Significant groups:
89-421: The Khmer Loeu ( Khmer : ជនជាតិខ្មែរលើ [cunciət kʰmae ləː] ; "upper Khmers") is the collective name given to the various indigenous ethnic groups residing in the highlands of Cambodia . The Khmer Loeu are found mainly in the northeastern provinces of Ratanakiri , Stung Treng , and Mondulkiri . Most of the highland groups are Mon-Khmer peoples and are distantly related, to one degree or another, to
178-646: A minor (fully unstressed) syllable. Such words have been described as sesquisyllabic (i.e. as having one-and-a-half syllables). There are also some disyllabic words in which the first syllable does not behave as a minor syllable, but takes secondary stress . Most such words are compounds , but some are single morphemes (generally loanwords). An example is ភាសា ('language'), pronounced [ˌpʰiəˈsaː] . Words with three or more syllables, if they are not compounds, are mostly loanwords, usually derived from Pali, Sanskrit, or more recently, French. They are nonetheless adapted to Khmer stress patterns. Primary stress falls on
267-522: A minor syllable . The language has been written in the Khmer script , an abugida descended from the Brahmi script via the southern Indian Pallava script , since at least the 7th century. The script's form and use has evolved over the centuries; its modern features include subscripted versions of consonants used to write clusters and a division of consonants into two series with different inherent vowels . Khmer
356-738: A 1984 resolution of the PRK National Cadres Conference entitled "Policy Toward Ethnic Minorities," the minorities were considered an integral part of the Cambodian nation, and they were to be encouraged to participate in collectivization. Government policy aimed to transform minority groups into modern Cambodians. The same resolution called for the elimination of illiteracy, with the stipulations that minority languages be respected and that each tribe be allowed to write, speak, and teach in its own language. The major Khmer Loeu groups in Cambodia are
445-522: A 1998 census. They have a Mon–Khmer language, and practice a form of animism . They have matrilineal descent. The Tampuan live in the northeastern province of Cambodia, Ratanakiri . Many Tampuan live in villages close to Ratanakiri's provincial capital, Ban Lung , around a volcanic crater lake, Yeak Laom. Some live in scattered communities around the small town of Voeun Sai. A total of 23,000 Bunong were thought to be living in Cambodia and in Vietnam in
534-658: A broad civic action program—for which the army had responsibility—among the Khmer Loeu in Mondulkiri , Ratanakiri , Stung Treng , and Koh Kong provinces. The goals of this program were to educate the Khmer Loeu, to teach them Khmer , and eventually to assimilate them into the mainstream of Cambodian society. There was some effort at resettlement; in other cases, civil servants went out to live with individual Khmer Loeu groups to teach their members Khmer ways. Schools were provided for some Khmer Loeu communities, and in each large village
623-627: A council of elders who judge infractions of traditional law. Two chief sorcerers, whose main function is to control the weather, play a major role in Pearic religion . Among the Saoch , a corpse is buried instead of being burned as among the Khmer . The Austronesian groups of Jarai and E De (also known as Rhade, or Rade) form two of the largest ethnic minorities in Vietnam. Both groups spill over into northeastern Cambodia, and they share many cultural similarities. The total Jarai population stands at about 200,000;
712-420: A council of local elders or by a village headman. The Khmer Loeu cultivate a wide variety of plants, but the main crop is dry or upland rice grown by the slash-and-burn method . Hunting, fishing, and gathering supplement the cultivated vegetable foods in the Khmer Loeu diet. Houses vary from huge multifamily longhouses to small single-family structures. They may be built close to the ground or on stilts. During
801-469: A dialect. Western Khmer , also called Cardamom Khmer or Chanthaburi Khmer, is spoken by a very small, isolated population in the Cardamom mountain range extending from western Cambodia into eastern Central Thailand . Although little studied, this variety is unique in that it maintains a definite system of vocal register that has all but disappeared in other dialects of modern Khmer. Phnom Penh Khmer
890-654: A final consonant. All consonant sounds except /b/, /d/, /r/, /s/ and the aspirates can appear as the coda (although final /r/ is heard in some dialects, most notably in Northern Khmer ). A minor syllable (unstressed syllable preceding the main syllable of a word) has a structure of CV-, CrV-, CVN- or CrVN- (where C is a consonant, V a vowel, and N a nasal consonant). The vowels in such syllables are usually short; in conversation they may be reduced to [ə] , although in careful or formal speech, including on television and radio, they are clearly articulated. An example of such
