How do we know the exact English spelling of these names? How can we say that one translation of another’s language is or is not correct in English?
Aren’t these translations from one language to another mostly based on the originator’s pronunciation?
Transliterations. Changing from one alphabet or writing system to another. Not translation, which transfers the meaning in one language to another.
Generally, when a language already has its own writing system, representing it in another one is not phonetic transcription of the pronunciation, although that can influence it. Ideally there’s a one-to-one correspondence between the set of glyphs in one system matched to another. (In practice, it usually doesn’t work out so neatly.)
In the case of Khmer, the word in Khmer script is ខ្មែរ, where the first letter represents kh, the second is the syllable me, and the third is the letter r. The way Khmer script is set up, a vowel is not written as an independent letters but is combined with the consonant that precedes it, making a syllabic glyph. But when there’s a consonant with no vowel, it’s written by itself. This is how we know that the letters kh and r don’t get a vowel with them, but the m does, so it’s combined with the element for e to make the syllable me. Actually, it’s a little more complex than that for Indic scripts like Khmer. When two consonants come together, their glyphs are combined into a conjunct form. So the spelling of the name *Khmer *is analyzed as khme + r.
So you see, transliteration isn’t haphazard. There is a definite system to it.
The usual version is neither of those, but Khmer.
As with other languages that use a non-Roman alphabet, spelling in depends on the Romanization system used to transliterate the language.
It may or may not go without saying that the “rouge” part is just French, so it is much easier to transliterate than the “Khmer” part.
There you go! I have learned something today. Thanks all.
This is why you may get very different English spellings of names in Arabic, Chinese, or other languages. Different sources may use different Romanization systems.
There was a similar ambiguity in the English spelling of the name of the former Libyan dictator, Gadhafi. Cecil Adams addressed the question of how to spell his name about 28 years ago, “How are you supposed to spell Muammar Gaddafi/Khadafy/Qadhafi?” In the case of the Libyan leader, he replied to a letter from American schoolchildren with his named written out as Moammar El-Gadhafi. That became the default Romanization for many media sources.
I going to post that. A longer list. Wikipedia uses “Muammar Gaddafi.”
Languages like Khmer (these links go to the writing system and not the specific language) or Arabic or Hebrew are harder to transliterate because vowels are less explicit than in alphabets. But even true alphabets like Cyrillic can sometimes be given multiple transliterations. Certain languages like Japanese have an well-defined transliteration, except that there are many competing systems (although Hepburn or one of its variants are normally used in English).
So do I now have to get used to making the km sound without preceding vowels like I did for Ng, or is there an invisible vowel in there?
Chinese is an unusual case because non-Chinese have commonly been exposed to three different systems. The oldest common system was the Wade-Giles developed by British diplomats in the 19th century. Then there was the Yale system developed by Americans in the mid-20th century. And now we have the Pinyin system developed by the Chinese in the late 20th century.
All of these systems have been in common use among English speakers which is why you’ll see the name of the former President of the Republic of China spelled as Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang Chieh-shih, or Jiang Jieshi.
For the purposes of speaking English, you can feel free to insert a schwa vowel in between the k and the m, and no one will think the less of you for it. 
Plus, many other alphabets don’t necessarily have a correlation to roman alphabet.
For example, the Arabic name “Ahmed” can maybe also be spelled “Achmed” although the correct pronunciation is more like “h” than 'ch", but is somewhere in between. As you can see, the romanization does not even agree on much except the “M”. (The difference is there is an even more specific “ch” letter in Arabic.)
Of course, we are just as guilty. We slur or simplify vowels. I suspect 99% of English speakers say a word like doctor as “dok-tur” not “dok-tor”.
That is sadly a very inaccurate view of how Arabic is romanized. The letter ح in Aḥmad, romanized as ḥ (aitch with a dot under it) sounds nothing like kh or ch or anything else. It’s the voiceless pharyngeal fricative, which sounds like h produced from the narrowed pharynx, or as the Arabic linguists of olden times called it, from “the middle of the throat.” The familiar [h] sound in English, which is also the Arabic letter ه, by contrast, comes from the glottis, or “the bottom of the throat.”
There is no letter for “ch” in Arabic at all. However, that sound exists in Persian, so Persian adapted the Arabic letter for j to write their ch: چ
The preferred standard system of romanization for Arabic is ALA-LC, developed by the American Library Association and the Library of Congress, in order to make an exact one-to-one correspondence between the Arabic symbols and the romanized symbols. That way, the original Arabic orthography can be recovered from the accurate romanization—this is called “reversability,” which is necessary in library cataloging. Arabic studies experts far and away use ALA-LC for their romanization, and so do the U.S. Intelligence Community and Wikipedia, because of its accuracy. There is no need to be haphazard and sloppy with Arabic romanization. That problem already has its solution, and those in the know are already on board with it. To claim otherwise is to spread obfuscation where there’s actually clarity.
I don’t pretend to know Arabic, thus am never wrong only misreading :)… But when I read Achmed, in post #12, I took the “ch” to not be intended to be pronounced [tʃ] but as either [x] (Latin x, ch in “loch”) or [χ] (Greek chi, not in English but I can imagine it by hearing it occasionally in French). Both do occur in Arabic, using the same character, which appears as the same as ح with a dot on top ( خ ). But it looks like the h in Ahmed (et al.) is indeed the close-enough-to-English-h [ħ] sound.
Yep, you got it right, the dot on top makes all the difference. The same letter-form with the dot inside it is the letter for j. With three dots inside it, it becomes the Persian-adapted letter for ch.
Hebrew doesn’t have the [ħ] sound, except in Mizraħi pronunciation. (See what I did there? ;)) It’s an understandable error for a Hebrew speaker to confuse [ħ] with [χ] when beginning to learn Arabic. I had studied Hebrew first; when I went to take my very first Arabic class, I didn’t know how to tell the difference either. The teacher wrote the word for ‘horse’ on the blackboard—ħiṣān—and asked me to read it. I mispronounced it χiṣān, and the teacher said no, that isn’t ‘horse’, you said the word for ‘testicles’. I was so embarrassed in front of everyone that I caught on fast and never forgot it! That was 30 years ago.
I am not a native Arabic speaker but my wife is. And I know some people named Ahmad. That letter in that name (which should be rendered as Ahmed, Ahmad, but not really Achmed) is a strongly aspirated “h” which an uninitiated Western ear may hear as the uvular fricative because the aspiration is more emphatic than what we do in English. There is also the more-empahtic ه . But the خ sound, as you and Johanna note, is much different. It drives me crazy when I hear newscasters scrape that sound. Not to mention Jeff Dunham.
Thanks.
I just know that our guide’s name was spelled with an “H” but was pronounced with that very slight almost-“ch” throat sound (almost as in the the German “kh” as in, “ach”, not the English, as in “Church”). But it’s a good illustration that one region’s alphabet does not necessarily translate to another’s; as Peking/Beijing demonstrates too.
One thing I’ve been trying to understand for years is why there’s an “r”? I’ve taken up pronouncing it “ka-mai” as I’ve heard native Cambodian speakers say it. “Ka-mere” or “Ka-mer” sound like complete different words due to the addition of the “r.” So, why was it added? Why not make it sound closer to the native word?
Simple: The spelling in the Khmer script uses the Khmer letter for r. Pronounced or not, it’s written. Might as well ask why Bostonian or English or French people write the letter r when they don’t pronounce it at the end of a word.
Again, it’s transliteration (representing the symbols of one writing system in another), not transcription (representing the phonetic sounds).