newkidontheblock wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2024 6:07 pm


Japanese love all the unwritten rules. They’ve spent a lifetime learning them. Taught from birth, reinforced in university.

nd yet, many Japanese long for the freedom of Western society.

Culturally, the Ryukyu Kingdom was independent from Japan. Even after the conquest, Japan “pretended” it didn’t conquer the Kingdom, per treaty China would invade if it was conquered. The Japanese boot only happened after China went downhill and threat of invasion disappeared..

HaifongWangchuck wrote: ↑Tue Feb 20, 2024 11:01 pm The fact of the matter is, it's not so much that many Khmer don't prefer speaking their language--Unlike in many places I've travelled, people here speak to you in the local dialect if they can understand you and you prefer it--but the issue is, *if* they understand you!

Or even worse, if you make an embarassing mistake that makes them want to laugh: Khmer of all languages I can think of is probably the most easy to make a linguistic faux pas, as lot of embarassing words or offensive terms are homophones with common, every day words.

For example, "ប៉ះ" is a very common word, meaning to touch something; but most foreign visitors almost always pronounce it as "បាស់", which means to rise up like an erection.

Another more common example that most expats are familiar with is the similarity between ក្តៅ, which means "hot/warm", and "ក្ត", which is a rude slang term for the penis.

So it remains that many Khmer will try to speak in English not just to try and be polite, but also to spare you from an embarassing faux pas as well.

Kammekor wrote: ↑Wed Feb 21, 2024 7:53 am

HaifongWangchuck wrote: ↑Tue Feb 20, 2024 11:01 pm The fact of the matter is, it's not so much that many Khmer don't prefer speaking their language--Unlike in many places I've travelled, people here speak to you in the local dialect if they can understand you and you prefer it--but the issue is, *if* they understand you!

Or even worse, if you make an embarassing mistake that makes them want to laugh: Khmer of all languages I can think of is probably the most easy to make a linguistic faux pas, as lot of embarassing words or offensive terms are homophones with common, every day words.

For example, "ប៉ះ" is a very common word, meaning to touch something; but most foreign visitors almost always pronounce it as "បាស់", which means to rise up like an erection.

Another more common example that most expats are familiar with is the similarity between ក្តៅ, which means "hot/warm", and "ក្ត", which is a rude slang term for the penis.

So it remains that many Khmer will try to speak in English not just to try and be polite, but also to spare you from an embarassing faux pas as well.

If your Khmer is sloppy, and you don't care about the correct consonants and vowels that much it's indeed possible to make a faux pas, but it's usually laughed away easily by the locals.

I don't consider this a good thing if you are genuinely trying to make a positive impression with Khmer: would you want a potential business partner in a land deal laughing away at how one speaks, afterall?

However, the examples you give are as similar as 'pen' and 'man' in English (your first example) and the second as much as 'slang' and 'sling'.

"Man" and "pen" are completely different as one begins with a labial consonant and the other starts with a plosive. My example is a lot more relevant, as both begins with plosives that have a very subtle difference yet nonetheless this difference holds a key distinction.

A better example for would be "they're" and "their" or the difference between "th" in "this" versus its pronunciation in "thick", but perhaps with a lot more socially unacceptable consequences ("nigger" and "niggard" is one familiar to a lot of Americans).


The vowels and consonants used in your examples, and thus the sounds, are pretty distinctive, even for beginners IMHO.

HaifongWangchuck wrote: ↑Thu Feb 22, 2024 3:30 pm

"Man" and "pen" are completely different as one begins with a labial consonant and the other starts with a plosive. My example is a lot more relevant, as both begins with plosives that have a very subtle difference yet nonetheless this difference holds a key distinction.