raising bilingual kids

"Ask Grandma if she wants to come in." I said to my toddler today as his Khmer Grandma stood outside the front door.

He turned to her and did just what I asked in Khmer! I was surprised and impressed.

He speaks to me in English so it's hard for me to know what his Khmer is like.

He often goes on church trips and outings where everyone else is Khmer, so that's when he gets to hear a lot of Khmer, when I'm not there.

Just in that moment today it was nice to see that he understood me in English, and he knew to speak Khmer to Grandma, and he knew how to say it in Khmer.

So far it feels like it's just kind of happened , our kids are being exposed to two languages. But recently I've been chatting to a friend in a similar family situation and feeling like we need to make an effort to make sure the kids have some Khmer language exposure at this point in their lives.

We're raising Khmer kids in Cambodia with the one Khmer parent, so it should be easy, right?

English is so important to Cambodians so many people know it, even some toddlers at church seem to know English and speak it with their parents.  Apart from the government schools it seems like most schools are in English. My friend has been searching high and low all over town to find a school with a Khmer program.

It seems like reading to and singing to our kids comes naturally to many parents from English speaking countries, but its not such a big thing for Cambodians.

There are less books and less literacy around to start with, unlike where I come from most people can read and write and it's really important to us. We've been reading books to our kids since they were babies, some other expats gave me their old board books they had for their kids. We have made an effort to seek out some Khmer kids books, and we read those too. But in volume its never going to compare to all the amazing kids books in English.

And singing- so many songs in English to sing with and for kids. Including the alphabet song- so long before you actually start reading you already know the alphabet. There is an alphabet sort-of song ish in Khmer, our toddler has been learning it too, but it doesn't seem to have the same place in the culture.

I've been asking around and searching for Khmer kids songs, I haven't really come up with that much. A friend has offered to teach us some she translated from English, so that will be fun! And another friend directed us to some songs made by a project to teach health, they are also fun and easy to listen to. But so far I haven't found anything like our nursery rhymes.

Language learning

Sunday morning show pile!

"I'm beautiful!" the toddler sometimes yells out when he gets out of the bath. If he were speaking Khmer it would make more sense as the word for "clean" and "beautiful" are the same.

He is learning to speak both languages, and sometimes we see that he is learning the right context for each. Before the baby was born I remember he saw Soeun riding up on the moto. He turned to me and said "Daddy!" then turned to his Cambodian grandma and said "Ba!"

The other day he fell of his bike and started laughing, but then it turned into loud cries. THe day after Grandma was remembering this and talking about what happened (in Khmer of course). He then turned to me and told the story in English, and acted his crying/laughing out.

better??

One day, a few years ago Soeun had a cold. The next day I asked him how he was and he said he was better. Later I realised he was still coughing and I felt confused, why did he tell me he was better when he still had a cold?

I asked him and he replied with the Khmer word for better, the one that means "more good/gooder" and then it made sense. I had thought he meant "chea howie" which means healed.

I've been thinking about that over the last week as Soeun has been feeling heaps better than he has been since late March. When he's sick it's almost as if the real him has disappeared, and when he's well it feels a bit like he has come back to life again, his personality is back. Makes a big difference to my day if I get to see my "real" husband.

So I've been enjoying his good health lately, it very exciting. But I can't get too excited and start planning all the things that are on hold because of his inner ear migraine..... his health is only gooder than before, he is not totally healed.

"narrow heart"- language fun!

I think I learnt a new Khmer phrase recently! I was having lunch with a Cambodian girl and she was describing some people, she said in Khmer that they are narrow hearted. I think it means something like selfish. Later Soeun told me that "wide heart" means something like generous. That reminded me of my other posts such as this:

In Khmer to encourage someone is to lift up their heart, 
and when your heart is down it means you are sad. 
Its pretty similar in English, but other heart phrases are opposite. 


If you have a big heart in Khmer it means you are proud, 
whereas in English is to do with kindness. 


Someone with a hot heart is a bad person, but in English a warm hearted person is someone you want to be around.


