Cambodian System of Writing

Huffman & Proum's Cambodian System of Writing was first published in 1970 -- and, to this day, there is no substitute for it.

The authors were generous enough to allow their work to enter the public domain after only 5 years in print, but the text remains expensive and difficult to find.

I found a copy at Toronto's non-circulating public library, and paid the hourly fee to scan it --page by page-- with the hope that it would become commonly available without charge to students, or to anyone who wanted to improve their Khmer. Some of the peculiarities of the particular copy scanned are preserved, including a few pages with torn corners and the "Metropolitan Toronto Library" stamp on the publication information page.

Although there are over 150 pages included in this set, this is not the complete text of the original. Parts 1 and 2 (on this disc) are the didactic portion of the book, after which part 3 offers a series of passages for reading exercise. While the first two parts mentioned are essential for anyone learning to read or write in Khmer, there are many available alternatives to the reading portions provided in the third and final section --in fact, the selections offered by Huffman may be a little out-of-date for anyone trying to learn the modern spoken language ("Things have changed in Cambodia since 1970" --difficult to exaggerate!) and are not particularly useful in preparation for literary studies.

I've copied these images to several discs, and have now mailed them to a handful of scholars around the world (contacted through SEA-Lang, the south east asian languages list) so that the text can be passed on, from hand to hand, in electronic format. I hope that it will soon be freely available on the internet.

Everything on this disc is in the Public Domain. It has been created and distributed without intention to profit, and I hope that it will be reproduced and shared by others without fee.

Eisel Mazard
2003