Introduction
Seven million people speak Khmer (also known as Cambodian),
the official language of the Kingdom of Cambodia. Ninety
percent of Cambodians speak it with very little variation
in regional dialects. In addition to the Cambodian communities
in the United States, Khmer is also spoken in those countries
where fairly sizeable numbers of Cambodians can be found,
namely, in Vietnam, Thailand and China. In terms of rankings,
Khmer is the 102nd most widely spoken language in the world.
(UCLA Language
Materials Project, 2004; Khmer
Language, 2004).
Khmer-Speakers in the
U.S.
According to the U.S. Census of 2000, there are 171,937
Cambodians in the United States (Hmong Studies
Internet Resource Center, n.d.). Of this total, 69% of
Cambodian Americans reside in:
- California (70,232),
- Massachusetts (19,696),
- Washington (13,899),
- Pennsylvania (8531)
- Texas (6852).
The
2000 U .S. Census results show that, of the total school
population, 5 years and over, (262,375,152), 181,889
speak Khmer at home (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004). The National
Clearing House of English Language Acquisition (NECLA)
places Khmer as the eleventh
most widely spoken language in the United States among Limited
English Proficiency (LEP) students, and the fourth
in Massachusetts, after English, Spanish and Portuguese (NECLA,
2004).
Historical Overview
of the Khmer Language
Khmer is an Austroasiatic
language of the Mon-Khmer family that has over 100 members
and is spoken throughout much of Southeast Asia (Infoplease,
2005). The most closely language to Khmer is Vietnamese (Yourdictionary.com,
2004). Historically, the language has gone through various
phases, and modern Khmer traces its roots back to the 19th
Century. Khmer vocabulary has been borrowed in earlier times
from Sanskrit (for
administrative, literary and military purposes) (Sanskrit,
2005). The influence of Buddhism introduced Pali vocabulary into
Khmer, and the period of French colonialism also resulted
in linguistic “growth” (Pali, 2005). However, during the
period of Khmer nationalism in the 1960s, the authorities
attempted to ‘purify’ the language to make it more ethnic.
The communist government of the Khmer Rouge during the 1970s
attempted to expunge the language of words that reflected
social rank (Yourdictionary.com, 2004).
As of 2003, the estimated population of Cambodia was 13,124,764
(Royal
Government of Cambodia, 2004). Approximately 95% of Cambodians
speak Khmer. Older Cambodians speak French, a legacy of the
French colonial era. Younger Cambodians are likely to speak
English as a second language (Demographics
of Cambodia, 2003).
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