Sun Narin
“SPEECH is of first importance and letters come after” is an old Cambodian saying that implies the importance of verbal communication rather than letters. Another proverb “Speech tells your nation and attitude tells your originality” reflects the significance of speech too.The Khmer spoken on broadcast media such as television and radio has become a concern because a number of TV presenters make mistakes in their grammar and choice of words. For instance, they use nouns as verbs, which leads to the misuse by the audience who will copy them. In addition, the writing in some newspapers, magazines, advertisements and other publications is incorrect.
We see that some parents do not make sure their children learn Khmer and concentrate on foreign languages including English and Chinese instead. They say that studying Khmer is just for the sake of knowing since it is not beneficial to future business and work.
One youth from a Chinese-Cambodian family, who did not give us his name, told us he had been studying Chinese since he was small. Speaking Khmer has become a problem for him since he doesn’t know how to write it much and cannot speak it well.
“I am not confident in speaking Khmer since I am afraid of being wrong. My dad has allowed me to study a foreign language more because this language counts for business and communication in the future,” he said.
Some private schools for children consider Khmer language unimportant compared to the native language since young children are mostly communicate in English and Chinese in these schools and Khmer is rarely spoken.
One thing that becomes the concern is that if those children do not learn and speak Khmer much, they will find it difficult in expressing themselves in Khmer when they grow up. They speak mostly foreign languages at a young age when that is best time for learning their native language. I know a university student who can speak English very well like a native speaker, but he cannot speak good Khmer and he finds it hard to get some Khmer difficult words out of his mouth. This has become an impediment as he cannot communicate in Khmer well.
I think Cambodians should learn their national tongue so that they will have insight into Cambodia and will be able to speak good Khmer. In addition, pursuing the art of speaking will lead to effective communication and successful business.
I agree that it’s good for people to speak foreign languages as well, due to the demands of the job market for good command of languages other than Khmer. But as Cambodians, living and working in Cambodia, we will always have to communicate well in Khmer in our work environment.
In the field of leadership, besides being capable, knowledgeable and ethical, communication with people plays a key role in persuading people to trust you. Therefore, being good at speaking is beneficial to leadership. If we do not know how to use Khmer for communication, how can we make our subordinates understand and believe what we are talking?
Ros Chantraboth, deputy director of the Royal Academy of Cambodia and a historian, has considered this issue and believes it should be dealt with, as the Khmer language’s identity can be devalued when there is a strong influence of foreign languages.
“There are a lot of private schools for young children competing with public schools. It debases the public education system of the country. The Ministry of Education has to consider this issue by looking at other countries’ systems, which prioritise the native language for young children,” he said.
Ros Chantraboth explained that some parents think that foreign languages are very important for their children, but it is just the vehicle for them to grab the knowledge from the world.
“If they don’t know Khmer language and have difficulty expressing themselves in it, they will find it hard to contribute in helping the country’s political affairs,” he said.
11 comments:
Why do we need so many vowels when 5 vowels is suffiecient for English. Overhaul the entire writing system to reflect the modern digital age.double stacking side way up and down and independent vowels etc. so many useless letters and the cost in term of time to teach each Khmer child to read and write. Let's the Buddhist monks keep those sacret texts and lets the layman compete in the global markets with modern tools. Modernize or extinct .
I agree, We must modernize and romanize the system of Khmer writing. Time is changing and everything has to change to catch up with the time. In 1945, the French colonialist authority attempted to romanize the Khmer writing system, but the monks and old people opposed it that's why the French gave in and re-adopted the writing system that we used today. There are too many alphabets and letters which makes it hard for foreigners and children to learn. Romanized system would be the best because it is easy to learn and easy to use in the computer and also easy to create new vocabularies like copy some words from French or English.
We are proud people and our history is going back a thousand year. We do not have to adopt Roman letters. We can't change who we are and the Khmer scripts are our identity and heritage. But we can modernize and simplified and making it a living language that changes with time . Even English is ever evolving and changing eg. " I am googling" would bamboozled William Shakespeare.
Not very sure, that you are a Cambodian or Khmer descent. But soon or late you will have different feeling, about losing your own identity, in case you are one of us.
You think, you can have a better feeling, when you adopt a foreigner language into our.
We have our own older face for more than 1000 years and most of us also the young generation of Khmer live outside Cambodia don't want to mask it with different thing,
Her we go again with Theary Seng's agenda to push this crab for funding. There is nothing wrong with the word or speech we are using. language evolves over time. Don't be too critical.. relax and enjoy life. Theary need a new boyfriend.
9:32 AM,bring your Vietnamese writing system to Cambodia then your mission is accomplished! Oh do you still want Khmer girls compete in Miss Universe? How many characters that Chinese has in their writing system? and that slow them down right? Smart ass. At least you don't have to worry about verb conjugation or male, female, singular or plural stuffs.
10:12 AM, no Viet,French,Chinese or Arabic, just consolidating our existing texts and get rid off what is non essential. ......... P.S.....Not every one disagree with you is a f'ing Viet...you backward dumb ars.
Khmer alphabet needs to add more consonants and few vowels !. We do not have g sound likes in go,girl,gap. F sound likes in full, for,from. Sh like in shoe,shall.Z sound likes in zero,zoo, zebra. We do not have vowel for err likes in stair,dare.I know someone even try to add srak' uoy but that is not essential!
1:40 PM
In your opinion we should add the Arabic, Greece and Roman alphabet into the Khmer alphabet.
Not just a G, F, Z but also Γ, Φ, Υ Ö,Ü or ß and Viet Alphabet.
Dear 7:35 PM. Nope,I didn't mean we should add foreign alphabet straight from their sets but create or arrange khmer alphabets or wowels to reflect those sounds. Right now we use ហ្គ,ហ្វ,ហ្ស,ហ្ស៊,ែ៊រ for those sounds which I mentioned in my previous comment but it is too cumbersome. Francis,for instance is hard to combine with present Khmer alphabets. About the Viet's stuffs,what are the extra sounds that we Khmer need from the Viet? Seriously can you give me an example,I'm not a racist but might be just plain ignorant. Again I'm not talking about tonal signs though,we Khmer do not have them and probably never need them.
http://www.talesofasia.com/rs-113-khmer.htm.
Khmer language and writing from foreigner's perspective.
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