We stopped for some snacks near Neak Loeung on our way to the countryside earlier this week and Doungchann, our Administrative Assistant, introduced Charlotte to some of her favorites. Charlotte enjoyed the hard boiled quail eggs. There were quite delicious and the yolk had a nice rich flavor. They also came with a tasty tipping…
Category: Daily life in Cambodia
5 Khmer Words that get a bit lost in translation
As auto-translation and speech recognition technology advances rapidly, one might start to wonder if there’s any reason to learn another language any more? Why not just pull out our smartphone, speak into it, and then tap ‘play’ on the translated text? There’s some risk of mistranslation but we read that that auto-translation has incorporated machine…
First Name, Last Name?
The proper order of names in Cambodia is [surname] [given name]. I would be Conklin Charles, not Charles Conklin. This follows general Khmer grammatic practices of categorizing from broad to specific; for instance, lime juice in Khmer is ទឹក [water] ក្រូច [citrus] ឆ្មា [lime]*. Smoked pork in Khmer is សាច់ [meat] ជ្រូក [pig] ជក់បារី [smoked]….
Frangipani
Adrienne, from Plains Mennonite Church, and her husband Adam recently started a MCC term of service in Burundi. I’ve been enjoying following her blog and I was inspired by her recent post on botanicals in which she shared her appreciation for the Plumeria. In Southeast Asia, Plumeria are commonly referred to as Frangipani in English….
Being a cross-cultural Mom
Being a cross-cultural mom here in Cambodia has been a learning experience. Things that had priority for parenting in the US have shifted and changed, influenced both by the expat community and the Cambodian culture. The most challenging part of parenting in the US was trying to figure out how to do it right. I…
Noisy Neighbors
Last month some noisy neighbors moved next door. They are cats and kittens!!!!! They live on the roof. They drive our dog crazy!! The mom cat teases our dog! Our dog whines and barks at night. So loud!! When my Dad checks the momma cat is sitting on the wall looking down at our dog!…
Catherine in Study Group
Catherine has been attending school online for most of this year but today she was able to meet with her class in a study group at another student’s house. You might remember that study groups were phase 2 of the Ministry of Education’s plan to reopen schools last August. It’s taken seven months to get…
A Simian Visitor
One morning this week Charlotte and Catherine were downstairs on the second floor playing when an unexpected visitor appeared on our balcony. It was a rather large monkey which knocked over our mango picker and then fled the scene of the crime. While monkeys are certainly common in Cambodia it’s rare to see them wandering…
Cellar Door and Morality
During a 1955 lecture noted linguist J. R. R. Tolkien, better known today as the author of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, claimed that ‘cellar door’ was more beautiful sounding than ‘sky’ or ‘beautiful’. In this he joined a long tradition of colleagues who held that ‘cellar door’ is among the most beautiful…
មៀន | Longan
មាន is the Khmer word for ‘have’. The Khmer phrase for rich person is អ្នកមាន, literally អ្នក ‘person’ មាន ‘have’. This is along the lines of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in English. Longan fruit is មៀន, literally ‘fruit have’. This is the source of endless wordplay in Khmer. For instance តើអ្នកមានមានមៀនទេ, which is something like…