Talk:Khmer language

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 Khmer language was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: July 25, 2007
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A notable characteristic of the Phnom Penh accent is a tendency toward slang and laziness in pronunciation, much like American urban slang. For instance, "Phnom Penh" will sometimes be shortened to "m'Penh". Another characteristic of the Phnom Penh accent is observed in words with an "r" subconsonant in the first syllable (that is, where r is the second consonant, as in the Enlish word "bread"). The r is not pronounced, the first consonant is pronounced harder than usual, and the syllable is spoken with a dipping tone much like the "hoi" tone in the VietnameseLanguage. For example, I have heard the word "dre" (meaning "fish") pronounced "te"; the "d" becomes a "t", and the vowel (long A) begins low and rises in tone.

  • This seems like a schwa - an unstressed neutral sound, like in "poor" right before the r or at the beginning of "about". Sometimes English r's get weakened to schwas. Same deal here?
  • No, not as far as I can tell. The r is rolled normally, and completely omitted in the manifestations of the Phnom Penh accents Ive heard.
  • In fact, the description above sounds like the consonant cluster is simplified, but rather than pure deletion of the "r", the vowel receives a "creaky voice" pronounciation instead. A similar kind of process can be observed in Southern US English, where the final "r" in "car" is replaced by a lengthened vowel.
Actually, I believe this phenomenon with /r/ in Phnom Penh speech is due to decades of (colonial) contact with the French. With some speakers the /r/ isn't necessarily dropped, but pharyngealized similar to the French "uvular r" sound. This is especially true when the /r/ is needed for contrast or euphony. A secondary (or maybe concomitant) influence, I believe is the number of Chinese and more recently, Vietnamese, in Phnom Penh. These two languages both lack the trilled /r/ sound of Khmer and are both tonal languages. This could explain how the /r/ was dropped and replace by intonation of the syllable for contrast. The shift progression could be shown: Khmer trilled /r/ > "uvular r" > dropped -r- replaced with intonation. Any comments?--WilliamThweatt 23:34, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

"Laziness" in very NPOV and does not belong in a linguistic article. It's all too easy to be objective about the way other people talk. We wouldn't put "The French language is a lazy slurred version of Latin" for instance. — Hippietrail 03:56, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Can the people who made this page list their sources? I would like to check them out. thanks! Ish ishwar 13:52, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm going to take out the info about the Khmer alphabet because there is already a page for that stuff. And anyone interested can just go there. --Dara 22:43, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Population Figures

The latest population figures for Cambodia (2004) are 13.9 million, of whom upwards of 90% are native Khmer speakers (the vast majority of the rest speak it as a second language, with the exception of remote areas in the provinces of Ratannakiri and Mondulkiri). Estimates of the number of Khmer speakers in Thailand and Vietnam vary widely and are highly politicised. These range as high as 1 Million in Thailand and 8 to 10 Million in Vietnam. Please reassess your numbers for Khmer speakers, as these have real political implications for these severely under-represented minority populations.

[edit] Clusters

I cleaned up the phonology section and made it match the alphabet article better, however whoever I any stop + /h/ clusters since Khmer already has aspirated stops and no language has phonemic distinction between aspiration and stop + /h/. I also removed ɓ as a phoneme of Khmer, but may put it back upon further research. AEuSoes1 08:51, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

