts in Phnom Penh and Siam Reap, including monks, experts in Khmer typography and history, Khmer designers, and philosophers.
“I had visited Cambodia on vacation and came across ancient Khmer script engraved at Angkor Wat and some other sites,” Sungil says of his inspiration to research the Khmer written language. “You can see many of the ancient letters on pillars in temples across Cambodia. I saw Pre-Angkor Khmer at a very old temple from the 6th or 7th centuries. The temples also used palm leaf manuscripts, where they told Buddhist stories.” He identifies Pre-Angkor Khmer as continental Southeast Asia’s first unique written language.
Khmer was derived from the Pallava script brought along by monks from Southern India who traveled to Cambodia and taught their letters, social systems, and religion to the locals. The script evolved over a couple of iterations into modern Khmer and then Lao and Thai. Thai script branched off into its own alphabet when King Ram Khamhaeng repurposed Khmer to develop the country’s own written language: “He created the new letters by simplifying Khmer’s form, making it easier to understand. He also created more consonants to adapt the script to their sound system.” The oldest example of the Thai script can be found on the Ram Khamhaeng Inscription from the 13th century, which is on display at the Bangkok National Museum.
While other indigenous written languages were wiped out by colonists like Chữ Nôm in Vietnam and Baybayin in the Philippines, as well as by nationalists like Lanna in Thailand, Khmer survived throughout the centuries and is still used to this day. “Buddhists had enough power during colonialism to preserve and protect their language and letters,” Sungil says. Another strength was its universal use across Cambodia. “While a place like Thailand is very diverse ethnically, Cambodia is mostly Khmer. So they’ve always used the same system nationwide.”
That’s not to say it hasn’t evolved over the years or faced its own challenges. “In the past, they would write on palm leaf, so the letter style was more circular, which made it easier to write over the plant lines,” Sungil explains. “But it became straighter (as seen today) when paper began being imported in the 20th century and use of the typewriter spread.” A lot of history has been lost, unfortunately, due to the purges of the Khmer Rouge. “They killed a third of the people in the cities; mostly intellectuals, teachers, and office workers. Much of the language, letters, and documentation—the culture itself—was burned over the course of five years. Much of the culture was lost.”
The Khmer script continues to change to this day due to new technologies and policies. When the word processor was introduced at the turn of the century, several foundational fonts were created that provide the basis of what’s used now. A man named Danh Hong created and uploaded more than 50 fonts to the Web, all of them free and open source. “They were very popular and many designers followed his work. He designed his fonts using historical forms and street signage,” says Sungil. Some of the fonts already had names, like Moul. Others had new names based on where they were found. With the advent of mobile keyboards, Khmer has entered a new era, and it’s a chaotic one. Since there are so many characters (126 letters), it’s difficult to fit it all on a tiny screen. And the government has declined to standardize a writing system. The result is a Wild West of keyboard apps. “With English, there’s one keyboard everyone uses. For Khmer, there are so many, all of them trying out different approaches.”
In his own design work, Sungil is more inspired by the color of Southeast Asian design found on packaging, signage, and in books and comics rather than letter form. While he says that Korean design is still mainly focused on fast-moving trends and tends to follow Western approaches, more and more clients are opening up to Asian inspirations: “These days they’re asking me for work with my own characteristics, they’re more interested in the Asian themes I’m using. Diversity is becoming more accepted than ever before.”