979-583: A monsoonal climate, with a cool season from November to March, a hot season from March to May, and a rainy season from May to October. Flooding is frequent in Kratié; the Mekong may overflow by as much as 4 m during the rainy season. Kratié is known for its attractive riverside scenery and its green villages and paddies, and the river dolphins. Kratié's fisheries are part of the Upper Mekong River Zone, which
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#17328486784241068-453: A resident government representative disseminated information and encouraged the Khmer Loeu to learn the lowland Khmer way of life. Civil servants sent to work among the Khmer Loeu often viewed the assignment as a kind of punishment. In the late 1960s, an estimated 5,000 Khmer Loeu in eastern Cambodia rose in rebellion against the government and demanded self-determination and independence. The government press reported that local leaders loyal to
1157-423: A teacher's exam that is less rigorous in remote areas. These new teachers rarely stay more than a year or two due to the low pay, leaving local officials having to do without and students often having to continue studies by themselves. There is a substantial Vietnamese minority in Kratié province. Kratié is home to seven indigenous groups: Bunong, Kouy, Mil, Khonh, Kraol, Steang, and Thamoun. Approximately 70% of
1246-405: A traditional bond of common descent in the maternal line and within which they do not marry). Women initiate marriage negotiations and residence is matrilocal. Each village has its own political hierarchy and is governed by an oligarchy of the leading families. In the past, sorcerers known as the "kings of fire and water" exerted political power that extended beyond an individual village. The Rade and
1335-492: A typical Khmer declarative phrase is a steady rise throughout followed by an abrupt drop on the last syllable. Other intonation contours signify a different type of phrase such as the "full doubt" interrogative, similar to yes–no questions in English. Full doubt interrogatives remain fairly even in tone throughout, but rise sharply towards the end. Exclamatory phrases follow the typical steadily rising pattern, but rise sharply on
1424-448: A word is មនុស្ស mɔnuh, mɔnɨh, mĕəʾnuh ('person'), pronounced [mɔˈnuh] , or more casually [məˈnuh] . Stress in Khmer falls on the final syllable of a word. Because of this predictable pattern, stress is non- phonemic in Khmer (it does not distinguish different meanings). Most Khmer words consist of either one or two syllables. In most native disyllabic words, the first syllable is
1513-552: Is a province of Cambodia located in the northeast. It borders Stung Treng to the north, Mondulkiri to the east, Kampong Thom and Kampong Cham to the west, and Tboung Khmum , and the country of Vietnam to the south. The province’s capital is the town of Kratié located within the Kratié Municipality . "Kratié" is the French spelling derived from the Khmer ក្រចេះ Krâchéh ([krɑːceh]). The area now known as Kratié
1602-429: Is a zero copula language, instead preferring predicative adjectives (and even predicative nouns) unless using a copula for emphasis or to avoid ambiguity in more complex sentences. Basic word order is subject–verb–object (SVO), although subjects are often dropped ; prepositions are used rather than postpositions. Topic-Comment constructions are common and the language is generally head-initial (modifiers follow
1691-580: Is a classification scheme showing the development of the modern Khmer dialects. Standard Khmer , or Central Khmer , the language as taught in Cambodian schools and used by the media, is based on the dialect spoken throughout the Central Plain , a region encompassed by the northwest and central provinces. Northern Khmer (called Khmer Surin in Khmer) refers to the dialects spoken by many in several border provinces of present-day northeast Thailand. After
1780-517: Is a member of the Austroasiatic language family, the autochthonous family in an area that stretches from the Malay Peninsula through Southeast Asia to East India. Austroasiatic, which also includes Mon , Vietnamese and Munda , has been studied since 1856 and was first proposed as a language family in 1907. Despite the amount of research, there is still doubt about the internal relationship of
1869-584: Is an Austroasiatic language spoken natively by the Khmer people . This language is an official language and national language of Cambodia . The language is also widely spoken by Khmer people in Eastern Thailand and Isan , Thailand , also in Southeast and Mekong Delta of Vietnam . Khmer has been influenced considerably by Sanskrit and Pali especially in the royal and religious registers , through Hinduism and Buddhism , due to Old Khmer being
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#17328486784241958-416: Is common, and the perceived social relation between participants determines which sets of vocabulary, such as pronouns and honorifics, are proper. Khmer differs from neighboring languages such as Burmese , Thai , Lao , and Vietnamese in that it is not a tonal language . Words are stressed on the final syllable, hence many words conform to the typical Mon–Khmer pattern of a stressed syllable preceded by
