How to Say Hello in Khmer: Susadei and the Sampeah

Hello in Khmer is chum reap suor (ជំរាបសួរ) in formal situations and susadei (សួស្ដី) with friends, peers, and anyone your age or younger. Pick the formal one when in doubt: nobody in Cambodia has ever been offended by too much politeness.

You will also see susadei written as suostei, sou sdey, or sus'day. They are all the same word. Khmer transliteration is famously inconsistent, and that matters more than you might think. We will come back to it.

The Quick Answer, Broken Down

Chum reap suor (choom reap soo-ah) is the formal greeting. Use it with elders, officials, monks, business contacts, and strangers you want to show respect to. It is usually paired with the sampeah gesture.
Susadei (soo-sa-day) is the everyday casual hello. Friends, kids, market vendors you chat with regularly, fellow travelers. It is friendly and light, roughly like "hi."
Neither one changes with the time of day. Khmer has specific phrases for good morning (arun suosdei) and good evening (sayoanh suosdei), but in real conversation susadei and chum reap suor cover everything from sunrise to midnight.

Unlike Thai, Khmer is not a tonal language, which is a relief. But it has vowel sounds and consonant clusters that English spelling simply cannot capture, so do not trust the romanized version too much.

Khmer Greetings at a Glance

Greeting	Transliteration	When to use it
ជំរាបសួរ	chum reap suor	Formal: elders, monks, officials, first meetings
សួស្ដី	susadei / suostei	Casual: friends, peers, everyday encounters
អរុណសួស្ដី	arun suosdei	Good morning, fairly formal, rare in casual speech
សាយ័ណ្ហសួស្ដី	sayoanh suosdei	Good evening, formal, mostly TV and announcements
សុខសប្បាយទេ?	sok sabay te?	"How are you?" The natural follow-up to any hello
ជំរាបលា	chum reap lea	Formal goodbye
លាហើយ	lea haey	Casual goodbye, "bye"

The Sampeah: The Gesture That Goes With It

The sampeah is the Cambodian greeting gesture: palms pressed together in front of you with a slight bow of the head. It looks similar to the Thai wai, but it has its own rules, and the key variable is how high you raise your hands:

Chest level, fingertips around the chin: friends and peers.
Mouth or nose level: elders, teachers, your boss, people of higher status.
Eyebrow level: monks and highly respected figures.
Forehead and above: reserved for royalty and prayer at temples.

As a visitor, a chest-to-chin sampeah with "chum reap suor" handles nearly every respectful situation. Two practical notes: you generally do not sampeah children or service staff first (a smile and a verbal hello is right), and if someone sampeahs you, return it at the same height or slightly higher if they are older than you.

Where You Will Actually Use This in Cambodia

At the temples. Angkor Wat guides, ticket staff, and especially monks. Greet a monk with a higher sampeah and chum reap suor, and never initiate physical contact.
At the market. A cheerful susadei before you start browsing changes the whole interaction. Vendors deal with silent pointing tourists all day; a greeting in Khmer earns a genuine smile and often a better price.
In the tuk-tuk. Drivers hear "Angkor Wat?" barked at them constantly. Opening with susadei, then negotiating, makes the ride friendlier on both ends.
At your guesthouse. Staff will light up if you greet them in Khmer, and it is the easiest place to practice daily since you see the same people every morning.

Pronunciation: Do Not Trust the Spelling

Here is the honest truth about Khmer: the transliteration is an approximation, and often a bad one. "Chum reap suor" is also written chomreabsuor, joom reap sour, and cumreap suo. The vowel in "suor" is a diphthong English does not have. The "r" at the end of syllables is often barely there. "Susadei" hides a subtle s-d cluster that romanization flattens completely.

Reading these words off a page will get you a version a Cambodian can decode, but it will not sound right, and you will have no way of knowing what you are missing. The only reliable fix is native audio plus shadowing: play a recording of a Khmer speaker, repeat immediately after, and match the rhythm and vowel quality rather than the letters. Five focused minutes of shadowing beats an hour of squinting at transliterations.

This is exactly the loop Hyperpolyglot is built on. Every phrase comes with native-speaker audio you can replay and shadow until it sticks, and you can add your own phrases too, so the greetings you actually need for your trip (with your hotel's name, your dietary stuff, your bargaining lines) get the same audio treatment.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Using susadei with monks or officials. It is not offensive, but it is too casual. Chum reap suor plus a sampeah is the correct register.
Pronouncing it like the spelling. "Sue-SAH-day" with hard English vowels is the classic giveaway. Listen first, then speak.
Sampeah height mistakes. Greeting a monk with a low chest-level sampeah undersells the respect. When unsure, slightly higher is safer than slightly lower.
Confusing it with the Thai wai rules. Similar gesture, different culture. Do not carry over Thai habits wholesale; Cambodians notice.
Skipping the greeting entirely. The biggest mistake is not a bad hello, it is no hello. In Cambodia, launching straight into a request without a greeting reads as cold.

Bonus: Saying Goodbye

Goodbye mirrors hello, with a formal and a casual version:

Chum reap lea (ជំរាបលា): the formal goodbye, matching chum reap suor. Use it with the same people, often with a sampeah.
Lea haey (លាហើយ): the casual "bye" for friends and everyday partings.
Sok sabay is a warm "be well" you will hear as a parting phrase too.

Same rule as before: when in doubt, go formal.

Make It Automatic Before You Land

A greeting only works if it comes out instantly, without mentally rebuilding the transliteration. Get there by drilling with real audio: hear it, shadow it, say it out loud until chum reap suor rolls off your tongue at the temple gate. Hyperpolyglot gives you native Khmer audio for every phrase, plus the ability to add your own, on iOS, Android, and Web.