Khmer Language

In 1898, the 23-year-old Guillaume Henri Monod traveled to French Indochina to seek his destiny in the exotic Kingdom of Cambodia. Located at the crossroads between the great civilizations of India and China, the fabulous Khmer Empire blossomed here more than a millennium ago.

Monod befriended many Cambodians while pursuing his passionate study of their ancient culture. One friend, Governor Khieu of the Pursat Province, shared his land’s rich legends with Monod, inspiring him to record them for future generations in 1922.

In this new edition—translated to English for the first time by Cambodian author and scholar Solang Uk—you’ll find that the wit, wisdom, humor and morals of these lively tales comes in many forms, never failing to surprise, perplex and amuse spellbound audiences.

The Asian Kingdom of Cambodia has many ancient legends about powerful jungle animals. But in this surprising book you’ll meet an unlikely hero: a small rabbit! As you’ll discover in these 27 classic folktales, Mr. Hare uses his brain to make up for his size. Time and again he outsmarts huge elephants, hungry crocodiles, fierce tigers...and even men! In this book you’ll read how the Hare... Taught the Tiger to Play Music; Ate the Old Woman’s Bananas; Lost a Race to the Snails; Saved the Elephant’s Skin; Made a Four-Headed Man; Scared the Monkey and Tiger; Rode on the Crocodile’s Back; ...and 20 more adventures! Mr. Hare’s tales are here in Khmer and English, with side-by-side translation by Dr. Chhany Sak-Humphry, so students of both languages can continue his tradition.

A number of different languages in outside of the Indo-European family were analyzed based on how difficult it would be for a native English speaker to learn them. They were then rated on a purely impressionistic 1-6 scale of easiest to most difficult. Extensive phonological, morphological, syntactic and even semantic analysis was done for many of these tongues to highlight areas of difficulty for English learners. Very long: 101 pages.

Alors que l'étymologie du nom de Fou-nan (扶南) (ហ្វ៊ូណន, ហ្វ៊ូណាន) dans les sources chinoises, pour désigner un ancien pays que l'on pense être l'ancêtre du Cambodge, fait quasiment l'unanimité, à savoir qu'il viendrait d'un terme indigène signifiant « montagne », celle du Tchen-la (眞 臘) (ចេនឡា, ចន្លាប), qui a succédé au Fou-nan, a laissé bon nombre de chercheurs perplexes. Pour certains, le nom chinois reste inananlysable tandis que d'autres ont fait des suggestions, parfois sous toutes réserves, parfois de manière plus affirmative. Après avoir passé en revue ces hypothèses, cet article se penche sur un terme indigène crāp (ច្រាប) /craːp/ présent en khmer moderne, et qui, au vu, des chroniques cambodgiennes, aurait existé dans un hydronyme.

While the etymology of the name Fu-nan (扶南) (ហ្វ៊ូណន, ហ្វ៊ូណាន), to designate an ancient country in Chinese sources which is thought to be the ancestor of Cambodia, is nearly unanimoumisly accepted as stemming from a local word meaning “mountain”, the etymology of Chen-la (眞 臘) (ចេនឡា, ចន្លាប), which followed Fu-nan left many scholars in bewilderment. For some of them, this Chinese name cannot be analysed, whereas some others made suggestions, sometimes with reservation, sometimes in a more assertive tone. After reviewing these past hypotheses, this article looks into a local word: crāp (ច្រាប) /craːp/, attested in Modern Khmer and which, according to Cambodian chronicles, was present in a hydronym.

