taabarang wrote: ↑Sun May 14, 2017 1:52 pm The first one deals with conveying the idea of speaking a "broken" language as in " He speaks broken English."

The construct is" nihyey piasaa (add your choice)
. bowii.

A note on my my phonetics. "bow" is quite similar to the English"bough" in tree bough. The
"II" is a long "e" sound.*. If you have put it together correctly you will notice that it sounds exactly like the Khmer word for "scoop" or "ladle" the implement you dip into water to bathe yourself.
.y wife says they are spelled exactly the same but are apparently unrelated. So, one sample sentence.

Borethey chran chiang kee nihyey piasaa Khmer bowii.

Most foreigners speak broken Khmer.

The second one conveys the notion of speaking with an accent.

This construct is "nihyey piasaa pailam. Although
pailam is usually doubled as in

Nyom nihyey piasaa Khmer pailam pailam.

I speak Cambodian with an accent.

Here's another one zI only learned after posting this.

Nihyey cham tua aksor-which means to speak perfectly correctly. As an American I hesitate to use this idiom, but it seems to approach" To speak the King's English" in meaning.
My wife used to describe her grannie's Cambodian when she lived with her in the Pol Pot period. Grannie also had a story about an uneducated male cousin of hers who was a household servant to a Frenchman. All of which is intended to introduce"bowii baranh." Bowii barang means an uneducated peasant servant.
As an example her is grannie"s story as told to me by her granddaughter (my wife.)

The servant's name was Miek; although he worked for a Frenchman he spoke no French. One day he sent Miek to the market to buy some fruit sending him on his wife with a thanks Merci.)
The poor servant didn't understand"Merci" and thought he said "Miek sii.". So the servant went home and dutifully ate the fruit the Frenchman had paid for.