prahkeitouj wrote:Hey! Samouth, MekongMouse and taabarang! You make me laugh till my stomatch hurt ))))
I just realized that the way I write is influent your thought. Of cousre I made mistake with my writing because I didn't care how it is, I just tried to regester in this forum :p
@ MekongMouse: your really great! The way you interpret is interesting. Yes, " preah kae touj = preah jan touj" .
Kae means month or moon.
Jan= prah jan/ preah jan= preah kae/kae. So little moon is Preah kae touj but not Prak kae touj lolzzz...
Hehehe... I learn many things from this treat and people's idea is great, interesting and funny too :-):-):-)

Ohh, that actually makes a lot of sense. Thank you.

MM , you are welcome!

This plays back to the problem of romanization of Khmer, when we talk about threats to the Khmer language that is likely the biggest. It's already prolific on Facebook and the number of English words that are being mixed in is growing.

For me learning to read Khmer accelerated my learning a lot. Most native speakers of any language are very good at speaking their language (obviously), but aren't so good at explaining it. Reading books (formal) and Facebook (informal) allowed me to notice patterns and figure for myself the correct usage of some things. It also made me realise many mistakes I was making, especially when getting confused with words that sound similar or identical in spoken Khmer.

It's also a huge help with pronunciation, if you say things as they are written you are almost always understood. When we try to imitate spoken slang Khmer we often miss out tiny sounds and inflections that are almost impossible for us as native speakers to hear but are crucial to being understood.

For example speaking with a Phnom Penh accent and replacing the jerng ror (្រ)​ with what sounds like a whining jerng yor (្យ)​ in words like krow (ក្រៅ) and pram (ប្រាំ). If I try to imitate the Phnom Penh pronunciation of the person I'm speaking with, I'm understood about half the time, if I pronounce it as it's written I'm understood 100% of the time.

My family also seem to think it's pretty funny when I try to speak like that, I guess it's like hearing one of those tuk-tuk drivers in Siem Reap trying to do a London or New York accent, it just feels wrong when coming from a foreigner.

We always say you have foriegners' ears. Like Cambodians can't understand English too because we have Khmer ears. In Khmer language we like to swallow the sound thst's why difficult for you to listen. But I believe that original Phnom Penh people 's accent is not difficult for you to listen.

prahkeitouj wrote:We always say you have foriegners' ears. Like Cambodians can't understand English too because we have Khmer ears. In Khmer language we like to swallow the sound thst's why difficult for you to listen. But I believe that original Phnom Penh people 's accent is not difficult for you to listen.

I am from Sihanoukville and i also have decent accent lolzz.

I think so