2047-423: Is contrastive before a vowel. However, the aspirated sounds in that position may be analyzed as sequences of two phonemes : /ph/, /th/, /ch/, /kh/ . This analysis is supported by the fact that infixes can be inserted between the stop and the aspiration; for example [tʰom] ('big') becomes [tumhum] ('size') with a nominalizing infix. When one of these plosives occurs initially before another consonant, aspiration
2136-422: Is important support for migratory species and subsistence fishing but does not play a major role in commercial fishing. Forests in Kratié tend to be open and less dense than elsewhere in Cambodia; they are generally made up of deciduous trees that lose their leaves during the dry season. Sar Cham Rong is the governor of Kratié province and Hoeu Sidem is the deputy governor. In the 2007 commune council elections,
2225-586: Is no longer contrastive and can be regarded as mere phonetic detail: slight aspiration is expected when the following consonant is not one of /ʔ/, /b/, /d/, /r/, /s/, /h/ (or /ŋ/ if the initial plosive is /k/ ). The voiced plosives are pronounced as implosives [ɓ, ɗ] by most speakers, but this feature is weak in educated speech, where they become [b, d] . In syllable-final position, /h/ and /ʋ/ approach [ç] and [w] respectively. The stops /p/, /t/, /c/, /k/ are unaspirated and have no audible release when occurring as syllable finals. In addition,
2314-460: Is primarily an analytic , isolating language . There are no inflections , conjugations or case endings. Instead, particles and auxiliary words are used to indicate grammatical relationships. General word order is subject–verb–object , and modifiers follow the word they modify. Classifiers appear after numbers when used to count nouns, though not always so consistently as in languages like Chinese . In spoken Khmer, topic-comment structure
2403-566: Is spoken in the Se San , Srepok and Sekong river valleys of Sesan and Siem Pang districts in Stung Treng Province . Following the decline of Angkor, the Khmer abandoned their northern territories, which the Lao then settled. In the 17th century, Chey Chetha XI led a Khmer force into Stung Treng to retake the area. The Khmer Khe living in this area of Stung Treng in modern times are presumed to be
2492-421: Is spoken in the capital and surrounding areas. This dialect is characterized by merging or complete elision of syllables, which speakers from other regions consider a "relaxed" pronunciation. For instance, "Phnom Penh" is sometimes shortened to "m'Penh". Another characteristic of Phnom Penh speech is observed in words with an "r" either as an initial consonant or as the second member of a consonant cluster (as in
2581-537: The Khmer Empire . The Northern Khmer dialect is spoken by over a million Khmers in the southern regions of Northeast Thailand and is treated by some linguists as a separate language. Khmer Krom, or Southern Khmer, is the first language of the Khmer of Vietnam , while the Khmer living in the remote Cardamom Mountains speak a very conservative dialect that still displays features of the Middle Khmer language. Khmer
2670-503: The Kuy , Pnong , Stieng , Brao , Tampuan , Pear , Jarai , and Rade . All but the last two speak Mon–Khmer languages . In the late 1980s, about 160,000 Kuy lived in the northern Cambodian provinces of Kampong Thom , Preah Vihear , and Stung Treng as well as in adjacent Thailand. (Approximately 70,000 Kuy had been reported in Cambodia itself in 1978.) Most of the Kuy have been assimilated into
2759-813: The Pearic group. The main members are the Pear in Battambang , Pursat , and Kampong Thom provinces; the Chong in Thailand and Battambang Province; the Saoch in Kampot Province ; the Samre in what was formerly Siem Reap Province ; and the Suoi in Kampong Chhnang Province . Some believe that this group constitutes the remnant of the pre-Khmer population of Cambodia. Many members of
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2848-470: The [r] is dropped and the vowel begins by dipping much lower in tone than standard speech and then rises, effectively doubling its length. Another example is the word រៀន [riən] ('study'), which is pronounced [ʀiən] , with the uvular "r" and the same intonation described above. Khmer Krom or Southern Khmer is spoken by the indigenous Khmer population of the Mekong Delta , formerly controlled by
2937-421: The elision of /r/ . Intonation often conveys semantic context in Khmer, as in distinguishing declarative statements , questions and exclamations. The available grammatical means of making such distinctions are not always used, or may be ambiguous; for example, the final interrogative particle ទេ /teː/ can also serve as an emphasizing (or in some cases negating) particle. The intonation pattern of
3026-409: The 1969-1970 United States bombing campaign targeting Vietnamese supply routes and bases in Cambodia and Laos, resulted in heavy bombardment of Kratié. Recovering unexploded ordnance and de-mining has been a major initiative since at least the mid-2000s. On December 30, 1978, Vietnamese forces captured Kratié to fight against Khmer Rouge. The Mekong River flows from the north to the south of
