Why is my native language so complicated?

As native English speakers, we generally don’t take the time to think about the way our language is put together. Even when I taught ESL in college, I mainly taught to native Spanish speakers, whose language is nearly as complex as ours. But now I teach English to people whose native language has NONE of the following: Verb tenses, verb conjugation, plurals. It also has few words. There are maybe 50,000 words in Khmer. There are over 200,000 in English. ‘More’and ‘Again’ are the same word in Khmer. As are maybe, possibly, approximately, around, about, roughly, and perhaps. Also questions are very difficult for them. In their language, they just add the word no to the end of a sentence. Thus, when I try to explain why an action that began in the past and is already completed takes a different tense that one began in the past but is still happening, I often rue the excessive complexities of English. While I appreciate the subtle differences that these can make in literature, they tend to make my everyday life just a little bit more difficult. You can't just translate a lot of English concepts simply because the concepts are entirely new to the students in any context. The usage of Khmer differs from English so much that often the students think I don't understand their questions or that I don't know my own language. For example, a girl asked about what a market vendor might say when he or she hadn't sold much. I told her that we would probably say that business has been slow or we hadn't done much business. She argued with me for nearly ten minutes because I hadn't translated it word for word into Khmer. I told her that we wouldn't say "me offer not sell" (the literal translation from khmer) Yes, the local language is a whole other animal. Here are some literal traslations of everyday conversations one may have in Khmer.

Host Grandma: Go market no? (Are you going to the market?)
Me: Go. (Yes, *responding with a verb is more common than saying the word yes)
HG: Take basket come (Bring the basket with you * the market basket serves the purpose of a shopping cart)

At the market:
Random person: Come from where? (Where are you coming from?)
Me: House.
RP: know wear sarong too. (You can wear a sarong! That’s fantastic!)

At the breakfast stall:
Breakfast lady: Niece eat what?
Me: Niece eat rice (people almost always refer to themselves and others in the third person, usually by some sort of kinship term.)
Random Person: White person know eat rice! (The foreigner is capable of consuming rice. Excellent)
RP: have age how many already? (How old are you?)
Me: I have age 23 already
RP: Take husband yet?
Me: not yet
RP: Want you take husband when? Want take husband cambodia?
Me: No want husband. Want work want study more.
RP: Have older younger how many person? (how many children do your parents have?)
Me: 2

At school:
Student: In Cambodia how teacher feel? (Do you like it here?)
Me: Teacher feel happy.
Student: sorry late last morning feed cow feed chicken. (I’m sorry I’m late, I had to feed the cows and chickens this morning)
Me No anything No. (That’s fine, I understand.)
Me: Younger younger remember what from yesterday? (What do you all remember from yesterday?)
Student: Teacher student remember small small (I don’t remember very much)
Me: Have person which other more remember anything? (Who remembers?)
Student: Teacher, I remember sentence have noun have verb one more (I remember a sentence needs a noun and a verb)
Me: Time all aldready! meeting each other day tomorrow (Time’s up! See you tomorrow)
Students: Goodbye teacher

I haven’t heard dance of the sugarplum fairies man for a while, so I will assume theme from Titanic man has prevailed!

shout outs, etc.

As summer draws to a close I cannot tell where the time has gone. I don’t even remember June happening weird. I am however, super excited to be going into a new school year. I now have some idea of what to expect. When I first came, I was overwhelmed by everyone’s expectations. I felt terrible when I had to tell my students that I couldn’t spend time with them individually for several hours a week. Setting boundaries was the hardest thing I’ve had to do. But it was worth it. People were disappointed, but they got over it. No one thinks any less of me for it. I have made a ton of new friends, and I am going to start teaching people whose English is more advanced, which means I have a wider variety of materials available to me. It should be good. I got to participate in a workshop on Gender and Development recently. It was really good. I was still slightly offended by many of the things that Khmer people laughed at (i.e. a husband not allowing his wife to go anywhere without him). But in the end they all seemed to have a decently progressive understanding of women’s roles in society. My favorite part was when I did a Q & A session on Gender in America. We had been discussing control over finances. I mentioned that money is a significant factor in American divorce statistics. This blew their minds. I was asked why, I love someone, I would leave him if he blew his entire paycheck on new car or tv. I replied that if he did this, he obviously didn’t love me. This statement received a standing ovation. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.

On a side note, the word I translated as ‘love’ in the above story actually means pity, sympathize with, or have compassion for. They use the word pity to mean what we consider love. It is a platonic form of love, and there is a saying in Cambodian that pity is stronger than love. This blows my mind. Pity? People want to be pitied. Once, one person had some oranges, and was passing out orange slices. She missed on of the other people and that person said “Don’t you pity me?” Granted compassion and sympathy make more sense as far as translation goes, but I would never equate either of those feelings with love. Huh.

I would like to send the biggest shout out in the world to everyone who has supported the tshirt project. Thanks to my wonderful mother, who has been incredibly awesome in putting this all together, thanks also to the lovely Nancy Jarboe for her tireless efforts with tshirt prep. And also to JP and Marilyn Hartung for donating the shirts. I can’t tell you amazed and moved I am at the support of all of you, friends, family, and complete strangers. Thank you all so very much for helping these girls. I’m both overwhelmed and extremely gratified that a group of people halfway around the world cares enough to help out these girls.

Also, for those of you following popsicle wars, I haven’t been home much during the day so I don’t have any updates yet, but will keep you abreast of any new developments.

Some new developments elsewhere: September started out with a bang for Cambodia. For the first time in history, Americans are being charged for child sex crimes committed overseas. Guess which country? Yep, the ‘bode. This is actually a very encouraging development. I recently saw a public service announcement on tv encouraging Cambodians to report suspicious foreigners. Apparently the US DoJ and ICE have an initiative focusing primarily on Cambodia to crack down on sex tourism. Good job.

For some lighter fare: Great news. A new study indicates coffee is fantastic for you. Contradicting old studies that say it is bad for you. SELF magazine recommended four cups a day. Four! Even I, (for those of you who don’t know me, if there were a way to give myself a coffee IV, I would be down with it) try to keep it at or below three cups a day. What I don’t understand is why we listen to new studies, when, next month, they will be old, outdated studies, completely contradicted. Obviously everyone cannot be right. This month’s SELF also had the best moves for toning your abs, butt, and thighs. Last month’s issue said the same thing. So which one is right? Were SELF readers using only mediocre butt toning moves last month? Understand, I don’t get much in the way of entertainment out here. In the states I liked having SELF for workout ideas, but never really thought critically about the magazine itself. But really, if it (or any periodical of this sort) does what it claims to, we wouldn’t need it every month. If I had used only the latest issue, would I have the best abs, instead of the mediocre abs produced by the workouts of the previous months? Yes, I know it is slightly ridiculous that I had time to sit and write an entire paragraph about this. Don’t judge me. I’m off for my third cup of coffee. Only for health reasons, of course.