Khmer as in Surin and Buriram

[Pescator]

There is a Dutchman- must be a very interesting fellow, too- who has roots in Isaan. He has a site offering some fluency in the local dialects.

 

See: http://www.phrasebook.thai-isan-lao.com/

 

Mollerup or Khun Thong (the author) as he is referred to locally is danish, not that it matters...

 

Cheers

hua ngu

[samak]

and in addition the khmer phrase dedicated to our esteemed board member Yetmaeh:

"chakae joy mae niang!"

and if you want to wish somebody "pai long narok!", the khmer equivalent is "ther ngeep taew!"

the latter is so difficult to transliterate that you can try to speak anyway as nobody will get it!

[Nervous_Dog]

Wife is quite happy that after a few visits to Laos, and working with us there she can now read Laos ok'ish. Her father though is quite fluent in it.

 

DOG

[Guest]

My wife is Khmer, from Surin.

 

She cannot understand central Khmer and Cambodian people really can't understand her either. This is from the experience of having been in Cambodia and from things like trying to listen to Cambodian news on cable TV in the US, etc. I estimate it's 40-60% mutually intelligible, like another poster said.

 

The Khmer dialects in Thailand are properly termed "Northern Khmer" or sometimes "Highland Khmer" or "Upland Khmer". I've been listening to my wife speaking it for several years and I've come to realize that the sounds and rhythm of it are actually more like Thai than like Cambodian Khmer. It's like a Thai-oriented pronunciation system with Khmer vocabulary and grammar but a lot of Thai words mixed in. (For eample: "man khao jai te" for "I don't understand.")

 

The only written form I'm aware of is one invented by missionaries to write the gospel in it. It uses the Thai writing system as a basis with modifications for the vowels that are present in Khmer but not in Thai.