3115-612: The 8th century such as Khvas Pi, Pram, and Koh Kring that has perfect deities, ancient halls, Khmer ancient houses, and French-style buildings. The area near Kratié along the Mekong River was one of the most densely populated regions of the pre-Angkorian era of Cambodia. Lon Nol was the province's governor in 1945. During the Vietnam and Cambodian Civil Wars and the subsequent Vietnamese presence against Khmer Rouge in Cambodia , intense fighting took place in Kratié. Operation Menu ,
3204-451: The 9th century until the 13th century. The following centuries saw changes in morphology , phonology and lexicon . The language of this transition period, from about the 14th to 18th centuries, is referred to as Middle Khmer and saw borrowings from Thai in the literary register. Modern Khmer is dated from the 19th century to today. The following table shows the conventionally accepted historical stages of Khmer. Just as modern Khmer
3293-517: The Brao population in Laos was estimated at about 9,000. In 1984 it was reported that the total Brao population was between 10,000 and 15,000. About 3,000 Brao reportedly moved into Cambodia from Laos in the 1920s. The Brao live in large villages centered on a communal house. They cultivate dry-rice and produce some pottery. They appear to have a bilateral kinship system. The Tampuan number about 25,000, according to
3382-507: The Bunong subgroups have matrilineal descent. Monogamy is the predominant form of marriage, and residence is usually matrilocal. Wealth distinctions are measured by the number of buffalo that a notable person sacrifices on a funereal or ceremonial occasion as a mark of status and as a means of eliciting social approval. Slavery is known to have existed in the past, but the system allowed a slave to gain freedom. The Stieng are closely related to
3471-669: The Bunong. Both groups straddle the Cambodian-Vietnamese border, and their languages belong to the same subfamily of Mon–Khmer. In 1978 the Cambodian Stieng numbered about 20,000 in all. The Stieng cultivate dry-field rice. Their society is apparently patriarchal, and residence after marriage is patrilocal if a bride-price was paid. The groups have a very loose political organization; each village has its own leaders and tribunals. Several small groups, perhaps totalling no more than 10,000 people in Cambodia and eastern Thailand, make up
3560-479: The E De number about 120,000. According to 1978 population figures, there were 10,000 Jarai and 15,000 E De in Cambodia in the late 1970s. They live in longhouses containing several compartments occupied by matrilineally linked nuclear families. There may be twenty to sixty longhouses in one village. The Rade and Jarai cultivate dry-field rice and secondary crops such as maize. Both groups have exogamous matrilineal descent groups (consanguineous kin groups that acknowledge
3649-507: The English word "bread"). The "r", trilled or flapped in other dialects, is either pronounced as a uvular trill or not pronounced at all. This alters the quality of any preceding consonant, causing a harder, more emphasized pronunciation. Another unique result is that the syllable is spoken with a low-rising or "dipping" tone much like the "hỏi" tone in Vietnamese . For example, some people pronounce ត្រី [trəj] ('fish') as [tʰəj] :
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3738-522: The Jarai have been involved intimately in the FULRO movement, and many of the leaders in the movement are from these two groups. [REDACTED] This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain . Country Studies . Federal Research Division . Khmer language Khmer ( / k ə ˈ m ɛər / kə- MAIR ; ខ្មែរ , UNGEGN : Khmêr [kʰmae] )
3827-591: The Khmer Empire but part of Vietnam since 1698. Khmers are persecuted by the Vietnamese government for using their native language and, since the 1950s, have been forced to take Vietnamese names. Consequently, very little research has been published regarding this dialect. It has been generally influenced by Vietnamese for three centuries and accordingly displays a pronounced accent, tendency toward monosyllabic words and lexical differences from Standard Khmer. Khmer Khe
3916-481: The Khmer. Two of the Khmer Loeu groups are Chamic peoples , a branch of the Austronesian peoples , and have a very different linguistic and cultural background. The Mon–Khmer-speaking tribes are the aboriginal inhabitants of mainland Southeast Asia, their ancestors having trickled into the area from the northwest during the prehistoric metal ages. The Austronesian -speaking groups, Rade and Jarai , are descendants of
4005-684: The Malayo-Polynesian peoples who came to what is now coastal Vietnam ; they established the Champa kingdoms, and after their decline migrated west over the Annamite Range , dispersing between the Mon–Khmer groups. The disparate groups that make up the Khmer Loeu are estimated to comprise 17-21 different ethnic groups speaking at least 17 different languages. Unlike the Cham, Vietnamese and Chinese minorities of
