Learning Khmer

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Ronny
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Re: Learning Khmer

Post by Ronny »

Marcus-Darkus wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 7:13 pm Very true.

I showed my Khmer T/A the book and she said it was decent. I will use that and hopefully the CD's will be more useful when I can hold a better conversation.

A word of advice: Don't get too hung on the CDs as they kinda suck. I pretty much gave up on them after the first week as the Khmer girl speaks too quickly and the CDs really aren't in tandem with the book. Read the book first and learn the alphabet and all the fundamentals and then listen to the CDs just to get a taste of what Khmer sounds like. That's what I'm doing, anyway.
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Re: Learning Khmer

Post by Jamie_Lambo »

Ronny wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 7:29 pm
Marcus-Darkus wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 6:51 pm Don't bother wasting your hard earned cash on this book/CDs. Jamie kindly sent me the PDF of the book, but I could not find the CD's online anywhere, so I went to Monument Books and bought it for $35.00 ( seems to be the going rate everywhere). The Khmer lady on the Cd's speaks way too fast, especially with the grammar and conversation modules.

I have been living here a quite a while now and have picked up more than a total beginners level of Khmer. The CD's are not for beginners, each word and sentence is only said once and at a fast pace.
Lucky for me, my Khmer teaching assistant will be teaching me every Saturday for the rest of the school year.

The book is good, the CDs are shit......You'll find better audio on Youtube, I've had much more success on there.
I bought the book about a month ago here in Bangkok for around $20 (700 Baht), and as is to be expected, my writing has really come along and I know some basic words while reading is coming along at a slower pace. Now it's mostly about picking up basic vocabulary and listening to the locals speak when I get there next month. As for those 3 cds, you're right, they really suck and I constantly have to click "pause" because that Khmer chic speaks way too damn fast. Learning some of the vowels are also challenging as a few of them change sounds depending on what consonants they are paired with. But as one poster told me previously, my fluency in Thai really has helped me as Thai is similar to Khmer in many ways and many words are shared.
yeah listening to locals whether it be eaves dropping on conversations, listening to music, or watching TV is a great help, you dont have to understand what they are saying, and khmers usually are pretty expressive when they talk so you can pick up the gist of what they are saying without actually understanding much of the words...

i do notice, when khmers talk to barangs, they have their own simplified khmer the same way we have a simplified pidgin english, which is great for practicing conversations, im often at the stage now though where they realise i have a reasonable level of khmer and step it up to local level and you can easily feel out of depth, all good practice though

yeah they do share a lot of words, not always pronounced the same though,
their "o" sound tends to sound more of an "or", for example in the number 6, in khmer its "hok" but thai sounds more "hork", the word lie "kohok" is more "kohork"
not an expert in Thai but something i notice often when talking with Thai friends and were discussing it
:tophat: Mean Dtuk Mean Trei, Mean Loy Mean Srey
Punchy McShortstacks School of Hard Knocks :x
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Jamie_Lambo
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Re: Learning Khmer

Post by Jamie_Lambo »

Ronny wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 7:39 pm
Jamie_Lambo wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 7:01 pm
Marcus-Darkus wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 6:51 pm Don't bother wasting your hard earned cash on this book/CDs. Jamie kindly sent me the PDF of the book, but I could not find the CD's online anywhere, so I went to Monument Books and bought it for $35.00 ( seems to be the going rate everywhere). The Khmer lady on the Cd's speaks way too fast, especially with the grammar and conversation modules.

I have been living here a quite a while now and have picked up more than a total beginners level of Khmer. The CD's are not for beginners, each word and sentence is only said once and at a fast pace.
Lucky for me, my Khmer teaching assistant will be teaching me every Saturday for the rest of the school year.

The book is good, the CDs are shit......You'll find better audio on Youtube, I've had much more success on there.
yeah i dont rate CDs anyway, as they dont comment on your own pronunciation, and to an inexperienced ears, you cant always hear the difference between words etc.
i went through the book with my personal tutor 3 times a week, and we focused a lot on pronunciation
always best to study with a capable tutor over a CD 100%



