Vocabulary Flashcards

About this tool

Vocabulary Flashcards is a deck of twenty common Khmer words and phrases on flip cards. You can study in either direction: Khmer first, where you read សួស្តី and guess the meaning, or English first, where you read the meaning and have to produce the Khmer. Tap or press Space to turn the card over, move through the deck with the arrow keys, shuffle it when the order has become a crutch, and use the speaker buttons to hear either side read aloud if your device has a voice for it. There is no account, no sign-up and no score to keep: it opens on a card and you work through it. It is for the first weeks of learning Khmer, for a visitor who wants ten useful phrases before a trip, for a volunteer or a teacher running a short session, and for anyone who already knows a few words and wants to check the script. It is a fixed deck of twenty entries, not a course: there is no spaced repetition, no progress saved between visits and no way to add your own words.

How it works

The deck is the `VOCABULARY_FLASHCARDS` array in `flashcard-data.ts`, twenty `{ khmer, english }` pairs loaded once into component state. `VocabularyFlashcardsClient` keeps an index, a flipped flag and a direction, and renders the question side and the answer side from the same card so the two can never fall out of step. Next and previous wrap around with a modulo on the deck length, so the last card leads back to the first and the counter restarts rather than stopping. Shuffle replaces the deck with a Fisher-Yates copy of the same array, which is why shuffling twice gives two different orders but never adds or loses a card. The keyboard handler is attached to the window rather than to a focused element, so Space and the arrow keys work wherever the focus is on the page; Space is prevented from scrolling. Pronunciation uses the browser speech synthesis API, picking an English and a Khmer voice from the list the device exposes, at a rate of 0.85 for English and 0.9 for Khmer. Nothing is stored: reload and the deck, the order and the card all reset.

Use cases

• Learning ten survival phrases before a first trip to Cambodia
• Testing yourself in the English-first direction once the Khmer side has started to look familiar
• Running a five-minute warm-up at the start of a Khmer language class
• Checking that you can still read the Khmer script for numbers, days and family words
• Practising pronunciation by ear with the speaker buttons on a phone
• Shuffling the deck to break the habit of memorising the order rather than the words
• Giving a volunteer or a new arrival a low-pressure way to start on the language

Frequently asked questions

• How many words are in the deck?

  Twenty. The list is fixed in the source and covers greetings, thanks, yes and no, and a set of everyday nouns: water, food, house, car, person, family, school, day, month, year, hour, number, name, country and language. It is a starter set rather than a frequency list, so it will not take you to conversational Khmer and it does not grow as you learn.

• Where does the word list come from?

  It is a hand-written list in `flashcard-data.ts`, chosen as common beginner vocabulary. It is not drawn from an official curriculum, a textbook or a published frequency list, and no source is claimed for the selection or the translations. Treat the pairs as a starting point and check anything you intend to use in a formal or written context with a teacher or a dictionary.

• Does it use spaced repetition or track what I have learned?

  No. There is no scheduling algorithm, no right-or-wrong marking and no record of which cards you have seen. The progress bar shows your position in the current pass through the deck, nothing more. Reloading the page resets the order, the card and the direction, because nothing is saved to the browser or to a server. If you want repetition scheduling, this deck will not give it to you.

• Can I add my own words or make a second deck?

  Not through the page. The deck is a constant in the source, so adding words means editing `flashcard-data.ts` and rebuilding, and the component reads only that one array. There is no import, no paste-a-list box and no per-user storage. A teacher who wants a custom set would have to fork the file rather than use the page as it stands.

• How does the pronunciation work?

  Through the browser speech synthesis API, which reads the Khmer or English text on the card using a voice installed on your device. The page asks the device for its voice list and prefers a Khmer voice for the Khmer side and an English one for the English side, at a slightly slower rate than normal. Nothing is downloaded from this site: if the device has no Khmer voice, there is nothing to play.

• Why does the Khmer audio sound wrong or stay silent?

  Because speech synthesis depends entirely on the voices installed on your operating system. Many desktop systems ship no Khmer voice, and the browser then either stays silent or reads Khmer text with a default voice that was never designed for the script. Adding a Khmer voice in the system settings usually fixes it. A phone with a Khmer keyboard installed is more likely to have one already.

• Do I need an account, and does it work offline?

  No account is needed and no data is sent anywhere. The deck is bundled with the page, so once the page has loaded the cards and the shuffle work without a connection. Pronunciation is generated locally by the device, so it also works offline. A hard reload while offline will fail, because the page itself still has to be fetched the first time.

• What do the keyboard shortcuts do?

  Space flips the current card, the left arrow goes to the previous card and the right arrow to the next one. Both arrows wrap around at the ends of the deck. The handler listens on the window rather than on the card, so the keys work without clicking the deck first, and Space is intercepted so the page does not scroll while you are reviewing.

Data and accuracy

Content last reviewed 21 October 2026