Me Speaky Khmer Gud

So over the past.. what, 10 months? yikes… of my life I have undertaken many things I have never done before. Of course I have talked superficially about many of them, in depth about some of them, and have yet to mention others. Yet undoubtedly one of the largest and most constant aspects of my living here is the process of learning and applying the Khmer language. Since I haven’t talked much about this very crucial part of living and working here, I think I shall a bit now.

Note: this journal entry should in no way be considered an actual study on language. No one should be duped into thinking I actually understand Khmer. This is just me touching a bit on how the language has impressed me during my learning process. So yeah.

1) Pronunciation: is very challenging at times. As with many languages, there are sounds using the lips, tongue, and throat that are made from a young age and are really, really difficult to do if your mouth has never formed the sounds before. In Khmer it seems to be primarily a series of back-of-the-tongue sounds that are hard as heck for us Americans to pronounce. Of course during training our LCFs were very patient with us. And good thing too, because a word mispronounced is a completely different word. At first we were annoyed by this in practice, figuring if we were getting it close enough to the word that people should be able to give us a break and understand it. Of course, that’s pretty unrealistic when it’s obviously the same in English where words like “tea” and “tree” are extremely different in meaning but structurally pretty similar I suppose. Some other examples of difficulties in pronunciation are
a. the use of a combination of b and p (Q: “is it blau or plau?” A: “Its neither. Or both…”)
b.The fact that W and V are interchangeable/the same sound in Khmer.
c.The fact that L’s and O’s are often hard as hell to pick out from each other (“is it ‘tal’? or ‘tao’? or ‘taol’?”).
Of course then we get to play the same pronunciation game when they try to speak English. They have a lot of trouble with ‘TH’, ‘SH’, ‘CH’ and the differences between F, S, X, Z etc etc. So we get to have fun exchanges sometimes. For example, the other day my brother got a huge kick out of the fact that I said the word for “confused” by saying “tro-lamb” when it is in fact “tro-lohm”. I then made him say “Thursday” repeatedly. We agreed to disagree after that.

2) Synonyms: I am told that the Khmer language has about 40,000 total words. Apparently English has around 400,000. That’s a big freakin gap. Seems like English has about 2352523 words for “big”, but from my experience here they just have one. Of course this can be made into the comparative and superlative “bigger” and “biggest” just like English, and there is a word for “very”, though to add emphasis in Khmer you can just say the word twice- “locrew barang tome tome!” (foreign teacher big big!). Of course they then have at least 7 words for the verb “to eat” while “wife” and “system” are the same word… but really most of the “to eat” variations are based on respect for your status, the person that’s eating status, or the relation between the two (you use different words for people older, younger, monks, the king, etc). Part of the lack of extensively descriptive vocabularly is that rather than have new words for things they put together existing words. In that way it is similar to a language like german, where a word like “familiar” in Khmer is translated as “seen/known already.” Well yeah, I guess that means familiar… one of the funniest instances of this logical word combination process I’ve encountered is that the oh-so-noble swan is rendered lovingly as “Moan Tuk.” That means “Water Chicken.”

3) Written Language: This is one of the few aspects of my life here I have been very stubborn about. I don’t want to learn to read and write. The alphabet has 33 consonants (all with either an inherent A or O sound after them) and like 20 something vowel sounds and not only are they difficult to remember and write (especially based on handwriting variations), but from my introduction during training I also found that a lot of it didn’t make sense in my head. “Kaw and Lo makes Klaw? Why not Klo? And if they have inherent vowel sounds, why/how does the new vowel fit in? I need a coconut…” and so on. I basically came to the decision that whenever I was studying writing/reading I could be using that time to learn to speak/listen better. But recently I've started taking some Khmer lessons two times a week from one of my co-teachers. He wants to teach me to read, so I’ve finally started to break down a bit and at least see it as a cultural exchange. Maybe I’ll be able to write “Colin wuz here” soon enough.

4) Grammar differences: There are a ton of these I’m sure, but there are some that have been particularly striking to me. First, there is almost no use of the word “to be”. They actually have 3 words for it, but they are used in specific circumstances and not thrown around like in English. Second, nouns come first and adjectives second. It took a little while to get used to saying “mango ripe” instead of the other way around, but now it comes automatically. Thirdly, there is a lack of excess words… articles, pronouns, etc if they aren’t necessary. They especially drop words in spoken Khmer to make things flow easier. Finally, and something that has been crucial to my success and sanity, is there are NO VERB CONJUGATIONS. After dreading things like the pluperfect tense in Spanish, there are no words for what a gift this has been. Overall most of these things make the language 100x easier to speak and listen to, as you just eliminate verbosity and have streamline sentences. Which definitely works in this blundering foreigner’s favor.

5) Awesome words: There are other cool parts of acquiring the language that I could babble about, but they’d only be interesting to me so I figure I’ll just write some of my personal favorite words I’ve found in the language. Some for their meaning, some that are just so fun to say I make ridiculous statements as an excuse to use them
Poot: This means “to lie.” Other words for lie include “co-ha”, “poe”, and “prro” but clearly poot is by far the best based purely on the amusement factor.
Leh-lah leh-lah: Used primarily in my household when my little brother doesn’t want to take a shower before bed, it sort of means being weird/bizarre in an immature way. It was a hilarious explanation to get.
Cowng: This word means “to hug another person with your legs while sleeping.” I learned it when I had to share the common room with my brothers because Nora/Michael came to visit and used my room. No better way to learn the Khmer word “to spoon.”
Spuk: This word seems to have a few connected meanings, but the most common is when you are describing the pins and needles feeling in your foot if it falls asleep. As in “Ahhhh, spuk chuung!” “Ahhhh, foot’s asleep!”
Man-tan: This phrase means "really" or "seriously", usually when adding emphasis to the truth of a statement. Like "wow, I am seriously tired" or "Man, I seriously ate so much rice I can't feel my face"
Poo-ee: Pronounced just like its written (Winnie The Pooh, then “EEEEEEEEEEE!”) it’s debatably my favorite word to say in the whole language. Unfortunately it means “blanket”, so I don’t get to shriek it nearly as often as I’d like.
Sloat: this means “laid back” or “easy going.” I’ve been harping on my family to find a water buffalo for me to ride, and my mom insisted I could ride the one at my grandmothers because “She’s really sloat”. Ha, a great application for something that perfectly encapsulates the Cambodian way of life.

And perhaps many things on any continent should be approached in a more sloat way. Sloat man-tan. With a poo-ee.