Kuy people in Preah Vihear Province

Soeun smelling Kuy food

Most people in Cambodia are Khmer, but there are some minority groups as well. Last year Kimsoeun and his small group went to visit the Pnong people in the province of Modulkiri, and I tagged along. It was a cross cultural experience for the Khmer Bible school students as I mentioned back here.

This year's trip he also went to visit a minority group (i'm not sure that the right term?). Anyway, they spend some time with the Kuy people, many of them live in Preah Vihear province. 

I heard from some people (i think it was these people) who work with Kuy (sounds a little bit like goo-ay), that they used to have a written language, but it got lost, and they don't really want it written. There was some "dog ate my homework type story". (In contrast to many languages of the world which aren't written down, but people may start developing a written language so they can translated the written work of God into it, and I assume the people like having their language written down.)

Here is a bit about them from a booklet that you can download from here.

Peoples of Cambodia- Kuy

In appearance they do not differ from the 

Khmers. They have their own language, unwritten 

until recently. One folk tale is that the village elders 

originally wrote their language on a pig skin but then 

dogs ate it so their writing was lost. Kuy is in the 

Mon-Khmer language group and there are several 

dialects. Most Kuy people also speak Khmer and in 

some places they are losing their own language. 

dominant belief structure. 

I think this is the newly paved road. You'll see older photos of a big red muddy road. And you can tell by the trees that there is still a lot of red dust around. Those leaves are probably actually green if you wipe the dust off.