Cambodian Minorities Languages and Cultures
Research on the Phnong language and culture.
The Phnongs are a minority group at the national level, but they represent the majority of the population in Mondulkiri Province (“90% of the province’s population).
The Phnongs are an ethnic group that belongs to the so called “Montagnards” group, which has been labeled according to habitat, in opposition to the populations living in the lowlands.
The “Montagnards” are distinguished from the lowland population by particular cultural and religious practices, such as specific rice cultivation, non Buddhist religious pratices, non centralized political organization, and, of course, specific languages.
The Phnongs and other “Montagnards” have no written tradition. Their very rich and diversified literature is entirely oral.
Our first task consists in recording, transcribing and translating this literature. The step will be to analyze the literature and language in order to describe them within the framework of modern, generally accepted theories.
It is absolutely essential to record the literature and describe the language, and these tasks should be carried out as soon as possible, because the traditional literature is rapidly disappearing: only elderly people can recite it in its traditional versified form, and it has hardly been transmitted at all to the younger generations.
On the other hand, we have to form a team of researchers, including young members of the Phnong community. The Phnong members of the team should first be trained in the field of phonemics and taught how to use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in order to record and transcribe their native tongue. Traning local people to transcribe their language will enable them to collect their own literary heritage and to have a grasp of their future as a specific cultural group.
Fulfilling those tasks will provide invaluable material to researchers in linguistics, cultural anthropology, and comparative literature and to education specialists involved in literacy programs for minorities.
The description of Pearic languages.
The Pearic languages form a subgroup of the Mon Khmer language family. Six Pearic languages are still used in Cambodia and Thailand. Owing to their small number of speakers, these languages and cultures are fast disappearing; some of them are nowadays used as a means of communication only sporadically. With the exception of the Chong spoken in Thailand, and the Sui spoken in the Cambodian Province of Kompong Spoeu, it is difficult therefore to write comprehensive linguistic descriptions of these languages. But it is still possible to describe their sound system and realization, and a significant part of their lexicon. Fieldwork sessions organized by the Linguistic Society of the Rotal University of Phnom Penh began in 1999 to describe the Saoch language, which is spoken in one village in southeastern Cambodia, and the Poa language, which is spoken in three villages in northeastern Cambodia. The Sui language, which is spoken in five central Cambodian villages, has not been analysed yet. This program will take into account two more Pearic languages spoken in the Cardamom Mountains, an area about which very little is known, as most of this mountain chain is still unexplored.
In spite of the small number of speakers, these languages and cultures have to be described and the descriptive data published.
• These fast disappearing cultures are an endangered part of our human cultural heritage. Once extinct, nothing will remain of the Pearic languages and cultures, if no proper description takes place now.
• These languages possess exceptional phonetic peculiarities such as the combination of four voice registers in at least two of them.
• Through the reconstruction of the proto Mon Khmer language family, the description will make a major contribution to comparative linguistics, cultural anthropology, and the history of Southeast Asia.
• The Pearic languages borrowed many words from the neighboring languages, principally Khmer. These loanwords can help us a lot to understand the past of Southeast Asia through the analysis of contacts and migrations.
Chinese Cambodians
Two books about the Chinese Cambodian minority have been written by William Willmott: “The political structure of the Chinese community 1970. In more than 35 years Cambodia has gone through crucial changes ( no less than 6 political regimes, civil war, genocide), and it is purely and simply impossible to understand the present day Chinese Cambodia minority and the economic role played by this group on the basic of these two books. This issue of the journal will offer a multidisciplinary analysis of the Chinese Cambodian minority on historical, anthropological, linguistic, geographical and sociological grounds.
Education in Cambodia: history and present day issues
This issue of the journal will be a study of two subjects:
Educational structure, contents and material in the Cambodian tradition. This approach to the traditional Cambodian educational system will be based on anthropological and sociological methods. The issue will stress the important of oral transmission, on the one hand, and the written production of the Buddhist monasteries, on the other. Far from being a reduction to pure history, our approach will examine the various repercussions of these teaching methods on the present day.
The sudden emergence of modernity. A comparative analysis of the educational programs as well as a sociological approach to teaching from French Protectorate period will allow a fresh look to be taken at the crucial educational problems Cambodia had, and still has, to face: Khmerization, illiteracy, education in a rural context, policies promoting literacy among linguistic and cultural minorities.
