Editing Khmer language (section)

===Stress===
[[Stress (linguistics)|Stress]] in Khmer falls on the final syllable of a word.<ref name="Schiller">{{cite web| url=http://sealang.net/sala/archives/pdf4/schiller1994khmer.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://sealang.net/sala/archives/pdf4/schiller1994khmer.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live | title= Khmer Nominalizing and Causitivizing Infixes| year=1994 | first=Eric| last= Schiller | publisher=University of Chicago| access-date =2008-12-04}}</ref> Because of this predictable pattern, stress is non-[[phoneme|phonemic]] in Khmer (it does not distinguish different meanings).
Primary stress falls on the final syllable, with [[secondary stress]] on every second syllable from the end. Thus in a three-syllable word, the first syllable has secondary stress; in a four-syllable word, the second syllable has secondary stress; in a five-syllable word, the first and third syllables have secondary stress, and so on.<ref name=ModSpok />{{rp|10–11}} Long polysyllables are not often used in conversation.<ref name="HUFF" />{{rp|12}}

Most Khmer words consist of either one or two syllables. In most native disyllabic words, the first syllable is a [[minor syllable|minor]] (fully unstressed) syllable. Such words have been described as ''sesquisyllabic'' (i.e. as having one-and-a-half syllables). There are also some disyllabic words in which the first syllable does not behave as a minor syllable, but takes [[secondary stress]]. Most such words are [[Compound (linguistics)|compounds]], but some are single [[morpheme]]s (generally loanwords). An example is {{lang|km|ភាសា}} ('language'), pronounced {{IPA|[ˌpʰiəˈsaː]}}.<ref name=ModSpok />{{rp|10}}
Words with three or more syllables, if they are not compounds, are mostly loanwords, usually derived from Pali, Sanskrit, or more recently, French. They are nonetheless adapted to Khmer stress patterns.<ref name=KhDict>Headley, Robert K.; Chhor, Kylin; Lim, Lam Kheng; Kheang, Lim Hak; Chun, Chen. 1977. ''Cambodian-English Dictionary''. Bureau of Special Research in Modern Languages. The Catholic University of America Press. Washington, D.C. {{ISBN|0-8132-0509-3}}</ref>

Compounds, however, preserve the stress patterns of the constituent words. Thus {{lang|km|សំបុកចាប}}, the name of a kind of cookie (literally 'bird's nest'), is pronounced {{IPA|[sɑmˌbok ˈcaːp]}}, with secondary stress on the second rather than the first syllable, because it is composed of the words {{IPA|[sɑmˈbok]}} ('nest') and {{IPA|[caːp]}} ('bird').<ref name=KhDict />