Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Khmer the language does seem to have some fun sounds.
But English has a consonant between 'b' and 'p' ('pʰ' in IPA) as well. Just consider the difference between 'ban', 'span' and 'pan'. The 'p' in 'span' is not as forceful as the 'p' in 'pan', and they're actually different consonants.
> The 'p' in 'span' is not as forceful as the 'p' in 'pan', and they're actually different consonants.
Yes, they're phonetically different, but in English the difference is not phonemic; they're allophones of the same consonant.
Re:The Awful German Language (1880)
by InternetOfStuff on Saturday October 06, 2018 @09:52AM
(#18155116)
I don't know enough (or in fact any) Khmer to make a meaningful comparison, but the "b", "bp", and "p" consonants exist in the Thai alphabet as well.
They used to share an alphabet, too, but the Thai opted to simplify it (westernise it) while the Khmer opted to keep their original alphabet. Written Khmer is hard for us westerners to deal with because of this. They have lots of vowels and consonants that we don't have (I always struggle with the consonant between 'b' and 'p', because it doesn't seem like there should be any room for another consonant in there).