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.

[khmerhamster]

It's not unusual. A significant number of people are like that - either can't read or can barely read.

Back when I was learning Khmer I used to frequently ask people for help with reading new words and loads of people, of all ages, would tell me that they were unable to read.

[phuketrichard]

very typical for someone born in the 80's-early 90's
Even today , when 5-10 year olds only attend public school for 4-5 hours/day and the number of vacations an days the teacher "doesn't show up"
not like in America where its 180 days/year and 8:30-3:30
not to mention when covid closed the schools

[Tootsfriend]

And at the other end of the scale there are many 5 to 10 year olds that are multilingual, speaking Khmer and English. How many kids that young speak two languages in your country unless they have a parent born overseas. My girlfriend's 7 year old and also her 7 yo cousin, both girls , understand English but don't speak much unless I make conversation with them.
This is one reason why I have never learnt the Khmer language, it's all about speaking English with them so they learn and hopefully have better job opportunities and future.

[Doc67]

I know a 31 year old who speaks English at strong conversation level, and can also read and write English surprisingly well (now even with apostrophes - I did that bit) and yet cannot read or write Khmer. I assumed she was doing the the Google translate routine each time she sent or received texts, but no, she had self taught herself written English.

She was homeless as a kid for a period and rarely attended school even when housed. I think that is the key, if they don't attend a decent school and/or have parents who don't care, they will never learn Khmer as adults.

[HaifongWangchuck]

I know a few Cambodians 17-28 who speak English and Khmer both really well, but generally have trouble reading it or resort to "Sing Khmer" (i.e, abbreviated, latin-transliterated Khmer, e.g "nh tv dek hz" instead of "Khnyom tov dek haey") since most people in Cambodia don't have much of a use for reading their own language online: FB is king in this country, and prior to the rise of improved Khmer font rendering (remember when it used to be so tiny?), people adapted Sing Khmer, which is now mostly what they use to communicate.

That isn't to say they won't use aksaw Khmer; long-form posts and official websites still use it. It's just that keyboards weren't designed with Indic abugidas in mind and thus it still is challenging for a lot of Khmer to write correctly, esp. when it comes to finding diacritics.

[Tootsfriend]

Cambodian boy who will be 3 years old next week, and already speaks good English. When I asked where he learnt English,,, Y Tube. 7 year old girl cousin also speaks good English but does go to English school.

[Bongmab69]

10 years ago 50% of khmers couldnt read or write, i suppose slowly its getting lower, and i know some european people also who hardly can: They are champions in hiding it, always will have a reason to not read for example a restaurants menu (forget glasses always works). Before i was "smart-phoned" i often asked myself why hey where talking to their phones, it workes surprisingly good to write khmer (if they speak it correctly, i tried ones being drunk (ooh my preaah)). And also most bar-girls cant read english but if they listen to your message they do understand it. One of my good long-time friends is 42 and works in a factory since her 18, she cant read o write khmer, but hardly anyone knows !! And she is not anymore a lowest-factory worker (she said me) !! And ofcourse with youngsters looking and listening to youtube works very well. Spain is the country with the worst english-understanding in western europe and i am pretty sure its because they hardly hear english, everything is spanish-dubbed. Coinicidentially i am in spain now (my spanish was better then english before) and i have a problem with my belgian sattelite-receiver: and found out i can put on spanish television the original english movies with spanish subtitles, it works pretty well to learn better english and/or spanish. Just listen and look !!

[khmerhamster]

10 years ago 50% of khmers couldnt read or write, i suppose slowly its getting lower, and i know some european people also who hardly can:

Where did you pluck that stat from? Unless you are including babies and dead people in it then it's complete nonsense. The adult literacy rate ten years ago was around 80%.

[phuketrichard]

10 years ago 50% of khmers couldnt read or write, i suppose slowly its getting lower, and i know some european people also who hardly can:

Where did you pluck that stat from? Unless you are including babies and dead people in it then it's complete nonsense. The adult literacy rate ten years ago was around 80%.

so u question him, yet than state a claim of 80% literacy 10 years ago!!!