mako Posted January 5, 2006 Report Share Posted January 5, 2006 Hi All I see in the review section that in the Apache bar that they talk about "kamen", can anybody enlighten me as to what this means. Thanks Mako Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Hippie Posted January 5, 2006 Report Share Posted January 5, 2006 Puut Khmen? or speak Khmen? or Khmer? If so, they might be referring to the girls there speaking Khmer (Cambodian) in the bar. Surin, And Si Sak*t to a better extent, and and to a greater extent, in Bur Ram, Khmen is spoken, rather than Lao or Thai. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samak Posted January 6, 2006 Report Share Posted January 6, 2006 yes; khamen refers to the language spoken in the provinces Buriram, Surin, SiSaket. that's a bit a thai version how they say the word khmer as thais can not speak the consonants kh and m together so they put a vowel a in between and ending r transforms to n however the version spoken in those provinces is different from the one spoken in Cambodia; there are even differences between Buriram and the other 2 provinces; in addition there is Suai, which is a mix of Khamen and lao/isaan the former owner of Apache (and i think current coowner or manager who knows) is from Buriram and this bar always had/has a lot of girls from this province. it was by the way recently refurbished and upgraded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mako Posted January 6, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 6, 2006 Hi Thanks for the info. Mako Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ultras67 Posted January 6, 2006 Report Share Posted January 6, 2006 the bar is still one too avoid though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
preahko Posted January 30, 2006 Report Share Posted January 30, 2006 samak said:yes; khamen refers to the language spoken in the provinces Buriram, Surin, SiSaket. that's a bit a thai version how they say the word khmer as thais can not speak the consonants kh and m together so they put a vowel a in between and ending r transforms to n however the version spoken in those provinces is different from the one spoken in Cambodia; there are even differences between Buriram and the other 2 provinces; in addition there is Suai, which is a mix of Khamen and lao/isaan ************************************** close, but no cigar...Suai (that's just the thai name for them, they call themselves "Kui") is a complete different language from both Khmer and Lao, though it is in the same language family as Khmer. however, Khmer and Kui are not at all mutually intelligible. Understanding confusion, anyway, since the social reality is that Khmers, Kui/Suai and Lao in southern Isaan all interact so much together that they tend to *learn* large portions of each others' languages, though that's a very different thing from the languages being a "mix" of each other. Whenever you see those folks leading elephants around to beg in Bangkok, 99% guarantee they're ethnic Kui, from Surin, and able to speak Khmer, Kui and Lao in addition to Thai. They and related ethnic groups speaking Mon-Khmer languages are, as far as anyone knows, the "original" inhabitants of this part of SEAsia, having been here long before the Thais/Laos, and even the Khmers. okay, history class in now dismissed for today, haha. oops, did I go off-topic from "Apache"?? preahko Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul101 Posted January 30, 2006 Report Share Posted January 30, 2006 [Deleted at the request of the poster - KS] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
preahko Posted January 30, 2006 Report Share Posted January 30, 2006 it's different in a number of ways. first of all, those provinces (and everything up past roi et, and central thai up to sukhothai or further, and southern thai all the way to malaysia) were part of the khmer empire for hundreds of years, way before there was any "siam" or even thais in the area. so in some ways the surin/buriram dialect of khmer probably reflects a much, much older way of speaking khmer. on the other hand, the surin and buriram-ites also been heavily influenced by thai, and there's lots of khmer vocabulary from cambodia that they don't know, especially the many, many new words coined in the 20h century in cambodian khmer (just like thai was reinvented as a "language of a nation state" in the 20th century). so the first major difference is vocabulary. the other difference is the sound system: surin khmer is "vowel deficient" compared to khmer, just like thai is. so they're missing a lot of the vowels necessary to speak standard khmer. so two things keep your wife from understanding them perfectly: vocabulary and the sound system differences between the two dialects. I've been speaking khmer for 20 years, teaching it for 17, and the first time I heard surin khmer (9 years ago)I could only understand about 40%. now that I know thai, plus now that I live here and interact with surin khmers all the time, it's more like 90%. but my students wouldn't be able to understand surin khmer hardly at all. in general, it's easier for native speakers of standard khmer to understand surin khmer, especially if they know some thai vocab, than it is to go in the other direction. by now, though, I consciously modify both my pronunciation and vocab when I talk to surin-ites, and they can understand me just fine. preahko Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul101 Posted January 30, 2006 Report Share Posted January 30, 2006 Very interesting thanks, where do you teach khmer? Seems surprising how the language has changed in such a short time. Do you know much about khmer music? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lusty Posted January 31, 2006 Report Share Posted January 31, 2006 Should have put this in my "Regional accent variation"thread in Board Bar last week! :: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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