New Words

As you probably know, my main task these days (and until sometime in May) is language study. The Cambodian country has it's own language, called Khmer (pronounced "kuh-my"). Khmer has it's own script/alphabet, so I am learning new vocab, new grammar, and new ways of reading and writing, not to mention new ways of producing sounds. Khmer has one of the largest numbers of consonant and vowel sounds of any of the languages in the world.

If you've never really seriously studied a language (high school French, while good, doesn't count--sorry!), it's an interesting process. I dream of studying new words. Khmer vocab gets stuck in my head like a song does, whether I know what it means or not. Some new vocab seems to be instantly cemented into my head--I remember it immediately and can use it at any time. Other words--no matter how many times I read them, hear them, use them, write them--I still forget them. Associations can help the memory process--for instance, if a Khmer word sounds similar to an English word, that helps me remember. For instance, the Khmer for "curtain" sounds vaguely like the phrase "the unknown." At this point, now that I've learned a little bit of Khmer, it can also be helpful if a new word sounds like Khmer word I already know. Then again, that can also be confusing--I remember three words that sound very similar: which one am I actually supposed to use in this situation??

One nice thing about Khmer, though, is that it uses a lot of root words to make new words. For instance, take the word for "water." Add the word for "room," and you have "room water"--bathroom. Or add "apple" and get "water apple": apple juice. "Water of cow": milk. "Water bee": honey. "Water fish": fish sauce. And so on. Very handy if you can hear and recognize the root words and what they are combined with (the key word there is IF...). It can also be educational. I was talking with the younger sister that I live with while we worked to prepare lunch on Sunday. She was cutting up a vegetable that we have fairly often, but that we do not commonly eat in the US (trust me, most of the fruits and a lot of the veggies are new to me. Tasty, but new). It was similar to Romaine lettuce leaves growing on stalks. I asked what it was called in Khmer, and the answer was "cutnaa." And bingo! Light goes on! I already knew that I enjoyed "pikaa cutnaa"--in English, cauliflower. In Khmer, that translates to "flower of the cutnaa." So--the cauliflower is the flower of the cutnaa plant, and for lunch we were going to eat the leaves and stalks. Who knew that cauliflower had leaves and stalks, much less that they were edible. I, for one, have never wondered why we call it "cauliflower."

Language can be an interesting history lesson, too. More food examples: combine the word for "garlic" with one of the words for "foreigner" to make "garlic of the foreigner," and you get the word for "onion." Same thing for some other veggies--"thing that grows in the dirt of the foreigner"--potato. "Bean of the foreigner"--green beans or peas. Makes you realize that these things were introduced by foreigners and new words had to be formed for them. The best words of all to learn, though, are those that are adopted from English the same way we've adopted "taco" or "deja vu." I managed to remember these Khmer words (although I still have to work on pronouncing them Cambodian style): "computer," "strawberry," and best of all--"chocolate."