Unlike many languages of Southeast Asia, Khmer (Cambodian) is not a tone language. However, in the colloquial speech of the capital Phnom Penh, /r/ is lost in onsets, reportedly supplanted by a range of other acoustic cues such as aspiration, a falling- or low-rising f0 contour, breathy voice quality, and in some cases diphthongization, e.g. /krɑː/ ‘poor’ > [kɔ̀ɑ], [kʰɔ̌ɑ], [kɔ̤ɑ̤], /kru:/ ‘teacher’ > [khùː] [kʰǔː], [kṳː]. This paper presents the results of production and perception studies designed to shed light on this unusual sound change. Acoustic evidence shows that colloquial /CrV/ forms differ from reading pronunciation forms in terms of VOT, f0, and spectral balance measures, while a pair of perceptual studies demonstrate that f0 is a sufficient cue for listeners to distinguish underlying /CrV/-initial from /CV/-initial forms, but that F1 is not. I suggest that this sound change may have arisen via the perceptual reanalysis of changes in spectral balance, coupled with the coarticulatory influence of the dorsal gesture for /r/.

ABSTRACT
This article examines two units of measure, of both volume and weight; the use of the former has been proven to date back to the Pre-Angkorean period, and for the latter during the Angkorean pe¬riod. Several interpretations exist regarding the actual measures represented by these two terms.
The first one, thlvaṅ — which is its more common spelling — and which is thought to occur in the copy of a Khmer text whose composition is dated A.D. 1601, under the form tanlūṅ, seemed to no longer exist in Modern Khmer and was consid¬ered to be equivalent to the picul. However, it turns out that the term is probably still in use among the Khmer population of Surin province in Thailand, and, depend¬ing on eras, has represented a weight of paddy ranging roughly from 240 to 264 kgs, or even up to 276 or 288 kgs, for a volume of approximately 480 litres.
The second term, dnāl, has been construed by certain to correspond to a very vague, non-specified unit, corresponding to a large earthenware pot. Other scholars, however, have thought it may have a relationship with an equivalent word still in use in Modern Siamese, and which would be the equiva¬lent of a coconut scoop, i.e. representing an average weight of 600 grams for husked rice. The present article favours the latter interpretation, but the etymology of this term is still problematic, all the more so as a Pāli word, nāḷi, seems to have been in use after the Angkorean period for the same measure.
Keywords : measure, capacity, volume, weight, Cambodia, Pre-Angkorean, Angkorean, Middle Period, Post-Angkorean, Khmer of Surin, standard Khmer, Old Khmer, Modern Khmer, Siamese, Pāli, thlvaṅ, dnāl, daḥnān, nāl, nāli, nāḷ, nāḷi, picul, pound, kaṭṭi, catty.

RÉSUMÉ
La présente contribution se penche sur deux termes de mesure, à la fois de capacité et de poids, attes¬tés pour le premier dès l’époque préangkorienne et pour le deuxième à l’époque angkorienne. Ces deux termes ont fait l’objet de tentatives d’interprétation quant aux valeurs qu’ils représentaient.
Le premier, thlvaṅ — pour ne donner ici que sa forme la plus courante et qu’on pense retrouver dans une copie d’un texte khmer dont la composition est datée de 1601 de notre ère sous la forme tanlūṅ —, semblait inconnu en khmer moderne et a été considéré être l’équivalent du picul. Or, il s’avèrerait qu’il est toujours attesté chez les Khmers de la province de Surin en Thaïlande et a pu selon les époques représenter un poids de paddy allant approximativement de 240 à 264 kg voire même jusqu’à 276 à 288 kg pour un volume d’environ 480 litres.
Le deuxième terme, le dnāl, a également fait l’objet de suppositions de la part de certains au¬teurs qui le font correspondre à la valeur très vague et non précisée d’un ustensile qui serait une grande mar¬mite en terre cuite, tandis que d’autres y voyaient une possible correspondance avec un terme équiva¬lent toujours présent en siamois moderne. Il équivaudrait au volume représenté par une noix de coco évidée et représentait, pour le riz décortiqué, un poids moyen de 600 g. Le présent arti¬cle pen¬che en faveur de cette dernière interprétation, mais l’étymologie de ce terme pose toujours pro¬blème d’autant plus qu’un mot pāli, le nāḷi, semble avoir été utilisé après l’époque angkorienne pour la même mesure.
Mots-clés : mesure, capacité, volume, poids, Cambodge, préangkorien, angkorien, époque moyenne, postangkorien, khmer de Surin, khmer standard, vieux khmer, khmer moderne, siamois, pāli, thlvaṅ, dnāl, daḥnān, nāl, nāli, nāḷ, nāḷi, picul, livre, kaṭṭi, catty.