4094-474: The Pearic group grow dry-field rice, which they supplement by hunting and by gathering. They have totemic clans, each headed by a chief who inherited his office patrilineally. Marriage occurs at an early age; there is a small bride-price. Residence may be matrilocal until the birth of the first child, or it may be patrilocal as it is among the Saoch . The village headman is the highest political leader. The Saoch have
4183-540: The Phnom Pram Poan mountain range, Phnom Prech, and rubber plantations. Eastern Kratié is an important bird area. The province is mostly covered in dense forest. Craters from Operation Menu bombings during the Vietnam War , some of which are filled with water, are still visible in the countryside. Some land in Kratié is used for agriculture, though a smaller percentage than elsewhere in Cambodia. The province has
4272-614: The Standard Khmer system and that of the Battambang dialect on which the standard is based. In addition, some diphthongs and triphthongs are analyzed as a vowel nucleus plus a semivowel ( /j/ or /w/ ) coda because they cannot be followed by a final consonant. These include: (with short monophthongs) /ɨw/ , /əw/ , /aj/ , /aw/ , /uj/ ; (with long monophthongs) /əːj/ , /aːj/ ; (with long diphthongs) /iəj/ , /iəw/ , /ɨəj/ , /aoj/ , /aəj/ and /uəj/ . The independent vowels are
4361-414: The clusters consisting of a plosive followed by /ʔ/, /b/, /d/ , in those beginning /ʔ/, /m/, /l/ , and in the cluster /kŋ-/ . After the initial consonant or consonant cluster comes the syllabic nucleus , which is one of the vowels listed above. This vowel may end the syllable or may be followed by a coda , which is a single consonant. If the syllable is stressed and the vowel is short, there must be
4450-411: The colloquial and most common designation for these groups. In the Khmer language , an alternative, though unrelated, use of the term "Khmer Loeu" is in reference to the Northern Khmer people . Ethnic Khmers sometimes use a tripartite division to differentiate Khmers native to Thailand , Cambodia or Vietnam . Those native to Thailand are sometimes referred to as "Khmer Loeu" due to their location on
4539-527: The consonants /ɡ/ , /f/ , /ʃ/ and /z/ occur occasionally in recent loan words in the speech of Cambodians familiar with French and other languages. Various authors have proposed slightly different analyses of the Khmer vowel system. This may be in part because of the wide degree of variation in pronunciation between individual speakers, even within a dialectal region. The description below follows Huffman (1970). The number of vowel nuclei and their values vary between dialects; differences exist even between
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#17328486784244628-463: The descendants of this group. Their dialect is thought to resemble that of pre-modern Siem Reap. Linguistic study of the Khmer language divides its history into four periods one of which, the Old Khmer period, is subdivided into pre-Angkorian and Angkorian. Pre-Angkorian Khmer is the Old Khmer language from 600 CE through 800. Angkorian Khmer is the language as it was spoken in the Khmer Empire from
4717-414: The early 1980s. In Cambodia the Bunong are found in Mondulkiri , Kratié , and Kampong Cham provinces in villages consisting of several longhouses each of which is divided into compartments that can house nuclear families. The Bunong practice dry-rice farming, and some also cultivate a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, and other useful plants as secondary crops. Some subgroups weave cloth. At least two of
4806-591: The ethnic Khmer majority. Khmer Islam was the name given to the ethnic Cham inhabiting the central plains of Cambodia. Khmer Loeu was coined as a catch-all term to include all of the indigenous minority ethnic groups, most of which reside in the remote highlands of northeast Cambodia. The current government has used the term Choncheate Daeum Pheak Tech ( ជនជាតិដើមភាគតិច ; "Original Ethnic Minority") in official documents while referring to ethnic Khmer as Choncheate Daeum Pheak Chraeun ( ជនជាតិដើមភាគច្រើន ; "Original Ethnic Majority"). However "Khmer Loeu" still remains
4895-566: The fall of the Khmer Empire in the early 15th century, the Dongrek Mountains served as a natural border leaving the Khmer north of the mountains under the sphere of influence of the Kingdom of Lan Xang . The conquests of Cambodia by Naresuan the Great for Ayutthaya furthered their political and economic isolation from Cambodia proper, leading to a dialect that developed relatively independently from
4984-561: The family. Khmer is spoken by some 13 million people in Cambodia , where it is the official language. It is also a second language for most of the minority groups and indigenous hill tribes there. Additionally there are a million speakers of Khmer native to southern Vietnam (1999 census) and 1.4 million in northeast Thailand (2006). Khmer dialects , although mutually intelligible, are sometimes quite marked. Notable variations are found in speakers from Phnom Penh (Cambodia's capital city),