When I was getting familiar with spoken Thai, a whiskey bottle and a few Thai buddies were my tutors. This led to some bad habits that came back to bite me in the ass until I was able to shake them off but I never literally paid to sit down with a teacher. To each his own, I say, but why pay when there are locals all around you who don't mind teaching you the language for free?
yeah but they can only teach you so much and at a certain speed, and it all depends on their level of English as to how they can describe the meaning of each word
there are a lot of Khmer words that dont always translate well into English because either, the word can be used to describe many things, or theres many words to describe the same thing depending on the context of the sentence, or how pairing 2 words together can completely change the meaning of the word etc
sure you can learn the basics with a bottle of whiskey and your friends, but actually learning the language takes more than that for the vast majority of people
i self studied for a year or 2 the very same way, and felt i was starting to get a good grip of the language, but you soon start opening up cans of worms the deeper you dig
ive been studying now for a number of years now, and im still learning new things all the time, its not so much learning new words, but understanding new words, i feel thats the difference
:tophat: Mean Dtuk Mean Trei, Mean Loy Mean Srey
Punchy McShortstacks School of Hard Knocks :x
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Re: Learning Khmer

Post by Jamie_Lambo »

you can be taught informal khmer from your friends, but you can only speak like that amongst your friends
you cant speak to elders or people in a more formal situation the same way
thats where you will struggle, and maybe cause offense
:tophat: Mean Dtuk Mean Trei, Mean Loy Mean Srey
Punchy McShortstacks School of Hard Knocks :x
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Re: Learning Khmer

Post by Ronny »

Jamie_Lambo wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 7:47 pm
Ronny wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 7:29 pm
Marcus-Darkus wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 6:51 pm Don't bother wasting your hard earned cash on this book/CDs. Jamie kindly sent me the PDF of the book, but I could not find the CD's online anywhere, so I went to Monument Books and bought it for $35.00 ( seems to be the going rate everywhere). The Khmer lady on the Cd's speaks way too fast, especially with the grammar and conversation modules.

I have been living here a quite a while now and have picked up more than a total beginners level of Khmer. The CD's are not for beginners, each word and sentence is only said once and at a fast pace.
Lucky for me, my Khmer teaching assistant will be teaching me every Saturday for the rest of the school year.

The book is good, the CDs are shit......You'll find better audio on Youtube, I've had much more success on there.
I bought the book about a month ago here in Bangkok for around $20 (700 Baht), and as is to be expected, my writing has really come along and I know some basic words while reading is coming along at a slower pace. Now it's mostly about picking up basic vocabulary and listening to the locals speak when I get there next month. As for those 3 cds, you're right, they really suck and I constantly have to click "pause" because that Khmer chic speaks way too damn fast. Learning some of the vowels are also challenging as a few of them change sounds depending on what consonants they are paired with. But as one poster told me previously, my fluency in Thai really has helped me as Thai is similar to Khmer in many ways and many words are shared.
yeah listening to locals whether it be eaves dropping on conversations, listening to music, or watching TV is a great help, you dont have to understand what they are saying, and khmers usually are pretty expressive when they talk so you can pick up the gist of what they are saying without actually understanding much of the words...

i do notice, when khmers talk to barangs, they have their own simplified khmer the same way we have a simplified pidgin english, which is great for practicing conversations, im often at the stage now though where they realise i have a reasonable level of khmer and step it up to local level and you can easily feel out of depth, all good practice though

yeah they do share a lot of words, not always pronounced the same though,
their "o" sound tends to sound more of an "or", for example in the number 6, in khmer its "hok" but thai sounds more "hork", the word lie "kohok" is more "kohork"
not an expert in Thai but something i notice often when talking with Thai friends and were discussing it

Yup, a lot of the words are similar but not really identical. Kinda like รูป in Thai or roob which means "picture". Same word and same meaning in Khmer but the sound comes out a little shorter and not tonal of course. As for understanding what the locals are saying, I always start off by trying to catch that one important word or two that give me the general gist of the conversation and the next thing you know one or two words become three and four and off you go. And before you know it you're conversing with them just fine as it all happens in stages.
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Re: Learning Khmer

Post by Jamie_Lambo »

Ronny wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 8:29 pm
Jamie_Lambo wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 7:47 pm
Ronny wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 7:29 pm
Marcus-Darkus wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 6:51 pm Don't bother wasting your hard earned cash on this book/CDs. Jamie kindly sent me the PDF of the book, but I could not find the CD's online anywhere, so I went to Monument Books and bought it for $35.00 ( seems to be the going rate everywhere). The Khmer lady on the Cd's speaks way too fast, especially with the grammar and conversation modules.

I have been living here a quite a while now and have picked up more than a total beginners level of Khmer. The CD's are not for beginners, each word and sentence is only said once and at a fast pace.
Lucky for me, my Khmer teaching assistant will be teaching me every Saturday for the rest of the school year.

