As recently as three decades ago, people of Veal Renh, a village just 30 km from Sihanoukville, spoke Saoch.
But the harsh rule of the Khmer Rouge—when all languages but Khmer were forbidden—long years of civil war and other circumstances have conspired to make Khmer the language of Veal Renh village.
Today, just a few village families still use Saoch regularly, and linguist Jean-Michel Filippi recently found only six knowledgeable villagers who could help him record Saoch for future studies.
By contrast, in Mondolkiri province, Phnong remains the sole means of communication for the ethnic Phnong people, who make up 80 percent of the province’s population. But increasing contact with the outside world has put that in jeopardy.
Filippi and Sylvain Vogel—both of whom are members of the Linguistic Society at the Royal University of Phnom Penh—talked about their research into Cambodia’s minority languages earlier this month at a University Agency for the Francophonie conference.
Languages disappear every day on the planet, Filippi said. But what keeps one language alive while another one fades away?
“A language dies because it is no longer relevant in daily life,” Filippi said.
As people adapted to the different climates and geography that went with their part of the world, languages and dialects emerged, reflecting communities and lifestyles. As a result, language and culture are closely linked.
“Concepts of a culture are expressed in the words and sentences of a language,” Vogel said.
For example, because Phnong people farm fields on a rotational basis in order to give plots of land time to replenish, the Phnong language includes words to describe the age of a piece of farmland, Vogel said.
Social values and customs are also reflected in languages, he said. When describing family members beyond siblings or children, the words brother and sister in French or English automatically mention a person’s gender, Vogel said.
In the Khmer and Phnong languages, the words for sibling are related to age, he said. For example, in Khmer, one first says “bong” to talk about an older child and “poun” for a younger one.
A number of factors play a role in whether a language will thrive or fade away, Filippi said. The number of people who speak it in everyday life and a community’s exposure to another culture or language will effect its survival. But in the end, it is up to the people themselves to decide, Filippi said.
While some communities have been determined to keep their language no matter what, others let it go because they don’t need it anymore to communicate among themselves, he said.
Until recently, Phnong people have been fairly isolated from the outside world. Unlike ethnic Khmers, they have been untouched by Indian influences and do not practice Buddhism, Filippi said.
Although very few Phnong speak Khmer, they now watch television and listen to the radio and have started to change different aspects of their lifestyles, Vogel said. They dress differently and have given up wearing loincloths and their hair in a bun, he said.
At this point, there is no written form of Phnong. But by converting Phnong words into international phonetic symbols, Filippi and Vogel developed a method for learning the language for native Khmer-speaking medical workers in Mondolkiri.
Efforts are under way both in Mondolkiri and Ratanakkiri provinces to develop written versions of other minority languages in Khmer script.
“In this area, Cambodian authorities have an exemplary approach,” Filippi said. The Cambodian government is allowing minority groups to learn to read and write in their own languages first, before they study Khmer, he said.
In the meantime, Vogel is recording as fast as he can traditional Phnong tales and legends while some villagers still remember them. Listening to the radio and watching television has begun to fill the evenings of many Phnong, and that has endangered the Phnong’s oral traditions, which have been passed from one generation to the next, Vogel said.
