Colloquial Cambodian: A Complete Language Course (Colloquial Series) [Audio Cassette]

This is a good starting point for someone who doesn't know any Cambodian. It is certainly the most affordable course and the easiest to obtain. From the very first lesson, you get real sentences with real content instead of just formulas- Hello, Good morning, how are you?- which is where so many language courses start. So from the opening bell you can get a sense of how the language works and how sentences are put together. The grammatical explanations are good, although some of them could be more detailed.

Another feather in the author's cap is that the material on the tapes really does follow the book. The speakers are quite easy to follow and one can get into the flow of the language very quickly. I suppose you could buy the book without the tapes, but would you feel very confident saying a words like "t'ngai" or "g'baal" for instance? In a lot of language courses (including some in the "Colloquial's" series) the material on the tapes does not coordinate well with the printed text. This one does.

The major minus in this book is its system of transcription. Given the choice between trying to represent Cambodian phonemes accurately (especially the vowels) and approximating what is now a very unphonetic system of writing, the author has come up with system that does a poor job of both. I really believe that he should have used Huffman's system which is much more precise in representing phonemes that differ only very slightly to a Westerner's ear. It would certainly help someone who also wants to consult Huffman's text. The author makes no bones about the fact that he wants to wean the learner away from transcription, and he succeeds, but mostly because his system is too inaccurate to be any help. He does introduce the writing system gradually and there are illustrations in the book showing how the letters are handwritten- which is another feature not every language book has when there is a writing system different from our own.

So- I'll give it four stars. I'd give five stars to a future edition if the author found a better solution to his transcription problems.

Let's start with the positive. The CD is great. The material is practical, the pronunciations are clear, and listening to it will definitely help any student of the Khmer language. Now for the book. Although Smyth does sort of apologize for his system of transcribing the spoken language, no justification can be made for this perverse, ugly, and misleading representation of Khmer. Smyth claims that use of phonetic symbols would require too much sophistication on the part of the average user, and I agree that the level of phonetic detail would be difficult. Besides, no two linguists use the same system (mea culpa, here). However, Smyth commits a crime against the language by splitting single syllable words into two, breaking up sounds and creating a written form that looks totally alien. The real reason for the mess is an attempt to match the spoken language to the written form. This is very hard, since the written form of the language represents the spoken language hundreds of years ago. Put simply, Khmer used to have a "b" and a "p". It lost that distinction, so that the difference "moved" to the following vowel. baa and paa become paa and pie (PEE-EH). His solution is to write "bp" and "p", but in the modern language they are the same sound. In trying to avoid the historical complexity of the writing system, a monstrous alphabetic stew is created. He writes the letter "r" at the end of words, but that's just because of the writing system. It is never pronounced in Cambodian Khmer (some dialects in Thailand have it). In sum, he tried a new solution to an old problem, and failed. It is just too much of misrepresentation, and makes learning difficult. The material is otherwise good, though the grammatical sketch is a bit too westernized. It would be easier to tell the truth: there are no parts of speech in Khmer and most words can be used as noun, adjective, or verb. There are inconsistencies. Smyth correctly notes that pronouns are often omitted (in subject position) but then keeps using them, so the colloquial language becomes a bit stilted. As Smyth rightly notes, if you learn the complex Khmer script you can forget about the transcription. I'll go further. If you learn the script, this is a very useful book. If not, it is too misleading about how Khmer works. The approach taken by Huffman in his books from the 1970s is better, as is Im Proum's course if you can find it. If you can't get to those, you will find this introduction does just as good a job if you get past the transcription and learn the writing system. Good luck!

Tha roman-alphabet renderings of the Khmer words is misleading, but for most aspects of the course only good things can be said. The exercises are well-chosen and paced in a way that makes learning Khmer about as painless as it can be, which is still pretty painful.

This book supposes no prior knowledge of Khmer. The other Khmer book I have seen, by Huffman, is very technical and seems to suppose a level of training in structural linguistics and phonetics that is beyond what most people have.