Freightdog's very own translation thread...

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Re: Freightdog's very own translation thread...

Post by Jamie_Lambo »

StroppyChops wrote: Sat May 26, 2018 12:19 am
Jamie_Lambo wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 11:52 pm shut up, youre just a hairy looking biker dude who drives around in a tuk tuk!
:stir:
And you just need a high-five. In the face. With a hammer. :D

I'm not JUST a hairy looking biker dude who drives around in a tuk tuk. I now also have a moto, although I bought it secondhand so I'm not sure who owns it now.
:dm:
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Re: Freightdog's very own translation thread...

Post by Barang chgout »

superferret wrote:StroppyChops, the reason you can't hear the difference between these words is probably because you come from an English background. I come from a European language background and I can distinguish these very clearly, since our languages train us to perceive these small differences in vowel sounds. English doesn't. This has nothing to do with tonality, and khmer is not a tonal language, that said every language has a tonal rhythm to it, like statements vs questions, emphasis on parts of words, etc. The problem with Khmer as already mentioned is that spoken formed is a highly different dialect, and especially PP dialect. You can learn to distinguish these wovels, you just need to spend enough time with it. Regarding this, it's interesting that the khmers have a vowel between "o" as in "no" and "a" as in "Walter", since this sound doesn't exist in my language I have difficulty producing it, though I do perceive it.

The other things is spoken khmer has a lot of liberty in changing vowels sounds according to the mood of the speaker. This is a feature not found in Western languages. Like a simple example, you can either say "Loy" or "Looy" for money, to me those are completely different vowels, still khmers interchange them all the time.
Loy...money.
Looy......good.
As in that new car is looy mes !

Sent from my SM-G570Y using Tapatalk

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Re: Freightdog's very own translation thread...

Post by Kammekor »

Username Taken wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 6:20 pm
Kammekor wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 5:08 pm
Username Taken wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 4:28 pm Baht depends whether it's a rising or falling tone.

Baht = yes. Baht Bong = yes brother freightdog.

Baht? (rising tone) = What? Say again.

KOW = Kingdom of Wonder.


I often get a laugh when I say "G'doy ma vear". Ask your boss for the translation.
"Joy!" can be used to express exasperation or frustration.
Khmer is not a tonal language..... :hattip:
You are obviously referring to my mention of 'rising or falling tone'. Are you seriously saying that you can't hear the difference between 'baht' as yes, and 'baht' as What did you say? ?
If you mean raising the tone when asking a question - that's common in loads of languages but I don't think it's language specific.
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Re: Freightdog's very own translation thread...

Post by Kammekor »

Barang chgout wrote: Sat May 26, 2018 6:25 am
superferret wrote:StroppyChops, the reason you can't hear the difference between these words is probably because you come from an English background. I come from a European language background and I can distinguish these very clearly, since our languages train us to perceive these small differences in vowel sounds. English doesn't. This has nothing to do with tonality, and khmer is not a tonal language, that said every language has a tonal rhythm to it, like statements vs questions, emphasis on parts of words, etc. The problem with Khmer as already mentioned is that spoken formed is a highly different dialect, and especially PP dialect. You can learn to distinguish these wovels, you just need to spend enough time with it. Regarding this, it's interesting that the khmers have a vowel between "o" as in "no" and "a" as in "Walter", since this sound doesn't exist in my language I have difficulty producing it, though I do perceive it.

The other things is spoken khmer has a lot of liberty in changing vowels sounds according to the mood of the speaker. This is a feature not found in Western languages. Like a simple example, you can either say "Loy" or "Looy" for money, to me those are completely different vowels, still khmers interchange them all the time.
Loy...money.
Looy......good.
As in that new car is looy mes !

Sent from my SM-G570Y using Tapatalk
I am pretty sure those words are pronounced differently. Money I would spell luy in English and the word 'good' in the way you mean it I would pronounce as lowy. It has more an o sound than an oo (u) sound and it has a much stronger w sound before the y.
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Re: Freightdog's very own translation thread...

Post by Kammekor »

StroppyChops wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 6:00 pm
Kammekor wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 5:08 pmKhmer is not a tonal language..... :hattip:
Yeah, people keep saying that, but I disagree - and I have an expensive piece of paper to back it up.

Ask a Khmer friend to pronounce the word អំបិល (ambel) for you - it's salt. Then ask them to pronounce អំពូល (ampoul) for you - it's light globe. Then go for អំពៅ (ampow) - it's sugarcane. There are two or three other variations in this word cluster that I can't recall right now, but I challenge any non-Khmer to hear the word spoken in conversational language, in isolation, no context, and be able to repeatedly and accurately give the right translation. I've seen Khmer from different regions have to provide context on these words for the meaning to be clear. To me, this word cluster is tonal. There are other word clusters that are similar.

I'm not sure where this "not tonal" notion came from, but I suspect it was the American war office which produced language learning tapes during the wars (I can still pick the people who learned American from them) which did a "barely good enough" job in that era, but an utterly screwed job for this era. Incidentally, the Khmer team members sit and chuckle at all the mistakes in Contemporary Cambodian, so if you learned with that resource, don't be too confident of your accuracy.
I don't get it.

Even though:

ambel (salt)
ampoul (light bulb)
ampow (suger cane) might seems similar at first these all have different vowels in the second syllable.

ambel - u as in skull
ampoul - oo as in look
ampow - o als in close

Nothing to with tonal or non tonal in my opinion, just different vowels.
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Re: Freightdog's very own translation thread...

Post by taabarang »

Nothing to with tonal or non tonal in my opinion, just different vowels.