This short biographical sketch of François Martini (with a list of some of his publications) is a part of a project of the École française d'Extrême-Orient entitled Chercheurs d'Asie : Répertoire biographique des membres scientifiques de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient (http://www.efeo.fr/biographies/cherch.htm).

My main purpose in putting online this account on academia.edu is to acknowledge the help I got from Ginette Terral-Martini and Solange Bernard-Thierry when I prepared it. I am downloading a personal letter which I received from Ginette Terral-Martini.

It is also an opportunity to add the reference of an article by François Martini "Romanisation des parlers 'tay' du Nord Vièt-Nam" (http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/befeo_0336-1519_1954_num_46_2_5608).

In the colloquial Phnom Penh dialect of Khmer (Cambodian), lexical use of F0 is emerging together with an intermediate VOT category and breathy phonation following the loss of /r/ in onsets (e.g. /kruː/ ‘teacher’ > [khṳ̀ː]). I show how this incipient tonogenesis might arise in a series of computational simulations tracing the evolution of multivariate phonetic category distributions in a population of ideal observers. Acoustic production data from a fieldwork study conducted in Phnom Penh was used as the starting point for the simulations. After establishing that the basic framework predicted relative stability over time, two possible responses to a phonetic production bias were considered: one in which agents correctly identified the source of (and thereby compensated for) the effects of the bias, and one in which agents misattributed the acoustic effects of the bias as a property of the onset. Good qualitative fits to the empirical production data were found for the latter group of learners, while the outcome for compensating learners resembled production data from a related dialect. These results are consistent with the sudden and discontinuous nature of many sound changes, and suggest that what appear to be enhancement effects may also emerge under different assumptions about the number of cue dimensions accessible to or deemed relevant by the learner.

The dissertation is concerned with how the negotiation of conventions of public discourse correlates to changing political economy. It focuses on Cambodia during the period immediately before and after the 1993 U.N.-sponsored elections. The dissertation develops the idea of "discursive etiquette" as a working concept. From this perspective it examines Cambodian conventions of social hierarchy, Khmer linguistic etiquette, and the discourse of the Cambodian news media as they have changed in relation to social and political change in recent years. Specific chapters focus on hierarchically marked pronouns and terms of address, satirical cartoons, and styles of newspaper writing. The dissertation also includes a close description of the Information/Education Division of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) and its role in the negotiation of public discourse at the time of the elections. [Key words: Cambodia, hierarchy, neutrality, linguistic etiquette, United Nations, satire, cartoons, media].

Abstract

In Modern Khmer, either /mɨn/ or /pum/, the negative particle, is allowed to be added to a positive sentence, transforming such a sentence to the constative negation. Stated thus, the particles are explained to some extent that each of them will be used due to proper linguistic registers and genres. In other words, each will tend toward the tentatively separate registers, or be adopted in some particular genres. However, it could be argued that the registers and the genres may account for the use of the 2 negative particles only at a level, owing to the fact that some matters remain somewhat obscure.

Some of the Khmer sentence samples were herein collected from related-to-Khmer textbooks, archives, and corpora and then examined. In that case, it could be noted that there might be some other linguistic conditions (e.g. the sentence structures, or the word collocation) that possibly affect the use of such particles.

ABSTRACT

This article aims at studying the coinage of neologisms of technology in Modern Khmer (MK) and categorizing the words into semantic fields. The data used in this study were basically collected from online newspaper archives, such as that of Koh Santepheap daily newspaper, or that of Rasmei Kampuchea, published in January-March 2014. The neologisms are determined as the new inventories because of their unavailability in វចនានុក្រមខ្មែរ [Khmer Dictionary] (ជួន ណាត, 1967) และ Cambodian-English Dictionary (Headley, 1997)

The results can be noticed that the newly invented vocabularies in MK are suitable to be categorized in sub semantic fields; for example, that of information technology (e.g. ស្មាតហ្វូន “Smartphone”). The discovered vocabularies are derived from other languages, especially from English. This will be noticed that distinctively altered borrowing strategies may be applied, as the borrowings from French have been disposed toward their decreased functionality in the language. It seems rendered that the English language has taken turns influencing technological fields and social networking communications.