A heavy heart in Khmer means you are persevering, while a light heart means you aren't standing your ground. Maybe like a feather in the wind, it is light so it gets blown around easily, while a heavy rock will stand firm. 




A Chinese friend shared this with me after reading the previous one on Khmer hearts:

In Chinese, if you have no heart means you are careless; 
if your heart is small means you are careful; 
if your heart is black in colour means you curse someone; 
if your heart is open means you are very happy.

Bodyless

There is a word for a head without a body in Cambodian language if I understood the girls this morning. 



We were doing a Bible study on Ephesians 1, near the end, about how Jesus is the head of the church which is his body. I think we were meant to be talking about how important that connection is, and what the relationship is between the head and the body but we ended up on a big tangent. 

They told stories from their villages about how at night heads of some people (only women I think) leave the body and roam around at night to find food. The organs like lungs and tummy go with it, and one organ lights up like a flashlight (a green organ- which one is that?). When the head is full it can go back to its body.



One of the girls in the group said a girl had to leave her village because even though she wasn't a bad person, she had this strange power. Also in the village the pigs were stolen because people were too scared to stay and guard them. And one girl was scared to go outside to the toilet at night so they had to build a toilet in the house.



They said there are lots of these kind of stories as many people were killed during Pol Pot time and didn't have a proper burial, so their souls are still here. 


I'll ask Kimsoeun about it tonight.

What does MSG taste like in English?

Salt tastes salty.
Sugar tastes sweet.
Chili tastes hot/spicy.
MSG tastes.........?

English students asked me this question when we were making papaya salad. In Khmer there is a word for the taste of MSG, but I told them I didn't know a word in English, maybe we don't have one. They found it strange I didn't know the word. To help me remember it they got me to eat MSG straight out of the packet. Perhaps if I tasted it the word would come to me. No word came! They still kept asking me though.

More hearts and other figures of speech

There is a Khmer pop song around these days with a line "two hearts", I'm told it means unfaithful. I thought that was interesting as in Hebrew "two hearts/minds" means you are telling a lie. While in English being in 2 minds about something means you haven't decided yet. And two faced in English means you are a hypocrite.

A heavy heart in Khmer means you are persevering, while a light heart means you aren't standing your ground. Maybe like a feather in the wind, it is light so it gets blown around easily, while a heavy rock will stand firm.

If a room is messy, in English we may call it a pig sty (sp?) as pigs are known for being messy. In Khmer they say a "pig's nest". Yes , nest as in what birds live in, it is not what they call pig's houses, but they think of nests as chaotic and messy. So to emphasise the point they say call a messy room a "messy dwelling of a messy animal" .

Hearts 2

A Chinese friend shared this with me after reading the previous one on Khmer hearts:

In Chinese, if you have no heart means you are careless;
if your heart is small means you are careful;
if your heart is black in colour means you curse someone;
if your heart is open means you are very happy.

Hearts

In Khmer to encourage someone is to lift up their heart,
and when your heart is down it means you are sad.
Its pretty similar in English, but other heart phrases are opposite.


If you have a big heart in Khmer it means you are proud,
whereas in English is to do with kindness.


Someone with a hot heart is a bad person, but in English a warm hearted person is someone you want to be around.

Do you know any "heart" phrases in other languages?

How rude!

“ When you’re ready to go out for dinner come to our room,” I said to my mum.

My husband Kimsoeun and both our mums were on holiday together. As my mum only speaks English and my mother-in-law only speaks Cambodia it was an interesting experience for them to be sharing a guesthouse room for the week. And it meant I had to say everything twice.

“When you’re ready to go out for dinner come to our room.” I said to my mother-in-law in Cambodian.

She had a funny look on her face. I guess she didn’t understand me, so I tried again. She still had a funny look, so I tried to say the same thing in a different way. It’s so hard to learn a new language! Maybe I wasn’t pronouncing something correctly, or my words were totally out of order.

I gave up and went back to the room I was sharing with my Kimsoeun; I guess she’d figure it out.

