Studying Khmer

Many have asked how my Khmer is going. It's a hard question to answer, because you could ask how my English is going and I would say I'm still learning new things about the language every day. But I am now able to hold basic conversations for a couple minutes or more, can bargain for whatever I need to buy at the market, and can understand more and more what people are saying around me. My study of written Khmer is difficult, though I didn't imagine it would be easy. I'm on the verge of being able to read phonetically Cambodian script, but I still don't know what most of it means. It all makes French seem very, very close to English!

Just so that I'm not writing in vague terms, I'll outline some of basics of the Cambodian language, also known as Khmer (pronounced as khmae in Cambodia). Khmer is the major representative of the Mon-Khmer language family, part of the larger Austro-Asiatic family. Most of the other languages in the Mon-Khmer family are spoken by relatively small tribal and ethnic groups throughout Southeast Asia, with the exception of Vietnamese, which is related to Khmer but was heavily influenced by Chinese over a one-thousand year period of Chinese domination.

Khmer is spoken by about thirteen million people in Cambodia, with smaller populations of speakers in Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, France and the United States. Although they are not related, Khmer and Thai share a lot of common vocabulary and the Siamese in fact borrowed the Khmer writing system hundreds of years ago. Pali, the language of the scriptures of Theravada Buddhism, also had contributed a good deal of words to the Khmer vocabulary, along with French, Vietnamese and Chinese.

Khmer uses a syllabic alphabet, which means that consonants have inherent vowels sounds associated with them but can also be modified by vowel symbols. Khmer has 33 different consonant symbol, divided into two groups based on their inherent vowel sounds. There are also 32 subconsonants used to create consonant clusters, which are very common in Khmer. There are 87 different initial consonant clusters in use in Khmer. Khmer has over thirty different vowel sounds, represented by both independent vowels and vowel symbols which modify consonants or subconsonants. In addition, there are many diacritical marks used to further modify sounds. If this all was very confusing to you, it is still about that confusing to me!

I am currently developing more plans for what I will be doing this year. In couple days, I will be going to Siem Reap, a city near Angkor Wat where more CLA musicians teach to students. After I get back to Phnom Penh, I will then probably decide where I will live to study Khmer music, most likely either in Siem Reap (at Wat Bo studying troe ming instrumental funeral music) or Takeo province (in a village studying smoat vocal funeral music). Whatever my actual research project turns out to be, I aim to complete it by February, at which time I plan ordain as a novice monk in a Cambodian wat, possibly Wat Bo in Siem Reap. In the meantime, I am working to build contacts with mentors and experts in my fields of interest, as well as continuing to study the language.

If you have any questions for me about Cambodia or my experience here, I'd be more than delighted to respond to them. Just comment to this posting or send me an email (trent.t.walker@gmail.com).