5073-400: The final syllable, with secondary stress on every second syllable from the end. Thus in a three-syllable word, the first syllable has secondary stress; in a four-syllable word, the second syllable has secondary stress; in a five-syllable word, the first and third syllables have secondary stress, and so on. Long polysyllables are not often used in conversation. Compounds, however, preserve
5162-535: The government had been assassinated. Following the rebellion, the hill people's widespread resentment of ethnic Khmer settlers caused them to refuse to cooperate with the Cambodian army in its suppression of rural unrest. Both the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese communists took advantage of this disaffection, and they actively recruited Khmer Loeu into their ranks. In 1968, Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge fled to Khmer Loeu lands, who were seen as hostile to lowland Khmer and to
5251-507: The government is accused of routinely violating those provisions, confiscating land for purposes ranging from commercial logging to foreign development. Traditionally, the ruling Khmer majority has referred to all the highland groups as phnong , a name of one of the groups that has come to mean "savage" in Khmer, or samre , the name of another group that has developed the meaning "bumpkin" or "hick". Both of these words are now considered pejorative. The colonial French administration designated
5340-404: The government sponsored Cultural Committee to define and standardize the modern language, they championed Khmerization, purging of foreign elements, reviving affixation, and the use of Old Khmer roots and historical Pali and Sanskrit to coin new words for modern ideas. Opponents, led by Keng Vannsak , who embraced "total Khmerization" by denouncing the reversion to classical languages and favoring
5429-609: The government. In late 1970, the government forces withdrew from Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri provinces and abandoned the area to the rapidly growing Khmer Rouge communist insurgent force, the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea , and to its Vietnamese mentors. There is some evidence that in the 1960s and in the 1970s the Front Uni pour la Libération des Races Opprimés (FULRO—United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races) united tribes in
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#17328486784245518-550: The highland ethnicities of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam "Montagnards". The term "Khmer Loeu" was crafted by the Sangkum Reastr Niyum government of Sihanouk 's Cambodia in the 1950s. To stress the unity, or "Cambodian-ness", of the various ethnic groups that inhabited its borders and promote a nationalist cohesiveness, the government classified citizens as one of three groups of "Khmer", Khmer Kandal , Khmer Islam and Khmer Loeu . Khmer Kandal ("Central Khmer") referred to
5607-416: The language of higher education and the intellectual class. By 1907, the French had wrested over half of modern-day Cambodia, including the north and northwest where Thai had been the prestige language, back from Thai control and reintegrated it into the country. Many native scholars in the early 20th century, led by a monk named Chuon Nath , resisted the French and Thai influences on their language. Forming
5696-762: The language of the historical empires of Chenla and Angkor . The vast majority of Khmer speakers speak Central Khmer , the dialect of the central plain where the Khmer are most heavily concentrated. Within Cambodia, regional accents exist in remote areas but these are regarded as varieties of Central Khmer. Two exceptions are the speech of the capital, Phnom Penh , and that of the Khmer Khe in Stung Treng province , both of which differ sufficiently enough from Central Khmer to be considered separate dialects of Khmer. Outside of Cambodia, three distinct dialects are spoken by ethnic Khmers native to areas that were historically part of
5785-554: The languages of Austroasiatic. Diffloth places Khmer in an eastern branch of the Mon-Khmer languages . In these classification schemes Khmer's closest genetic relatives are the Bahnaric and Pearic languages . More recent classifications doubt the validity of the Mon-Khmer sub-grouping and place the Khmer language as its own branch of Austroasiatic equidistant from the other 12 branches of
5874-511: The last syllable instead of falling. Khmer is primarily an analytic language with no inflection . Syntactic relations are mainly determined by word order. Old and Middle Khmer used particles to mark grammatical categories and many of these have survived in Modern Khmer but are used sparingly, mostly in literary or formal language. Khmer makes extensive use of auxiliary verbs , "directionals" and serial verb construction . Colloquial Khmer
5963-493: The lowlands, the Khmer Loeu groups haven't integrated into Khmer society or culture and remain politically unorganized and underrepresented in the Cambodian government. There have never been any treaties between a Khmer Loeu group and the government nor is Cambodia a signatory to the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention . Cambodia's landmark 2001 land law guarantees indigenous peoples communal rights to their traditional lands, but