That night as we were eating Kimsoeun explained to me that he had just explained to his mum that I didn’t mean to offend her, it’s just the way we talk in English. Huh? How had I offended her? And I didn’t even talk to her in English.

It turns out that I was being really rude when I said “our room”. I should have said “my room”. I did make a language mistake, but it wasn’t to do with my pronunciation or grammar. If I had been talking to someone younger it would have been fine. It’s not something I would have guessed at all.

I was glad that Kimsoeun was able to explain to me that I had offended her and why, other wise I would not have known. And I was also glad that he could explain to her that I wasn’t intending to be rude.

I wonder how many other times I have offended people and not been aware. If there is no friend around to explain it must be so easy to come across in the wrong way and not even know about it. It highlights how important love and humility are in cross-cultural relating.

Graduation

Bible School Graduation was held recently. It was great to see old friends who came for the day. I also enjoyed singing. One of the songs we sang is picture below. I went over in my language sessions in the week leading up to graduation so I was able to sing all of the words!



In English we call it "Because he lives".In Khmer its called "God sent his Son". One of the words in it I learnt from an advert on TV for MSG. Ajinomoto MSG claims to "dissolve easily", that word for dissolve/ melt is what happens to fear (in the song).

Oops, What did I say?

“My mother in law hired a bus.” I said this (in Khmer) to a Cambodian friend and her face suddenly changed. She looked something like horrified, I had never seen her make that expression before. I was confused.

Lucky for us, Soeun overheard. He began laughing! Now both I and my friend were confused. We looked at him and waited for him to stop laughing so he could explain.

It turns out I pronounced the word for “hire” incorrectly. Instead of saying “hire” (something like “jool”), I said “chol”. I had actually told my friend that my mother in law had been run over and killed by a bus!

(more language learning fun: Khmer Karaoke and the plethora of pronouns )

"Korean" Class

Well, actually it was Khmer language class but there were lots of Koreans in it! Also Malaysian, American, Singaporean, Hong Kongian (sp?), Vietnamese, Canadian, Japanese, Indonesian, and Swiss people were my classmates in the 9 months that I studied at a university in Phnom Penh.
Here you can see the group I studied with for the first term.

And here is the faithful remnant, well, those of us who are still here anyway. We recently had lunch together at a Chinese restaurant. I was excited because the food you can see us eating here was the same food that I ate when I lived in China. Most Chinese food I’ve eaten outside China is different to the food to I ate in China. I guess the owner or chef is from North China.

It was also fun to show off my husband; oh I mean introduce them to Kimsoeun. As we are all learning Khmer he is the expert!

And this photo is from our second day of class. Our teacher (kru) is writing the first few letters of the alphabet on the board. To the left you can see a poster with the whole alphabet on it.

If you want to have a look at all the letters and vowels click here and scroll down a bit.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Dad! Here is a pun for you.

Wind photos link

If you want to see photos to go with what I wrote before go to the Expat Advisory site. They run a blog contest and I entered "What colour is the wind?". They added some photos! I think you need to go this month to see pics, as its a monthly contest. I notice they changed it to USA spelling, and the first time KSs name appears you can tell its been spell checked too.

What colour is the wind?

What colour is the wind?
“Ouch!” Kimsoeun my husband laughs at my cry of pain. He is the one who is sick, so why am I screaming? And why is he laughing?

He has had a headache for a few days, but that’s not the pain that makes me say “Ouch”.

To treat his headache he has asked me to “ gos khjol” his back. So I’m scraping a small round metal lid up and down his back until his skin turns red, using a menthol rub as a lubricant.

When his mum does it he ends up with two red lines down either side of his spine, and smaller rib-looking lines going outward from these main two lines. I’m trying to do the same, but I only manage a few small, faint lines here and there. He wanted me to scrape harder but I felt like I was hurting him.

Sometimes “ gos khjol” is translated as “coining” because you can use a coin to do it. Cambodia doesn’t have coins anymore, but Cambodians in Australia use coins and Vicks. It’s similar to the Chinese medicinal practice of “cupping”. Hot cups are placed on the skin until it turns red. Khmer people also use this method and call it “joop khjol”.

