What Questions

What questions in Khmer simply tag the word awai អ្វី onto the end of the question. This is the opposite to English, in which the word ‘what’ usually appears at the start of the sentence:

What is your name? – neak chmooa awai? អ្នក ឈ្មោះ អ្វី?
What do you do? – neak twer gaa awai? អ្នក ធ្វើការ អ្វី?

Most questions in Khmer are generally formed by adding a particular question word on to the end of a statement, which makes them fairly straightforward. However, while this is the technically correct way of doing things, the question words may in practice be placed elsewhere in the sentence. The most common placement is either at the end or the start of the question (you should learn the correct way first, but be prepared to hear things in new ways and adapt to using them as you progress in the language).