The book is good, the CDs are shit......You'll find better audio on Youtube, I've had much more success on there.
I bought the book about a month ago here in Bangkok for around $20 (700 Baht), and as is to be expected, my writing has really come along and I know some basic words while reading is coming along at a slower pace. Now it's mostly about picking up basic vocabulary and listening to the locals speak when I get there next month. As for those 3 cds, you're right, they really suck and I constantly have to click "pause" because that Khmer chic speaks way too damn fast. Learning some of the vowels are also challenging as a few of them change sounds depending on what consonants they are paired with. But as one poster told me previously, my fluency in Thai really has helped me as Thai is similar to Khmer in many ways and many words are shared.
yeah listening to locals whether it be eaves dropping on conversations, listening to music, or watching TV is a great help, you dont have to understand what they are saying, and khmers usually are pretty expressive when they talk so you can pick up the gist of what they are saying without actually understanding much of the words...

i do notice, when khmers talk to barangs, they have their own simplified khmer the same way we have a simplified pidgin english, which is great for practicing conversations, im often at the stage now though where they realise i have a reasonable level of khmer and step it up to local level and you can easily feel out of depth, all good practice though

yeah they do share a lot of words, not always pronounced the same though,
their "o" sound tends to sound more of an "or", for example in the number 6, in khmer its "hok" but thai sounds more "hork", the word lie "kohok" is more "kohork"
not an expert in Thai but something i notice often when talking with Thai friends and were discussing it

Yup, a lot of the words are similar but not really identical. Kinda like รูป in Thai or roob which means "picture". Same word and same meaning in Khmer but the sound comes out a little shorter and not tonal of course. As for understanding what the locals are saying, I always start off by trying to catch that one important word or two that give me the general gist of the conversation and the next thing you know one or two words become three and four and off you go. And before you know it you're conversing with them just fine as it all happens in stages.
yeah deffo agree with the last bit mate, and go through the same process
what i was meaning is that you will be learning that word for in that context but it might not work for others, or that same word could be used for others, so you would hear it in a sentence thinking it meant one thing, and it could mean another,
as i say its simple if you keep it simple, like in your case, but if you start to dig deep, you can end up opening up lots of cans of worms lol
:tophat: Mean Dtuk Mean Trei, Mean Loy Mean Srey
Punchy McShortstacks School of Hard Knocks :x
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Re: Learning Khmer

Post by Marcus-Darkus »

Ronny wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 7:45 pm
Marcus-Darkus wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 7:13 pm Very true.

I showed my Khmer T/A the book and she said it was decent. I will use that and hopefully the CD's will be more useful when I can hold a better conversation.

A word of advice: Don't get too hung on the CDs as they kinda suck. I pretty much gave up on them after the first week as the Khmer girl speaks too quickly and the CDs really aren't in tandem with the book. Read the book first and learn the alphabet and all the fundamentals and then listen to the CDs just to get a taste of what Khmer sounds like. That's what I'm doing, anyway.
Thanks, Ronny!

I'm reading the book and also using this to learn the Khmer consonant.


I know a lot of vocabulary as I have Khmer staff around me and now a Khmer girlfriend - It's some of the pronunciation I am really struggling with. I still pronounce Ice coffee with milk wrong, even though I learnt how to say it 16 months ago. :facepalm:
Ronny
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Re: Learning Khmer

Post by Ronny »

Marcus-Darkus wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 10:14 pm
Ronny wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 7:45 pm
Marcus-Darkus wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 7:13 pm Very true.

I showed my Khmer T/A the book and she said it was decent. I will use that and hopefully the CD's will be more useful when I can hold a better conversation.

A word of advice: Don't get too hung on the CDs as they kinda suck. I pretty much gave up on them after the first week as the Khmer girl speaks too quickly and the CDs really aren't in tandem with the book. Read the book first and learn the alphabet and all the fundamentals and then listen to the CDs just to get a taste of what Khmer sounds like. That's what I'm doing, anyway.
Thanks, Ronny!

I'm reading the book and also using this to learn the Khmer consonant.


I know a lot of vocabulary as I have Khmer staff around me and now a Khmer girlfriend - It's some of the pronunciation I am really struggling with. I still pronounce Ice coffee with milk wrong, even though I learnt how to say it 16 months ago. :facepalm:
You're well on your way and you'll be just fine. Cheers!
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