Right you are.
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Re: Freightdog's very own translation thread...

Post by StroppyChops »

I understand that those barang who speak better Khmer than I argue that they can always hear and correctly interpret the correct word from the cluster, although I'd argue that you're selecting the correct word from the context given by the sentence. I wonder if you'd be as accurate if a Khmer person who was unknown to you said one of the words in isolation, in an informal tone. I honestly don't mind that people disagree with me, and I'm not out to prove myself right or anyone else wrong, it's just a point that I thought would be interesting for discussion.

Obviously in written form the words are distinctly different. Anyone who wants to discuss language as the written form being the authority is living in a post-industrial mindset - language is now considered to be a living, evolving entity and is viewed from the spoken word perspective. After all, doth thee now speaketh in King James? Is "owned" still "owned"?

In spoken form (in my lived experience) especially in the city, the vowel distinction is typically not obvious (at least to my ears) and that in that particular word cluster sounds are (to my ears) separated mostly by a tonal difference - note here that tonal variation is produced by moving the centre of sound production back and forward along the mouth, nose, throat region of the respiratory system. Remember that there are different forms of spoken/understood Khmer, north vs south, city vs province, old vs new/young. What I experience most is urban slang or informal, and (for example) when I've asked to buy salt, one person had understood me clearly and another has argued that I wanted a light bulb - and the two have then had a longer conversation on which is the correct pronunciation. This often becomes a group discussion, with people NOW stressing the vowel distinctions to make their points.

I accept that my Khmer is not great, but what I know is good, and functional. I'm often misunderstood by Khmer around me - but in these instances its fascinating to step back and watch Khmer have animated discussions on Khmer.
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Re: Freightdog's very own translation thread...

Post by Kammekor »

For me, there's no issues with 'tone' when speaking Khmer or listening to it. What makes / made it rather difficult for me is the way Khmer pronounce words. A lot of Western languages tend to emphasize the first or center syllable of a word whereas Khmer in general emphasizes the last syllable of the word. By paying attention to this Khmer became easier to understand for me, and my 'Khmer' became easier to understand for Cambodian people.
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Re: Freightdog's very own translation thread...

Post by superferret »

StroppyChops wrote: Sun May 27, 2018 2:44 pm In spoken form (in my lived experience) especially in the city, the vowel distinction is typically not obvious (at least to my ears) and that in that particular word cluster sounds are (to my ears) separated mostly by a tonal difference - note here that tonal variation is produced by moving the centre of sound production back and forward along the mouth, nose, throat region of the respiratory system. Remember that there are different forms of spoken/understood Khmer, north vs south, city vs province, old vs new/young. What I experience most is urban slang or informal, and (for example) when I've asked to buy salt, one person had understood me clearly and another has argued that I wanted a light bulb - and the two have then had a longer conversation on which is the correct pronunciation. This often becomes a group discussion, with people NOW stressing the vowel distinctions to make their points.
This is very true, but I don't believe tonality is the explanation. A lot of low educated khmer don't even know what the exact words are, so you could easily get people from the country who say salt and lightbulb exactly the same, and don't even know it's supposed to be different. A shopkeeper selling lightbulbs will just know a lot of khmer pronounce it the same way as salt, and in fact over time pronouncing it like salt could become a valid pronunciation for lightbulb.
My low educated khmer friends regularly pronounce even the same words differently, on some days they'll say "chwaa" for monkey on other days they might say "Svaa".
They also regularly pronounce words that educated khmers pronunce with a certain consonant using a different consonant "sosei" "tasei" to write, etc. As for vowels, they pronounce certain ones all over the place. Khmer has a lot more flexibility and disparity among speakers than we're used to. If you find a pattern of tonality in Khmer, and can prove it has tonal elements that would be of interest to linguists, but it could also just be a few individuals using tonality to signal their word is not standard or something like that.
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Re: Freightdog's very own translation thread...

Post by Jamie_Lambo »

Kammekor wrote: Sun May 27, 2018 10:14 am
StroppyChops wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 6:00 pm
Kammekor wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 5:08 pmKhmer is not a tonal language..... :hattip:
Yeah, people keep saying that, but I disagree - and I have an expensive piece of paper to back it up.

Ask a Khmer friend to pronounce the word អំបិល (ambel) for you - it's salt. Then ask them to pronounce អំពូល (ampoul) for you - it's light globe. Then go for អំពៅ (ampow) - it's sugarcane. There are two or three other variations in this word cluster that I can't recall right now, but I challenge any non-Khmer to hear the word spoken in conversational language, in isolation, no context, and be able to repeatedly and accurately give the right translation. I've seen Khmer from different regions have to provide context on these words for the meaning to be clear. To me, this word cluster is tonal. There are other word clusters that are similar.

I'm not sure where this "not tonal" notion came from, but I suspect it was the American war office which produced language learning tapes during the wars (I can still pick the people who learned American from them) which did a "barely good enough" job in that era, but an utterly screwed job for this era. Incidentally, the Khmer team members sit and chuckle at all the mistakes in Contemporary Cambodian, so if you learned with that resource, don't be too confident of your accuracy.
I don't get it.

Even though:

ambel (salt)
ampoul (light bulb)
ampow (suger cane) might seems similar at first these all have different vowels in the second syllable.

ambel - u as in skull
ampoul - oo as in look
ampow - o als in close

Nothing to with tonal or non tonal in my opinion, just different vowels.
:thumb:
:tophat: Mean Dtuk Mean Trei, Mean Loy Mean Srey
Punchy McShortstacks School of Hard Knocks :x
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