Once when a Cambodian husband in Australia “coined” his sick wife, he almost got in trouble because of it. The doctors who were eventually called thought he had been abusing her. After someone’s been “coined” it does looked like something violent happened to them. Red welts on the skin are surely a sign of something bad?

It seemed to be used as a general cure-all. Apparently it can help if you have a fever. “Coining and cupping reroutes the blood flow by opening up the arterials near the skin surface cooling the blood and in turn it can reduce fever.” (Dr Sheftall, American Medical Center, Phnom Penh Post, August 2007)

Sometimes when Kimsoeun has a headache he pinches his skin so hard it stays red for the rest of the day. He explained this is called “jup khjol” and a likened it to a massage. A pretty painful massage if you ask me!

Many Cambodians would feel that they can’t get better from their sickness if they are not “coined”.

The word “khjol” is also the word for wind. When I learnt this I understood why my neighbours kept asking me “What colour is the wind?” They would burst into fits of laughter and I would feel confused. The wind doesn’t have a colour, does it? But now I know the colour of “khjol” is red.

Village visit, the Year of the Rat is here and I’m a student of Khmer language and history!

Soeun recently went to stay in a village for a few days with some students (college mission). There were heaps of kids with lots of energy and it sounds like they had fun. It was hard to do studies at night, as they don’t have electricity. KS took our emergency lantern (like a big torch/flashlight); he said it was the brightest thing there.

The team thought they would get up early at 5.30 to pray, but by that time everyone else was already up!
One morning the students stole the camera and took a picture of Teacher Soeun asleep, as you can see here. You might be able to see someone having a wash in the background.

Village life is quite different to the city- as well as no power, they also don’t have toilets, and some peoples’ houses don’t have doors.

The church is new and small in this village. Actually, it’s more a handful of new believers than a church. They don’t have any leaders yet, and many of them can’t read. The team’s aim was to encourage them, and train them in leadership. As well as this they washed the kids’ hair. There were heaps of kids and apparently handfuls of lice!

Although not an official public holiday here, Chinese New Year is celebrated. Leading up to it I heard lots of firecrackers although not as many as I heard when I was in China. In China it sounded like a war zone, here there are spurts of bangs every now and then.

At the market there were special stalls set up selling lots of red and gold shining things, and all the normal products were more expensive. The day before the year of the rat began I was buying some uncooked rice and eggs from my usual seller. She asked me if I was going anywhere for Chinese New Year, and excitedly told me she was going out, in Khmer “dar layng” (literally: walk play, a walk for fun) to visit her mother. By that time some of the sellers had already shut up and gone home for the holiday.

Soeun was away that weekend on college mission, so that was a good opportunity for me to have a “language intensive in the province”, aka visit my in -laws. Because of CNY the bus was more expensive.

I stayed a few nights. Now they own 3 bikes, so I rode one to their church, and to the market and around town just for fun (dar layng). I also tagged along when they went to visit someone in hospital, and got to see the house where they used to live.

Two years ago when I first came to Cambodia KS took me to visit his mum on Chinese New Year too. In high school I studied recent Cambodian history (1970s, Lon Nol, Pol Pot), and I remember asking Soeun if it would be ok to ask his mum about her life during these horrible/strange times. As it was such an awful time for the whole country I was worried about stirring up bad memories, yet very interested to know what happened- especially to my then-potential mother in law. Soeun said she would be fine to talk about it- but I’d have to learn Khmer language first! At that stage I couldn’t imagine knowing enough Khmer language to discuss family history and war.

However, here I am two years later. I felt excited this year to discover I could understand enough Khmer to get the gist of what my mother in law was saying. She told me about how after Pol Pot time she left her baby Soeun with her parents in the village. She came to the town. It was deserted and there were many empty houses, so she started living in one and it became hers! I had heard those stories from Phnom Penh, but hadn’t thought about what might have happened outside the capital. (They sold that house years ago.)

Why were there so many empty houses?

