Khmer 101

Did we graduate?

On our return to Cambodia we were pleasantly surprised to find - as to how much Khmer we had picked up - as to how much we had learned from the people, from the community we live in. We went from saying ‘tamada tamada’ - things are fine, to simple sentences that we can finally formulate and that make sense for the Khmer people to understand…

Initially, Kevin and I carried a dictionary with us, mispronouncing every Khmer word that you can possibly imagine …   Even more troubling, the Khmer people misunderstood us, because they thought we were speaking a foreign language - English instead of Khmer.   We even went as far as creating cue cards, which we pasted around our apartment to remember the new words that we had just learned.  In short, we realized that being both in a classroom environment with our Khmer 101 instructors, the belated Dara in Phnom Penh, and with Sophek in Mondolkiri, was in fact a disservice for us!  We were indeed overloaded with too much information all at once.   What's more, although the instructors were Khmer, did their best to deliver a good program, we were still isolated with the know how of learning the  ‘true’ Khmer language.  That is, as soon as we ‘barangs’ left the classroom environment, we naturally reverted back to our familiar milieu – to   English.

However, once in our placements, once we were forced to go out into the community, the market, the villages, to interact, share the culture, breath the same air, we gradually began, became, more accustomed to their ways – progressively assimilating ourselves into the language, the culture?

Putting a spin to our little adventure on route to Mondolkiri:  half way to MDK, we met up with another minivan, with the same company that we were travelling with, who had pulled to the side of the road and motioned our van to do likewise - and to pull up behind him.  Everyone got out of both vans, ours and the van in front of us, except for us!  I suppose we weren’t paying much attention to the change of the guards, except that we ‘mindlessly’ thought everyone was taking a quick ‘washroom’ break’ out in the field.  In fact, people were exchanging vans and were asking us to leave.  Clueless, we looked at each other, looked at the people, and didn’t move, until the new driver pointed to the other van (that had stopped in front of us), for us to switch to it, and to take with us our belongings, for Mondolkiri.  Why we had mysteriously exchanged vans, we will never know.  Did we graduate from Khmer 101 – basic Khmer language instruction? – maybe...  The culture however, will inevitably take time to understand it’s many 'onion' layers.  When we think that we have understood a situation,  another new inexplicable layer is introduced. lol

More later … :)