I had adapted these tables from F.E. Huffmann. The analysis of aspirated stops makes much more sense, of course you're right.
I think it also makes sense to keep the shwa in those clusters that have them, so they should be put back in.
And why did you remove ɓ? The three-way distinction for the plosive series does exist for the bilabials as well: ប (voiced) - ព (plain) - ផ (aspirated). Babelfisch 05:36, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
I put ɓ back in, but I'm confused when you say that there's a three way distinction between voiced plain and aspirated since ɓ is not just voiced but implosive as well. The article on the Khmer alphabet has ɓ and ɗ as b and d. Should those be changed?
If there's a schwa in between consonants then it's not a cluster and shouldn't be in the list of Khmer clusters. If the schwa is rapidly articulated and/or voiceless then I doubt it's a phonemic enough distinction from a true cluster to really be a necessary inclusion.
AEuSoes1 19:42, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
Phonologically, there is this three-way distinction, but d and b are phonetically not just voiced but usually implosive as well. (Taking out the voiced plosives really destroys the system and is completely inadequate!) Similarely, phonologically the clusters are clusters, but some of them have an epenthetic shwa that is clearly audible, but predictable. You can easily derive the precise rules from the data given in Huffmann. Babelfisch 00:52, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
I've been looking at Huffmann, he seems to contradict certain conventions about phonology and phonetics. For instance, he says that when the glottal stop is the first part of a cluster it's "released with slight vocalism." Since it's impossible to have a voiced glottal stop, you can't do that. If there is an epinthetic schwa so audible that you want to put it in a broad transcripting then it's not a cluster. I recognize that the writing system considers certain combinations as clusters but this is the actual phonology, not the writing system. AEuSoes1 21:02, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Having a background in linguistics and being fluent in Khmer, maybe I can add something here. The voiced implosive counterparts to /b/ and /d/ (sorry, I don't type IPA) do exist in Khmer but it is not a "three-way distiction" as said above. The voiced implosive and the "plain" /b/ and /d/ are allophones recognized as the same phoneme by native speakers. Some native speakers also use an implosive variant of /m/.WilliamThweatt 23:21, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article problems

I would fail this because of the lack of in-line citations. You have five books in 'References', but very few page numbers in 'Notes' from the books. There is a reference for an external Pdf page which is very good, and could be quoted extensively (by paraphrasing, of course, and using the page numbers...) The whole article could be a lot more detailed. Sorry. andreasegde 06:33, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I also found the article from WP:GAC and I agree to some extent with andreasegde's comments. I've added some more inline references, which hopefully should allow the article to be awarded good article status. However, the issues mentioned by andreasegde would have to be addressed in order for the article to achieve featured status. Addhoc 15:53, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] IPA and ភាសាខ្មែរ

There's an infobox referring to the IPA chart for English for a pronunciation key. This isn't much help for a language including such exotic sounds as implosives! Surely there must be a more comprehensive IPA chart somewhere.

The ភាសាខ្មែរ refers to what is presumably the Khmer script in the opening sentence. Maybe some readers' browsers can cope with the script, but mine—which can display several world scripts & large chunks of Unicode—can't. I suspect that I'm not alone in this. Could you perhaps use an image? (That last question mark was intentional ...)

In other respects it reads like a professional article, & must be pretty close to GA.

Oh, one other thing I noticed. The "four periods" mentioned in History would stand out better as sub-sections or headings of some sort—maybe even just a list. -- NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 12:03, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

PS A dumb question—but then I know nothing about Khmer, I'm afraid. Is the Phiesa of Phiesa Khmae cognate with Bahasa (Indonesia), ie meaning "speech"? As a betting man, I'd guess it is. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 15:49, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's correct, right guess. The word seems to come from Sanskrit "bhāṣā" (भाषा). It's also used in the form "basa" in Sundanese, I think. The word has spread quite muchly around Southeastern Asia, even to non-Indo-European languages. :> — N-true 21:12, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Are Indonesian bahasa and Mon-Khmer phesa, phiesa, etc. (all meaning "talk, speech, language") really loanwords from an Indic (Sanskrit-derived) language? I think this word is found even in remote Austro-Asiatic languages like Khasi, and it seems rather close to Chinese huà (話) < Old Chinese *whas, *ʍas ("talk, speech, language"), Korean māl ("talk, speech, language"), and Japanese uwasa ("rumor, gossip").
Khasi is spoken in an Indian state, between Bengal and Burma. Why not? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.93.174.168 (talk) 08:59, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
You bring up a good point about the IPA warning. I'd bring it up here if I were you since this is true for many languages and the template itself may need some revision. As for the text appearing as boxes, you're not alone in your browser's inability to read Khmer script but the image is to the right in the language box. The Khmer script article has {{Khmer characters}} that we could put in this article as well to guide readers willing to change their computer to display the script. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 00:30, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Failed GA nomination

I had to fail this article's GA nomination. Here is the version that failed. Here are my reasons:

  1. References 1 and 2 do not actually provide sources.
  2. The Phonology section is completely unreferenced.
  3. Phonology section makes mention of the consonants /f/, /ʃ/, /z/ and /g/ appearing only in loan words, but they do not appear on the chart of consonants and no explanation is given as to why this is.
  4. Grammar section could use some wikifying.
  5. Social registers section needs referencing and expansion to provide examples of subject matter (examples of the actual terms that are used).

Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 15:50, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

And some images could help it along... The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 02:06, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
addressed #3...more to follow.--William Thweatt Talk | Contribs 22:22, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
as for #1, the first reference gives the latest estimate of Khmer speakers in Vietnam, supporting the figure in the infobox and the second, used twice in the article, supports multiple statments in the body of the article.--William Thweatt Talk | Contribs 22:45, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
addressed #2...added refs to Phonology section--William Thweatt Talk | Contribs 23:00, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] /r/ phoneme in Phnom Penh Khmer

The phenomenon of dropped /r/ phonemes in Khmer discourse is more likely a feature of Chinese influence. Southern Chinese dialects like 'Yue' have no /r/ phoneme. Khmer does have an /r/ phoneme, the 'ro'. Thus merchants and the uneducated laity in the capital city pronounced words with diminished /r/ phonemes. Evidently, the tendency to simplify sounds won over and the dropped /r/ phenomenon spread and has become the mark of Phnom Penh residents. The percieved strengthening of the initial consonant of an -/r/ second cluster is the result an aspiration /h/ in place of the lost /r/. Richard Noss examines the treatment of /r/ in the standard educated khmer and that of Phnom Penh Khmer, the more vulgar dialect (1967). Though he does not delve into the origins of this phonological divergence, he does mention that both standard and rural khmer retain the /r/ phoneme in speech, implying that foreign influences in Phnom Penh have brought about the dropped /r/ phenomenon. As of yet, there is no significant evidence to suggest that the loss of /r/ in he Phnom Penh dialect is either the result of Chinese or French influence. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Empty pockets8 (talk • contribs) 22:11, 5 May 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Need Khmer script at Kuyteav

Can someone add the Khmer script at Kuyteav? Badagnani 22:01, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

All done! Though you need Khmer unicode installed to see it in the article. I can upload a small jpeg of the script if you prefer, just let me know.Paxse 02:22, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Need instruction for installation

As mentioned above by Paxse, I think the more important thing is there should be instruction about how to install Khmer unicode somewhere NEAR THE TOP of the page. Like You need to install KM Unicode for windows if you want to view all the text in this page.

Mori Riyo 06:10, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Failing GA

Unfortunately, I must fail this article due to various problems, keeping it from GA status:

1. Well written?: Y
2. Factually accurate?: Some internet sources would be nice, as some people don't own the publications listed.
3. Broad in coverage?: Some expansion is required. See articles like English language, or Turkish Language to see some examples on where to broaden the comprehensiveness (History and Grammar are very short; verbs, nouns).
4. Neutral point of view?: Y
5. Article stability? Y
6. Images?: WP:FURG - image

Overall, there's a bit to be done in order to get the article to reach GA status. NSR77 TC 00:22, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scouting in Khmer script

Can someone render "Be Prepared", the Scout Motto, into Khmer script? Thanks! Chris 02:56, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Khmer mul.jpg

Image:Khmer mul.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot 06:45, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Three main dialects?

I have some questions, the article mentions three main dialects while listing four. Also, Cardamom and Surin are listed while Khmer Krom isn't at all. I am sure that Khmer Krom is its own independent dialect with just as much or even more speakers than the Khmer Surin dialect. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.136.27.231 (talk) 22:47, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Numbers

"Khmer numerals, which were inherited from Indian numerals, are used more widely than Hindu-Arabic numerals." As in Thailand, the spread of mobile phones has inluenced the way that people write numbers - especially telephone numbers and addresses; though this may be confined to urban centres. --Steve (talk) 00:46, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Care to explain? Besides the fact that Western numerals can also be used (moreso technology-wise), this isn't an abnormal borrowing. I've also seen the 正 unary numeral system used in some places in Cambodia as well. - Io Katai (talk) 01:59, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't understand the exact meaning of what you're trying to say, but since Khmer numerals function exactly as hindu-arabic numerals, I don't see why technology would changed its status. Joshotoken (talk) 22:05, 1 May 2008 (UTC)