At the beginning of Pol Pot time, everyone was driven out of the city. The Khmer Rouge were planning to make a classless society, everyone was to be a farmer. Being educated or rich was a bad thing. Between 1975 and 1979 and heaps of people died (some day 2 million). So the evacuation of towns and great amount of death meant there were many empty houses. As you can imagine that created land ownership issues, still a problem today. One of many problems as you’ll see if you click on book title in previous post below.

Did you know...?

“If Cambodian cuisine could speak, it would be a polyglot hybrid of Vietnamese, Chinese, and Thai, with a smattering of French and a heavy Indian accent.”

(Paul Brisby, SE Globe, Dec 2007)


There are at least 10 words for ‘carry’ in Khmer language. Each word is for a different way of carrying. For example, one word is used when you carry something on your shoulder, another for when you carry something on your hip. There is a word for when you carry things that are hanging from a long stick that is resting on your shoulders, and another one for when more than one person carries something.


Only about half the primary schools in Cambodia have toilets. As well as all the other reasons I think this would contribute to less girls finishing school.

(Phnom Penh Post Dec 14, 2007)

The annual roll toll in Cambodia is going up…
“RTAVIS reported 2,140 casualties in October alone, of which 136 were fatalities. Another 616 were severely injured compared to September, during which 121 died and 537 were seriously injured out of a total reported 1,818 casualties.”

(RTAVIS=Handicap International Belgium’s Road Traffic Accident and Victim Information System)
(The Cambodian Weekly, Dec 23 2007)

Christmas goes for 2 months in Cambodia! As Dec 25 isn’t a public holiday each church will decide which Sunday to hold their Christmas service. It could be anywhere from late November to early January. And as some services are in the morning and some in the afternoons a person who wants to visit different churches can go to many services. One year KS went to 4 churches in the same day and ended up sleeping the night at the last one.

“72% of the 1,016 Cambodians interviewed said they paid a bribe to receive a service in the previous 12 months, according to Transparency International’s 2007 Global Corruption Barometer released December 6. Only Cameroon … had a higher corruption score.”

(PPPost Dec 14, 2007)

“Inflation rises to 6.5% in Sept”
“While the complaints about gas prices soaring to 4,450 riels per litre continue, another crescendo of worries is coming from consumers about the hikes in the cost of food and other commodities.”
A food seller was interviewed and said she had to put the cost of her meals up as inflation was eroding all her profit.
(PP Post, Dec 13, 2007)

Language Progress!

Mostly, my days are filled with trying to learn more Khmer. This means I’m mostly struggling with unknown words and sounds. I’m often in environments where I’m straining to understand even just a little of what is being said.

Recently though, I had some experiences which made me step back and see the progress I’ve made this year. Let me share them with you.

One Saturday morning, around 7am I was walking along a road carrying a silver plate of grapes. As a wedding guest I was part of the fruit procession, there were two long lines of us walking towards the function hall where the wedding was being held. It was all very festive and colourful, accompanied by music and clicking cameras.

Walking in the opposite direction was another fruit procession. I looked over at them and realised I recognised many of the faces. They were from the church I went to last year; I hadn’t seen most of them all year. Afterwards I caught up with a few groups of them. “Che khmai chrarnna!” (Lit: know Khmer language a lot). They were all surprised at how much Khmer I know now. It felt much easier to communicate with them than last year.

A recent Sunday morning at Khmer church we sang a song. It was one I had tried to learn at the start of the year. I remember painstakingly trying to read each word with my tutor. They were all so hard to pronounce. All I could understand was “God” and “I”.

But at this end of the year the song is not so much of a mystery. I found, while I still didn’t understand every word, I could sing along.

A definition of a definition

As most of my classmates are Korean, but the teacher doesn't speak Korean he sometimes uses a dictionary to explain words. He has one that has Khmer, English and Korean. Yesterday he looked up a Khmer word and took the book around the class so everyone could see it. Everyone can either read Korean or English. The English word was "raise". We had been talking about farming, so it was "raise" as in "raise cattle on a farm".

However the Korean word meant "cause to go up", a different meaning of the English word "raise".
Instead of defining the Khmer word they had just mis translated the English definition!