Every language has its special expressions, slang as well as idioms. Some of these expressions, if translated word-for-word to another language, you’ll definitely find out that the results you got are surprisingly odd, nonsense, sometimes meaningless, and sometimes hilarious new phrases. Cambodian language is no exception. I’ve just tried word-for-word translation of some Khmer slang into English. And it confirms my above hypothesis. Below are the results: (Two of them are originally the work of Pheakdey Cheat, a funny, yet bright and intelligent friend of mine at IFL)
Hi! thx for addin' me in ur friend list. Oh ur blog is really nice... U r absolutely brilliant about Khmer Language esp. poem. M so proud of u.
Keep moving guy! :)
Nice blog
nice translation hehe
Hello,
From number 1 and 3, one can get the meaning from literal translations fine. The rest are hard to understand without knowing khmer. Anyway, those are good ones. Oh, you should put the explainations/meanings to those sayings. The meaning are good too.
I think the translation is funny. :) I know the other one: ដេកលេងៗ លក់។ (dek leng leng lok). It's literally translated as: Sleep play play sell. :D
Fascinating! Thanks.
Hey I recently started dating a Cambodian-American girl and I find the Cambodian culture and history fascinating. I really enjoyed reading some of your blogs. Ironically, I had been studying Japanese culture shortly before I met my Cambodian-American gf. I'm currently studying Khmer. I haven't quite learned how to read the script yet, but I was wondering how you would pronounce some of the slang terms that you wrote about in this blog.