Illiteracy in young(ish) Khmers

[DiscoverSEA]

I was very surprised to meet a girl of 29 in PP who was illiterate, she could neither read or write and used the speak function on her phone to send and hear messages. She was happy with her situation and did not see the need to put effort into learning.

She told me her parents had split when she was a toddler and she had been moved around by various family members who looked after her and never went to school. She said she knew a few English letters but not enough to read or write and could identify some words in both English and Khmer.

She spoke excellent English and had visited that country with her former husband. She was interesting to chat with, very bright indeed, articulate and coped with more difficult sentence construction. I was astonished that, even in a poor country like Cambodia, people were still illiterate.