6052-558: The midpoint of the Middle Khmer period. This has resulted in a distinct accent influenced by the surrounding tonal languages Lao and Thai , lexical differences, and phonemic differences in both vowels and distribution of consonants. Syllable-final /r/ , which has become silent in other dialects of Khmer, is still pronounced in Northern Khmer. Some linguists classify Northern Khmer as a separate but closely related language rather than
6141-492: The military after they confiscated chainsaws used for illegal logging . An indigenous people's organization is active in Kratié province. Schistosomiasis is a problem in Kratié province. The incidence of malaria and dengue fever rose sharply in the mid-2000s; this increase has been attributed to changes in climate. Malaria is hyperendemic in Kratié's forests. The provincial infant mortality rate of 97/1,000 and child mortality rate of 80/1,000 are significantly higher than
6230-491: The modern Khmer language dictionary that is still in use today, helping preserve Khmer during the French colonial period. The phonological system described here is the inventory of sounds of the standard spoken language, represented using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The voiceless plosives /p/, /t/, /c/, /k/ may occur with or without aspiration (as [p] vs. [pʰ] , etc.); this difference
6319-583: The mountainous areas of southern Vietnam and had members from Khmer Loeu groups as well as from the Cham in Cambodia. In the early 1980s, Khmer Rouge propaganda teams infiltrated the northeastern provinces and encouraged rebellion against the central government. In 1981 the government structure included four Khmer Loeu province chiefs, all reportedly from the Brao group, in the northeastern provinces of Mondulkiri , Ratanakiri , Stung Treng , and Preah Vihear . According to
6408-411: The national average (68/1,000 and 53/1,000, respectively). Kratié is one of the poorest provinces in Cambodia but, in 2015, was ranked fifth in the nation for the high-school exam pass rate. Schools struggle to attract teachers to the poor and overwhelmingly rural province. Teachers are sent to the province from Phnom Penh , the nation's capital, but they are new teachers who see an opportunity to pass
6497-529: The period of the French Protectorate , the French did not interfere in the affairs of the Khmer Loeu. Reportedly, French army commanders considered the Khmer Loeu as an excellent source of personnel for army outposts, and they recruited large numbers to serve with the French forces. Many Khmer Loeu continued this tradition by enlisting in the Cambodian army . In the 1960s, the Cambodian government carried out
6586-455: The predominant culture of the country in which they live. Many are Buddhists, and the majority practice wet-rice cultivation. They have the reputation of being skilled blacksmiths. The Brao , Kreung , and Kavet inhabit the northeastern Cambodian province of Ratanakiri and adjacent Laos . All three speak different, though mutually intelligible, dialects of the same language. They share a very similar culture, with matrilineal descent. In 1962
6675-580: The province's poverty rate of 32% is somewhat lower than the national average of 39%. Some gold mining occurs in Kratié. Most soil in Kratié is poor; the province primarily grows perennial industrial crops like rubber. Kratié has the potential to be an ecotourism destination. Kratié's road system is poorly developed. As of 1998, the average household possessed 0.48 hectares of agricultural land, and 37% were landless. Land concessions often cover land customarily owned or used by people in Kratié province. In 2004, community land organizers were threatened by
6764-563: The province's residents live along the Mekong River; the area beyond the river is sparsely populated. Approximately 8% of Kratié's population is indigenous; it is one of four provinces with a substantial indigenous population. 70% of the population is rural. Religion in Kratié province (2019 census) The state religion is Theravada Buddhism . More than 93.1% of the people in Kratié province are Buddhists. About 6.6% population of Kratié province follow Islam followed by Chams . Christianity
6853-404: The province; approximately 140 km of the river is located in Kratié. The river is home to Irrawaddy dolphins , fish, and birds. The flow of the Mekong River at Kratié town varies greatly. There are hundreds of seasonally flooded islands in the river. As of 2007, the Cambodian government planned to build a dam on the Mekong River near Kratié town. The province also contains many forests,
6942-514: The rural Battambang area, the areas of Northeast Thailand adjacent to Cambodia such as Surin province , the Cardamom Mountains , and southern Vietnam. The dialects form a continuum running roughly north to south. Standard Cambodian Khmer is mutually intelligible with the others but a Khmer Krom speaker from Vietnam, for instance, may have great difficulty communicating with a Khmer native of Sisaket Province in Thailand. The following
