Sophea Chin

Losing Our Language

          The risk of losing our language is a major threat in our Cambodian community.  Many of the younger generations do not even know how to speak in their native tongue; they only know simple words like “jaa” and “baht” and simple sentences like “kyom jong banh ah neung” meaing “I want that one”, or “kyom jong thoaw dahy” meaning “I want to go too”.  For example, even thought I am fortunate enough to be learning how to read, write, and communicate fairly okay at a Khmer School, any times I find myself not able to express myself to any respectful adult, or even to my friends.  Like if I wanted to tell my parents that I want to go see a movie, or go shopping, or hang out with my friends, I start speaking broken Cambodian and finish my sentence in English.  My parents often look at me amusingly because when I talk with my friends I call them “you” and I call myself “me”, its’ because I’m not accustomed to saying “kyom” or “nehk”, to me it is too formal.  Even if I’m with my Khmer friends I speak broken Khmer and use a lot of English words and English suffixes.  For example, for “holding” I would say “san-ning” and “stopping” would be “chop-ing”, etc, etc.

            Importantly, my parents rely on me to interpret a great number of things to them, but a lot of the times I do not know what the meaning of the words are in Khmer and when I try to describe what the meaning is to my parents using English-Khmer, it just confuses them even more.  I remember a time not too long ago, when my mother asked me what “pressure” meant because my sister had said that her leg was hurting everytime she applied pressure to it.  I had no idea how to explain that one so I started saying (in Khmer) that if my sister started pushing on her leg with her hand then she hurts, and that was the only definition I could think of.  Well, I was hoping my mother got the gist of what I was trying to say, but she thought my sister was going to be in great pain if she moved her leg.  I told her that wasn’t what I said and she told me to explain it again; but I couldn’t!  To this day I still can’t explain what “pressure” means!  And as a result I feel that my knowledge is inadequate because my only means of communication with my parents, which is through Khmer, is greatly limited. 

            Although I am a Khmer fob, I still encourage my friends and my self to speak in our native tongue.  There are many Khmer Schools eagerly waiting to teach students for free, like the Khemara Buddhikaram Temple located at 2100 W. Willow St., where I go.  And parents are also great mentors to their own children.  For instance, I occasionally try to read the Cambodian newspaper to my mom, and when I get stuck on a word I can’t read she tell me what the word is and breaks it down into “pah-joong-jee-nehk”, “juhng” and “sa-rak”.  I believe if parents sped a lot of time speaking Khmer and reading Khmer literature to their children, their kids would grow up with more confidence and will not shy away or stutter when our elders speak them to.

            In the future I envision the Cambodian society as a proud group of people, who has come up in this world and be recognized for their great success and achievement after periods of gruesome warfare and natural disasters back in the motherland.  I envision the Cambodian people as helping one another and banding together to create a more cultural and peaceful place for our own children to live in.  I hope to see the Cambodian society keep in touch with the news and people over in Cambodia and I believe that traditions will be able to be passed on the newer generations and be cherished and then be taught to others out of love and wisdom.