by ឆ្កែឆ្កួត » Wed May 15, 2019 11:18 pm
How long is a piece of string? I don't know.
How difficult it is to learn another language depends on a lot of factors, but one of the most important factors is how much you need to. If you speak English well, you can go almost anywhere in the world and there will be some people who understand you. But if English is the only language you speak, you might even have difficulty with different accents, and you won't understand people who are just learning English.
I have been learning Khmer for only 3 months, but I have been studying very hard. This is my experience so far....
I went to Cambodia for 1 month. I found a book called "Practical Cambodian Dictionary". I found someone from Canada who speaks Khmer well and loves teaching Khmer. But after learning all the "common phrases", I still couldn't understand anyone. I lived in a shop and the girls who work there could not speak any English, or understand me when I tried phrases in Khmer. After a month in Malaysia, I had some comprehension and I could form sentences in Malay, so I wondered why Khmer seemed so difficult. It is because basic simplified Malay is used as a lingua franca by millions of people in Indonesia, so Malays, think it is worth teaching to foreigners. Malays are also very proud of their hospitality because it says in the Koran "if a foreigner in your country is lost, you must take care of them until they have found their way." Malays are also proud that a lot of them speak English well, can use big words, and even have a "British" accent. Also, Malay is written in Roman letters most of the time, the sounds correspond closely with sounds in English, and there are only 6 contrasting vowel sounds. (English has 9 and Khmer 10).
I grew up speaking two languages, English, and Warlpiri which is a central desert language of Australia. Warlpiri has literally only 3 contrasting vowel sounds (that's all you need really), which correspond very closely with 3 of the Malay vowel sounds, so I could already "hear" all the sounds they make. Malay and Warlpiri are similar in some ways, and many words can be made by adding suffixes (and prefixes in Malay) to existing words. The rules of grammar are consistently applied.
So Khmer is not considered easy to teach to foreigners, hospitality is not a national pastime in Cambodia as it is in Malaysia, Cambodians are 90% mono-linguistic and therefore most of them find it difficult to learn English and understand "bad" accents, Khmer is written in a different script so if you don't learn it you can't practice by reading signs, Khmer vowels, and even some consonants do not correspond with English sounds, and the grammar is so complicated it seems inconsistent. (For example the same affix could have multiple functions).
But I didn't give up, instead I decided to take a new approach. The breakthrough came when I decided to learn the Khmer script. This made me realized how many different sounds are made in Khmer. Khmer has many spelling rules, and a lot of characters, but once you learn them it is very consistent compared to English. Here is a vowel chart...
Compare it to these vowel charts for English...
I hope this helps you. Now I can hear and contrast all the sounds in Khmer, so I can distinguish between words that are similar, and when I work hard at writing down Khmer song lyrics, I can use the Practical Cambodian Dictionary to get a sort of translation. I also watch Khmer TV series (with English subtitles), and they are much more entertaining than Australian TV. They never let you get comfortable. Just when everything seems to be going well, tragedy strikes! On the positive side, Khmer has a lot of similarities to English in the Grammar and is generally a subject–verb–object (SVO) language. It is not tonal like Thai and Vietnamese, and doesn't have genders for every noun like German. Remember to put the adjectives after the nouns (as in French), and keep in mind that a lot of words can be used in different ways to mean different things. Begin Learning Khmer script here...
http://www.pratyeka.org/csw/hlp-csw.pdf
Here is an interesting map.
How long is a piece of string? I don't know.
How difficult it is to learn another language depends on a lot of factors, but one of the most important factors is how much you need to. If you speak English well, you can go almost anywhere in the world and there will be some people who understand you. But if English is the only language you speak, you might even have difficulty with different accents, and you won't understand people who are just learning English.
I have been learning Khmer for only 3 months, but I have been studying very hard. This is my experience so far....
I went to Cambodia for 1 month. I found a book called "Practical Cambodian Dictionary". I found someone from Canada who speaks Khmer well and loves teaching Khmer. But after learning all the "common phrases", I still couldn't understand anyone. I lived in a shop and the girls who work there could not speak any English, or understand me when I tried phrases in Khmer. After a month in Malaysia, I had some comprehension and I could form sentences in Malay, so I wondered why Khmer seemed so difficult. It is because basic simplified Malay is used as a lingua franca by millions of people in Indonesia, so Malays, think it is worth teaching to foreigners. Malays are also very proud of their hospitality because it says in the Koran "if a foreigner in your country is lost, you must take care of them until they have found their way." Malays are also proud that a lot of them speak English well, can use big words, and even have a "British" accent. Also, Malay is written in Roman letters most of the time, the sounds correspond closely with sounds in English, and there are only 6 contrasting vowel sounds. (English has 9 and Khmer 10).
I grew up speaking two languages, English, and Warlpiri which is a central desert language of Australia. Warlpiri has literally only 3 contrasting vowel sounds (that's all you need really), which correspond very closely with 3 of the Malay vowel sounds, so I could already "hear" all the sounds they make. Malay and Warlpiri are similar in some ways, and many words can be made by adding suffixes (and prefixes in Malay) to existing words. The rules of grammar are consistently applied.
So Khmer is not considered easy to teach to foreigners, hospitality is not a national pastime in Cambodia as it is in Malaysia, Cambodians are 90% mono-linguistic and therefore most of them find it difficult to learn English and understand "bad" accents, Khmer is written in a different script so if you don't learn it you can't practice by reading signs, Khmer vowels, and even some consonants do not correspond with English sounds, and the grammar is so complicated it seems inconsistent. (For example the same affix could have multiple functions).
But I didn't give up, instead I decided to take a new approach. The breakthrough came when I decided to learn the Khmer script. This made me realized how many different sounds are made in Khmer. Khmer has many spelling rules, and a lot of characters, but once you learn them it is very consistent compared to English. Here is a vowel chart...
[url=https://postimages.org/][img]https://i.postimg.cc/85dTqWKQ/Khmer-vowel-chart-svg.png[/img][/url]
Compare it to these vowel charts for English...
[url=https://postimages.org/][img]https://i.postimg.cc/Yqf0ZvDw/Aus-E-Monophthongs-Cox.gif[/img][/url]
[url=https://postimages.org/][img]https://i.postimg.cc/XYLZGr9g/USE-Monophthongs-midwst.gif[/img][/url]
I hope this helps you. Now I can hear and contrast all the sounds in Khmer, so I can distinguish between words that are similar, and when I work hard at writing down Khmer song lyrics, I can use the Practical Cambodian Dictionary to get a sort of translation. I also watch Khmer TV series (with English subtitles), and they are much more entertaining than Australian TV. They never let you get comfortable. Just when everything seems to be going well, tragedy strikes! On the positive side, Khmer has a lot of similarities to English in the Grammar and is generally a subject–verb–object (SVO) language. It is not tonal like Thai and Vietnamese, and doesn't have genders for every noun like German. Remember to put the adjectives after the nouns (as in French), and keep in mind that a lot of words can be used in different ways to mean different things. Begin Learning Khmer script here... http://www.pratyeka.org/csw/hlp-csw.pdf
Here is an interesting map.
[url=https://postimg.cc/k6Cchg6v][img]https://i.postimg.cc/50YRyHfT/fsi-map-2.png[/img][/url]