Worlddata.info
Picture Languages

Khmer speaking countries

Khmer is the official language in Cambodia and is spoken in 3 other countries as monther tongue by a part of the population. The Khmer language (native name: ខ្មែរ, ខេមរភាសា, ភាសាខ្មែរ) has its roots in the Austroasiatic language family.

As a percentage of the total population, the largest share of around 89 percent is in Cambodia. A total of about 18.2 million people worldwide speak Khmer as their mother tongue.
Distribution Khmer

CountryRegionOfficial languageDistributionTotal
CambodiaSoutheast Asiayes88.6 %14,698,000
VietnamSoutheast Asiano1.4 %1,365,000
LaosSoutheast Asiano16.5 %1,225,000
ThailandSoutheast Asiano1.3 %931,000



Unless otherwise described in the text, this page is about native speakers — not the total number of speakers. How many people understand or speak Khmer as a subsequently learned language is not the subject of this page. Countries where native speakers make up only a few thousand, or even a few hundred people, or countries with a percentage well below 1% are unlikely to be listed here.