Such a process of borrowing to increase the vocabulary size adequately reflects linguistic phenomena related to the changing Cambodian society.

KEYWORDS : Linguistic phenomena, Khmer language, Semantic field, Neologisms, Loanwords

The Austroasiatic language family includes approximately 150-160 languages: Vietnamese, Khmer (or Cambodian), Mon, the Munda languages (Santali, Mundari, Kharia, Gutob, Remo, Gtaʔ, Sora, Korku, Gorum, Juang, etc.), Khasi, the Nicobaric languages (Car, Teressa, Nancowry, etc.) and  various others. Vietnamese and Khmer have official status as national languages of Vietnam and Cambodia respectively.

Biblio details: 2016. In: Kiyoshi Hara and Patrick Heinrich, eds. Standard Norms in Written Languages: Historical and Comparative Studies Between East and West. Tokyo: Joshibi University of Art and Design.

Abstract

Following the Great War, ethnolinguistic nationalism became the basis of nation-state building and statehood legitimation in Central Europe. According to this paradigm, for the nation-state to be legitimate, it must house a single nation only, defined through its unique language that also serves as this polity’s sole national and official language. The language cannot be shared with any other states, and no additional languages can be employed in official capacity on the nation-state’s territory. Initially, I thought that this unique normative isomorphism of language, nation, and state was specific exclusively to Central Europe. But scanning the language policies of today’s extant states, I discovered that another cluster of ‘isomorphic polities’ exists in East and Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam). This raises an interesting question of whether it is a local development, or maybe a transfer of ideas took place in this respect between (Central) Europe and this region.

Keywords: Central Europe; East and Southeast Asia; ethnolinguistic nationalism; imagined (invented) character of the categories of language, nation and state; [a] language (Einzelsprache); normative isomorphism of language, nation and state; script (writing system)

« អំពី​អត្ថបទ ១ ស្តី​ពី​ចំនួន រង្វាស់​រង្វាល់​បុរាណ ។ល។ ដែល​ហ្លួង​ពិភ័ក្តិ​ធានី យោក្ប័ត្រ​ជ្រោយ​ចង្វា បាន​រៀប​រៀង និង ជូន “លោក​ជា​ធំ” អាដេម៉ារដ៍ ឡឺក្លែរ » + « កំណែ​និង​សេចក្តី​បន្ថែម​ដល់​អត្ថបទ​ស្តី​ពី​ចំនួន រង្វាស់​រង្វាល់​បុរាណ ។ល។ ក្នុង​សិក្សាចក្រ​លេខ ៦ »
www.khmerstudies.org/publications/articles/

Des mots en vieux khmer résistent à l'interprétation quand on les croit disparus en moderne, même si recourir à d'autres langues a permis de retrouver le sens de plusieurs d'entre eux. Si, d'après certains auteurs, le khmer connaît une uniformité assez remarquable au sein du Cambodge moderne grâce à un continuum linguistique certain, il apparaît néanmoins, utile de reconnaître l'existence de différences dialectales à l'intérieur du Cambodge actuel comme sur ses marges.
Tel est le cas de thṅe (ថ្ងេ). Si son sens – à savoir une nuance sombre – a été connu assez tôt par les khmérologues grâce à deux inscriptions écrites en sanskrit et en khmer et si l'on a pensé qu'il aurait pu subsister sous forme de vestige dans des noms de plantes, il a été trop vite déclaré disparu en khmer moderne, car il semble toujours présent sous les formes traṅae (ត្រងែ), dans les parlers du Nord-Ouest, et sraṅae (ស្រងែ), dans les parlers de l'Est et du Sud-Est. Se baser sur le seul parler de Phnom Penh pour analyser le khmer ancien peut donc être réducteur. Ainsi, une étude dialectologique de toute l'aire khmérophone est nécessaire pour une meilleure compréhension de l'épigraphie en vieux khmer.

