jah steu wrote:

Bitte_Kein_Lexus wrote:Literacy is probably closer to 90% if not slightly higher, but as mentioned by someone else, it's a common UN ploy for $$$/projects and so on.

That’s not my experience here. We employ dozens of female bar staff. Rural girls from poor families. So not representative of urban locals.
About 25% are reasonably literate. About 35% have very basic literacy. That leaves 40% who are illiterate. Many say their parents are also illiterate.
Interestingly their numeracy is better. Possibly from constantly calculating their salaries, commissions, rents, loans, bets etc.
Also many of them learn to read and write English to a much higher level than their Khmer literacy. An important skill for communicating with foreign men to hopefully get some money coming in!


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I think it really depends on how one defines literacy. I'd say being to read/write at a basic level makes you literate. That's the basic definition. You don't need to be proficient, or know a ton of vocabulary/have perfect spelling or be quick. I go to the countryside basically every week and the vast majority are literate.

They certainly don't read fast though, and many people who are in their 50s can't read due to growing up in turbulent times. Many younger people also fell through the cracks, but I think it's also fair to say that the girls you employ are usually from the bottom of the social pyramid, so perhaps it's unsurprising that there would be a disproportionate number of them who are illiterate.

Now, if we were to employ different criteria, like say, having the ability to speed read at a basic pre-university level of 150-220 words per minute, then I'd say the "literacy" probably falls to 50% if not lower.

Having recently learned to read and write in Khmer, I would marvel at a 40 % literacy rate. It makes a great deal of sense to me literacy in English is better- not just because it “follows the money” but because as messed up as English is it’s a good deal simpler than Khmer. Written Khmer is a nightmare, linguistically speaking.

Just me? The last language I learned before this was Korean and I wanted to weep for the beautiful simplicity of Hangul.

Somewhat true antsy. In my opinion, Khmer is actually way easier to learn than English, but given its phonetic base, reading and writing can be quite difficult. That's why you'll see locals reading stuff at the National Museum or something, but they're voicing it out with their lips syllable by syllable. The less literate have a lot of trouble chunking/recognizing words (of course, this is also true in any language, albeit I'd argue moreso with Khmer since some vowels show up at the end of words). Spelling is also horrendous. My wife routinely spots spelling mistakes, even on fancy refrigerator advertisements by major companies such as Samsung.

I try to encourage reading. Reading for fun is not culturally Khmer, for the moment at least, but I do hope that this is changing, and I am all out for getting the Khmer kids in my circle of family and close friends to read fun stories and get their brains working at the same time.
Reading is important.

There's a growing number of young (18-26) local authors. You can meet them if you ever go to book fairs. Some even write in English. Most prefer to read mangas though.

Do tell about "mangas"? !!? what is that?!

Japanese comics. Kinda like how the translated version of Dragon Ball was big when I was growing up. I mean, sure, they're not exactly analyzing 19th century Russian literature, but it's got them reading so it's good. I loved Tintin and other "bande-dessinés" as a kid.

They also love anime of course.

Which are cool, but too often it's much about girly stuff OR violence OR magic stuff OR worse that is widely available.
I wonder about the quality of locally read mangas, how dumb OR violent OR girly the most popular are.
The translation thing for a market of 15 M people is also not helping, unless some passionate people work and get proper wages for a quality selection and translation...

I hope i'm wrong and that is a great inspirational thing for the youth, but you know, with such meaningless tv programs and little opening to foreign cultural life for little people, they probably mostly looking for cheap thrills and readymade feelings with little patience for a complex plot, and i wouldn't blame them. Better read bland stuff than not reading.
Reading is good to escape problems, but the amount of problems might overwhelm the will.
So in theory yeah manga is cool (and i like a few ones myself), but not too sure the available ones are the best ones on the market.

I'm confident though there is loads of teens gaining skills to draw because of mangas, which is an affordable hobby. I saw amazing drawings here and there. Maybe there is a wave of skilled cartoonist coming-up. May they have good stories to tell, and know how to.

An irrelevant pedantic add for the conversation, but the plural of manga is manga.