7031-528: The southern Khorat plateau relative to those native to Cambodia, "Khmer Kandal", while Khmer native to the lower Mekong Delta region of Vietnam are called " Khmer Krom " ("lower Khmer" or "southern Khmer"). Khmer Loeu form the majority population in Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri provinces, and they also are present in substantial numbers in Kratié Province and Stung Treng Province. Their total population in 1969
7120-417: The start of a syllable are /str/, /skr/ , and (with aspirated consonants analyzed as two-consonant sequences) /sth/, /lkh/ . There are 85 possible two-consonant clusters (including [pʰ] etc. analyzed as /ph/ etc.). All the clusters are shown in the following table, phonetically, i.e. superscript ʰ can mark either contrastive or non-contrastive aspiration (see above ). Slight vowel epenthesis occurs in
7209-628: The stress patterns of the constituent words. Thus សំបុកចាប , the name of a kind of cookie (literally 'bird's nest'), is pronounced [sɑmˌbok ˈcaːp] , with secondary stress on the second rather than the first syllable, because it is composed of the words [sɑmˈbok] ('nest') and [caːp] ('bird'). Khmer once had a phonation distinction in its vowels, but this now survives only in the most archaic dialect ( Western Khmer ). The distinction arose historically when vowels after Old Khmer voiced consonants became breathy voiced and diphthongized; for example *kaa, *ɡaa became *kaa, *ɡe̤a . When consonant voicing
7298-463: The use of contemporary colloquial Khmer for neologisms, and Ieu Koeus , who favored borrowing from Thai, were also influential. Koeus later joined the Cultural Committee and supported Nath. Nath's views and prolific work won out and he is credited with cultivating modern Khmer-language identity and culture, overseeing the translation of the entire Pali Buddhist canon into Khmer. He also created
7387-605: The vast majority of seats went to members of the Cambodian People's Party . Women make up 17.4% of commune council members. In 2005, Kratié received 1.69 billion riel from the commune/sangkat fund, of which development funds were 1.20 billion riel and funds for administration were 0.49 billion riel. Rice cropping plays an important role in the provincial economy Most Kratié residents are subsistence farmers or fishers. 78% of residents are employed in agriculture. Thirty percent of Kratié households live on less than US$ 1 per day;
7476-470: The vowels that can exist without a preceding or trailing consonant. The independent vowels may be used as monosyllabic words, or as the initial syllables in longer words. Khmer words never begin with regular vowels; they can, however, begin with independent vowels. Example: ឰដ៏, ឧទាហរណ៍, ឧត្តម, ឱកាស...។ A Khmer syllable begins with a single consonant, or else with a cluster of two, or rarely three, consonants. The only possible clusters of three consonants at
7565-508: The words they modify). Some grammatical processes are still not fully understood by western scholars. For example, it is not clear if certain features of Khmer grammar, such as actor nominalization , should be treated as a morphological process or a purely syntactic device, and some derivational morphology seems "purely decorative" and performs no known syntactic work. Krati%C3%A9 Province Kratié ( Khmer : ក្រចេះ , Krâchéh [krɑˈceh] ), alternatively spelled Kracheh ,
7654-438: Was emerging from the transitional period represented by Middle Khmer, Cambodia fell under the influence of French colonialism . Thailand, which had for centuries claimed suzerainty over Cambodia and controlled succession to the Cambodian throne, began losing its influence on the language. In 1887 Cambodia was fully integrated into French Indochina , which brought in a French -speaking aristocracy. This led to French becoming
7743-520: Was estimated at 90,000 people. In 1971 the number of Khmer Loeu was estimated variously between 40,000 and 100,000 people. Population figures were unavailable in 1987, but the total probably was nearly 100,000 people. According to the General Population Census conducted in 2008, their total population was 179,193. Most Khmer Loeu live in scattered temporary villages that have only a few hundred inhabitants. These villages usually are governed by
7832-407: Was lost, the distinction was maintained by the vowel ( *kaa, *ke̤a ); later the phonation disappeared as well ( [kaː], [kiə] ). These processes explain the origin of what are now called a-series and o-series consonants in the Khmer script . Although most Cambodian dialects are not tonal , the colloquial Phnom Penh dialect has developed a tonal contrast (level versus peaking tone) as a by-product of
7921-606: Was part of the early first millennium Kingdom of Funan until Funan itself was superseded and absorbed in the 6th century by Chenla . Sampheak Borak, the former Royal Capital during the Chenla Era, is located in Sambo District . In addition, Kratié has Vihear Sasar Muayroy Pagoda built in the 16th century. This pagoda is related to a Khmer legend Krapeur Nen Thun (Venerable Monk Thun, the Crocodile). Kratié has several temples built in
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