Some words in Old Khmer thought to have disappeared from Modern Khmer can be resistant to interpretation, even though recourse to other languages has allowed the meaning of some of them to be recovered. While some authors note that Modern Khmer shows a rather remarkable uniformity within present-day Cambodia through a dialect continuum across the country, it would be nevertheless beneficial for scholars to recognise the existence of dialectal differences both within the borders of present-day Cambodia and at its extraterritorial margins.
Such is the case of thṅe (ថ្ងេ). Although scholars understood its meaning—referring to a dark hue—rather early on thanks to two inscriptions in both Sanskrit and Khmer, and thought it might have existed vestigially as in some plant names, it was, unfortunately, too quickly declared to have disappeared from Modern Khmer. It is still present in some north-western dialects as traṅae (ត្រងែ), and in some eastern and south-eastern dialects as sraṅae (ស្រងែ). Thus, relying on the Phnom Penh dialect alone in order to analyse Old Khmer is probably too limiting. A survey of dialects covering the whole of the Khmer-speaking area is essential if Old Khmer epigraphy is yo be better understood.

This paper examines a key characteristic of isolating languages in Southeast Asia and Africa: Transcategoriality (categorial change). In these languages linguistic units emerge as generic ideas, which are either not categorized at all or are only weakly categorized, while their syntactic status is specified by the discourse. Variation on the categorial level results from an initial under-specification which can relate to an analytical and lexical strategy to express grammatical relations. In East and Southeast Asian languages, a strong tendency to the formation of grammatical markers defined by their high degree of indeterminacy can be observed. These markers are despite their missing obligatory categories usually divided into classical western biased categories. Using the Vietnamese polyfunctional TAM marker đã, the phenomenon is investigated both at the level of lexical semantics as well as at the level of sentence semantics. It can be shown that đã is not only a past-tense marker, and consequently should not be glossed as such. But rather as a polyfunctional element that takes on a role of importance in the categorial change in the Vietnamese language. Contrary to the current practice, a less biased approach to the description of Southeast Asian languages is proposed. As a result a new category system for isolating languages could be a possible approach since the commonly used categories (verb, nouns, etc.) tend to be problematic.

Das ist ein Buch. ISBN: 978-953-7036-76-8

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG:
Die Sanskrit-Kultur Kambodschas und Indiens im Lichte der Epigraphik/



In der Einleitung der vorliegenden Arbeit werden die Grundbegriffe, auf denen die Arbeit beruht, erklärt und die zu lösenden Probleme entworfen. Methodologie wird auch dargestellt. Weiterhin wird eine Liste, die etwa 30 kambodschanischen und 6 indischen Sanskrit-Inschriften enthält, hinzugefügt, worin sich die asymetrische Struktur der Arbeit entfaltet.

Am Anfang des ersten Kapitels wird mit der Bestimmung der gesammten Kultur durch eine Sprache begonnen ohne irgendeine "grundlose Idealisierung" vorausgesetzt zu haben, weil man die Sprache als etwas mit dem priesterlichen Gesellschaftsstand, der von ihrer axiologischen Identität untrennbar ist, unvermeidlich verbunden sieht. Über Sanskrit kann nämlich in seiner wirklichen Vollkommenheit nicht genau nachgedacht werden, wenn man nicht diesbezüglich im Zusammenhang mit den Priestern, denen Sanskrit in Beziehung auf den größeren Teil seiner Aspekte und besonders in Beziehung auf seinen axiologischen Aspekt gehört, nachdenkt. Eine derartige Annäherung kann geschichtliche, gesellschaftliche und sogar materielle Sachverhalte umfassen, aber sie beschäftigt sich primär und vor allem mit Sanskrit und mit dem zu ihm eigentlich gehörenden Stand.