Journal of Southeast Asian Language Teaching
Volume 12, No. 1, Spring 2006

Multimedia Reviews

Review of Cambodian for Beginners, by Richard K. Gilbert and Sovandy Hang. Bangkok: Paiboon Publishing, 2004. 300 pp. paperback packaged with three Audio CDs. $12.95.

Cambodian for Beginners is the first foray into Khmer language instructional materials for Benjawan Poomsan Becker’s Paiboon Publishing, which has previously published Thai language learning materials for a number of  levels and a beginning Lao book, as well as Thai-English-Thai and Lao-English-Lao pocket dictionaries.  This book follows the template established by Paiboon’s other books, but uses a different transcription system, no doubt due to the considerable phonological complexity of Khmer.  The book was written by a former Mormon missionary to Cambodia who now does Khmer interpreting work in California (his bio describes him as a linguist, but lists no degree in linguistics) and a Cambodian refugee living in America who has a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and works in social services.  Neither appears to have any Khmer teaching experience.

The chapters are organized into a seemingly random mix of grammatical categories, writing system elements, and topics such as “telephone conversations” and “body parts.”  Each chapter is then broken down into four categories: “vocabulary,” “grammar,”  “conversation” and “sentences.”   Each chapter also contains exercises such as drills and cloze exercises, as well as suggestions for written practice.  Three of the four recurring chapter sections correspond to tracks on one of the audio CDs.  For example, on successive tracks you’ll hear first the “vocabulary” section for that chapter pronounced in both English and Khmer, then two dialogs on the next track, then a series of sentences on the next track.  The audio for the dialogs and sentences is only spoken in Khmer.  On the third of the three CD-ROMs, you’ll also find the audio companion to the book’s various appendices, which include “useful phrases” and additional vocabulary.

The two Khmer native speakers’ voices—one male and one female—are fairly clear and, despite a few traces of nonstandard (dialect) pronunciation on the part of the female speaker, stay pretty true to standard Khmer, using a pronunciation which conforms closely to a “correct” pronunciation of the writing system.  The dialogs are spoken at normal speed, which they should be.

In fact, I think that the dialog sections—“conversations” in the book’s terminology—are the most useful part of these Khmer learning materials.  Much of learning a language at a beginning level, I believe, involves memorizing standard spoken phrases dealing with everyday “survival” needs and basic social interaction, and this book, combined with the audio CDs, provides the tools for learners to do just that.  The writers of the book are also to be commended for presenting the Khmer writing system throughout the book, including focusing on the basic elements of both the consonants and vowels, and for the way they combine these elements to represent syllables.  The two main weaknesses of the book, however, are to be found in its grammar section and in its transcription and explanation of the finer points of Khmer, such as the vowel sounds.

The grammar sections in each chapter suffer from what I call the “overzealous museum guide” syndrome.  Picture the language learner as the visitor to a museum, and the instructor—or in this case the book’s author—as the guide.  Just because one work of art that you come to early in your tour has similarities and connections with five or six others scattered throughout the museum doesn’t mean that you as a guide should then run your guests all over the museum to each location that has a related painting.  The visitors are likely to retain little information about the painting you were trying to describe in the first place!  Just because things —be they grammatical structures, auxiliary verbs, or works of art—are related in some way doesn’t mean you have to flood your audience with all that information at once.  In the grammar sections of this book, however, when a particle that has multiple functions is introduced, the author very briefly explains every one—or at least several—of those functions; in the complex world of Khmer grammar, this is likely to confuse and frustrate learners.  In fact, the author begins the first grammar section in Chapter One by making a statement I always dislike hearing: “You will be happy to know that Cambodian grammar is very simple (p.19).” Nothing could be further from the truth.  I think that in order to ensure that learners process the complexities of things such as the function of particles and word placement in Khmer grammar, new items need to be introduced in some sort of context. For example, the new items could be placed in topical sentences or dialogs rather than being presented in a “catalog” fashion.  [I don’t recommend developing chapters based upon grammatical elements of the language.]

My other major problem with this book is its transcription system.  Rather than using an established system such as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) or that of Franklin Huffman (a modified version of the IPA), the author attempts to use  English vowel symbols (in what I find to be a highly questionable manner) combined with a smattering of IPA symbols to try to describe the highly complex Khmer vowel system (p. 10).  In many cases, the sounds he describes for vowels (by reference to vowel sounds in certain English words) are simply wrong .  Luckily, users of the book have the audio CDs to listen to so they can hear exactly what the Khmer vowels really sound like.  But the use of a faulty transcription system in the text is only bound to confuse learners.  In some cases, the author’s choice of which English consonant to use to represent a particular Khmer final consonant is similarly wrong and misleading, and will doubtless lead to encouraging typical errors that English speakers make when learning Khmer, such as producing the unreleased final palatal stop (final /ch/) as /k/ .

One final point: I think the book could have been better organized in a number of ways.  Chapters could have been determined by communicative topics, and it could be more clearly indicated in the book which section corresponds to precisely which audio CD track.  As it is, the learner is left to figure out, by listening to the CD, where she should be following along in the book.  A truly well-put-together multimedia learning resource, in my opinion, should feature a holistic or organic connection between the audio (or video) component and the text component; the two should be closely linked and complement each other.  At the very least, the multimedia elements should be well cross-referenced and indexed to help ground the often confused and easily frustrated beginning level learner.

To sum up, I think that this book and audio CD set definitely has an audience in those who wish to pick up a bit of conversational Khmer and build their vocabulary.  It could also be useful for gaining a very basic familiarity with the elements of the Khmer alphabet.  And the price is certainly right.  As a sophisticated learning tool for serious learners seeking university-level language study,  however, these materials fall short of acceptable, and could actually contribute to the spread of incorrect information about the language and could encourage some of the typical errors of non-native speakers studying Khmer.

Editor’s note:  Frank Smith is the editor of this section.  If you would like to consider reviewing a book for the Multimedia section of JSEALT, please contact him via email at fjsmith@wisc.edu    To view the Guidelines for Multimedia Reviews, click on the submissions button of this journal.

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