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There are very few studies on Cambodia’s linguistic landscapes, on the use of Khmer in linguistic landscapes, and even less on the use of Khmer linguistic landscapes in education. As part of a joint research project involving Cambodian and French teams, we examined the linguistic landscapes of the town of Siem Reap, where we carried out joint fieldwork in 2022. This paper presents the first observations we made, based on a study of the regulations concerning public displays on the one hand and on the scriptural practices on the other. We also share some activity around the material we collected on the field for teaching Khmer, in Cambodia as well as in France.

In the Khmer writing system, the Khmer script is the official letter of Cambodia, written from left to right without a space separator; it is complicated and requires more analysis studies. Without clear standard guidelines, a space separator in the Khmer language is used inconsistently and informally to separate words in sentences. Therefore, a segmented method should be discussed with the combination of the future Khmer natural language processing (NLP) to define the appropriate rule for Khmer sentences. The critical process in NLP with the capability of extensive data language analysis necessitates applying in this scenario. One of the essential components in Khmer language processing is how to split the word into a series of sentences and count the words used in the sentences. Currently, Microsoft Word cannot count Khmer words correctly. So, this study presents a systematic library to segment Khmer phrases using the bi-directional maximal matching (BiMM) method to address these problematic constraints. In the BiMM algorithm, the paper focuses on the Bidirectional implementation of forward maximal matching (FMM) and backward maximal matching (BMM) to improve word segmentation accuracy. A digital or prefix tree of data structure algorithm, also known as a trie, enhances the segmentation accuracy procedure by finding the children of each word parent node. The accuracy of BiMM is higher than using FMM or BMM independently; moreover, the proposed approach improves dictionary structures and reduces the number of errors. The result of this study can reduce the error by 8.57% compared to FMM and BFF algorithms with 94,807 Khmer words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research was conducted in a Cambodian community recently recognized as the second Cambodia Town in the United States, which is new to the linguistic landscape research community. Data for this research were 279 photos collected in Lowell, MA during August of 2013. They were collected from two important main streets (Westford Street and Branch Street) that house many Cambodian businesses. The site for this data collection was purposefully selected because it is located in the heart of the Cambodia Town with many Cambodian businesses and offices. All the photos were entered into and coded with NVivo 10. Findings were reported in relation to the number of languages, the role of Khmer language, and the amount of transliteration reflected in the signs. These findings were discussed with implications for a better understanding of the language-in-contact situation (in this case Khmer and English) and the functions of Khmer as a minority language in this context. This understanding also has implications for the learning and teaching of English or Khmer in this community and the language planning of the Cambodia Town. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an acoustic and perceptual study of the r>h shift in the variety of Khmer spoken in Giông Riêng district, Kiên Giang province, Vietnam. In Phnom Penh Khmer, /r/ is realized as [h] in syllable onsets and onset clusters, and accompanied by lowered pitch, breathiness, and in some cases a change in the quality of the following vowel. In Kiên Giang Khmer, the r>h shift is accompanied by pitch lowering, but without changes in aspiration or vowel quality, and spectral measures did not indicate substantial differences in voice quality. Consistent with their productions, users of this dialect appear to rely solely on differences pitch to identify these lexical items. We discuss the implications of our findings for Khmer dialectology, mechanisms of sound change, and variation in the realization of rhotics more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of Cambodian geography in two Khmer polities: Funan, an empire that occupied the southeastern portions of modern-day Cambodia and Vietnam during the early centuries A.D., and Democratic Kampuchea, a Cambodian state that existed from April 17, 1975, until the Vietnamese invasion of December 25, 1978. The terms "Cambodia" and the alternative English transliteration "Kampuchea" refer to the modern Southeast Asian state located between Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, while "Khmer" is used to denote the language, culture, and nation of the people who are ruled by that state. The territory of modern Cambodia can be thought of as a shallow saucer with a broken rim on the lower right or southeast side. The Cardamom mountains along Cambodia's southwestern coast form a barrier with the ocean while the Dangrek mountains along Cambodia's northern border separate the country from the Khorat plateau of Thailand. Highlands are located in Cambodia's extreme northeast. Most of Cambodia's interior is flat. The Mekong river, which enters Cambodia from the north, traverses an alluvial plain in Cambodia's southeast before entering Vietnam to eventually empty into the South China Sea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on a research project on a Khmer-English bilingual program in a primary school in Western Australia. Information on the research participants; Difference between Khmer and English; Details on the progress of the children in writing in both languages.