Research on the Phnong language and culture.
The Phnongs are a minority group at the national level, but they represent the majority of the population in Mondulkiri Province (“90% of the province’s population).
The Phnongs are an ethnic group that belongs to the so called “Montagnards” group, which has been labeled according to habitat, in opposition to the populations living in the lowlands.
The “Montagnards” are distinguished from the lowland population by particular cultural and religious practices, such as specific rice cultivation, non Buddhist religious pratices, non centralized political organization, and, of course, specific languages.
The Phnongs and other “Montagnards” have no written tradition. Their very rich and diversified literature is entirely oral.
Our first task consists in recording, transcribing and translating this literature. The step will be to analyze the literature and language in order to describe them within the framework of modern, generally accepted theories.
It is absolutely essential to record the literature and describe the language, and these tasks should be carried out as soon as possible, because the traditional literature is rapidly disappearing: only elderly people can recite it in its traditional versified form, and it has hardly been transmitted at all to the younger generations.
On the other hand, we have to form a team of researchers, including young members of the Phnong community. The Phnong members of the team should first be trained in the field of phonemics and taught how to use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in order to record and transcribe their native tongue. Traning local people to transcribe their language will enable them to collect their own literary heritage and to have a grasp of their future as a specific cultural group.
Fulfilling those tasks will provide invaluable material to researchers in linguistics, cultural anthropology, and comparative literature and to education specialists involved in literacy programs for minorities.
The description of Pearic languages.
The Pearic languages form a subgroup of the Mon Khmer language family. Six Pearic languages are still used in Cambodia and Thailand. Owing to their small number of speakers, these languages and cultures are fast disappearing; some of them are nowadays used as a means of communication only sporadically. With the exception of the Chong spoken in Thailand, and the Sui spoken in the Cambodian Province of Kompong Spoeu, it is difficult therefore to write comprehensive linguistic descriptions of these languages. But it is still possible to describe their sound system and realization, and a significant part of their lexicon. Fieldwork sessions organized by the Linguistic Society of the Rotal University of Phnom Penh began in 1999 to describe the Saoch language, which is spoken in one village in southeastern Cambodia, and the Poa language, which is spoken in three villages in northeastern Cambodia. The Sui language, which is spoken in five central Cambodian villages, has not been analysed yet. This program will take into account two more Pearic languages spoken in the Cardamom Mountains, an area about which very little is known, as most of this mountain chain is still unexplored.
In spite of the small number of speakers, these languages and cultures have to be described and the descriptive data published.
• These fast disappearing cultures are an endangered part of our human cultural heritage. Once extinct, nothing will remain of the Pearic languages and cultures, if no proper description takes place now.
• These languages possess exceptional phonetic peculiarities such as the combination of four voice registers in at least two of them.
• Through the reconstruction of the proto Mon Khmer language family, the description will make a major contribution to comparative linguistics, cultural anthropology, and the history of Southeast Asia.
• The Pearic languages borrowed many words from the neighboring languages, principally Khmer. These loanwords can help us a lot to understand the past of Southeast Asia through the analysis of contacts and migrations.
Chinese Cambodians
Two books about the Chinese Cambodian minority have been written by William Willmott: “The political structure of the Chinese community 1970. In more than 35 years Cambodia has gone through crucial changes ( no less than 6 political regimes, civil war, genocide), and it is purely and simply impossible to understand the present day Chinese Cambodia minority and the economic role played by this group on the basic of these two books. This issue of the journal will offer a multidisciplinary analysis of the Chinese Cambodian minority on historical, anthropological, linguistic, geographical and sociological grounds.
Education in Cambodia: history and present day issues
This issue of the journal will be a study of two subjects:
Educational structure, contents and material in the Cambodian tradition. This approach to the traditional Cambodian educational system will be based on anthropological and sociological methods. The issue will stress the important of oral transmission, on the one hand, and the written production of the Buddhist monasteries, on the other. Far from being a reduction to pure history, our approach will examine the various repercussions of these teaching methods on the present day.
The sudden emergence of modernity. A comparative analysis of the educational programs as well as a sociological approach to teaching from French Protectorate period will allow a fresh look to be taken at the crucial educational problems Cambodia had, and still has, to face: Khmerization, illiteracy, education in a rural context, policies promoting literacy among linguistic and cultural minorities.
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