Khmer people
are a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Cambodia, accounting for 97.6% of the country's 15.9 million people.They speak the Khmer language, which is part of the larger Austroasiatic language family found throughout eastern and central India and Bangladesh, in other parts of Southeast Asia (including Vietnam), South China and numerous islands in the Indian Ocean.The majority of the Khmer are followers of the Khmer style of Buddhism, a highly syncretic version that blends elements of Theravada Buddhism, Hinduism, animism and veneration of the dead.Significant populations of Khmers reside in adjacent areas of Thailand (Northern Khmer) and the Mekong Delta region of neighboring Vietnam (Khmer Krom), while there are over one million Khmers in the Cambodian diaspora living mainly in France, the United States and Australia.
