Cambodian Linguistics, Literature and History: Collected Articles

Judith M. Jacob (1929-2011) was one of the twentieth century's foremost Western scholars of the Khmer language, teaching at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London for most of her career and producing the standard English-Khmer dictionary and reference grammar still used by students today. This 1993 volume gathers her scattered academic articles into a single collected edition spanning three of her core specialties: Khmer linguistics (grammar, vocabulary, and the structure of the language), Khmer literature (including her close studies of classical verse narratives and court literature), and Cambodian history and social conditions as reflected in written sources. Because Jacob worked directly with original Khmer-language manuscripts and inscriptions rather than secondary translations, the collection is considered a foundational reference for anyone doing serious research into pre-modern Cambodian textual culture. It sits at the intersection of philology and history, showing how the Khmer language itself changed across centuries of Angkorian and post-Angkorian Cambodia. Republished as a bound collection specifically so later scholars would not have to hunt down her individual journal articles piecemeal.