Interesting points about the day:
I read an entire 500 page (Harry Potter like) book in the space between a toast-with-peanut-butter-and-strawberry-jam-breakfast and lunch.
My little sister had an IV put in on our dining table and rested there for the evening…and she is carrying the silly thing around with her as she goes about her normal activities. I know she must be very sick in order for her to allow this kind of treatment.
My other little sister is reading the “Fair Trial Handbook,” dually written in Khmer and English and just asked me how to pronounce the words ‘detained,’ ‘custody,’ and ‘trial.’
My grandmother just came into my room and told me to close my door after looking under my bed with a flashlight. This is not an unusual event, though tonight she actually gave me an explanation. What is it, you ask? Well, she was checking to make sure a gangster (in Khmer, bong tom, bong toet, or, big older brother, little older brother) hadn’t snuck silently through the locked gate while we were eating dinner 20 feet away and somehow made it up to my room where he hid under the bed and was planning to choke me when I went to sleep. She even clutched her throat to demonstrate what was going to happen and made the matching sounds with her elder voice. Twice.
Lots of things sound the same to me in Khmer…including the words for: fork, wet, and pretty clothes; small, fat, cheap, shop, and short; dog, clever, crazy, lazy, and borrow, holiday, mine, sleep, pretty, and trash. My family laughs at my frustration often. They continued to laugh when we sat down so that I could begin to chart some of the levels of the verbs; for example, the word ‘eat’ is actually six words for six different classes of people: The King, Monk, grandparents and oldest aunts/uncles, people who are older, people who are younger, and animals/children. And they laughed yet more when I tried to make a fairly complete family tree, and having completed my mom’s side of 4 sisters and their full families, children, sexes, ages, names, and places of residence, I asked how many brothers and sisters my dad had and the answer was…10. A huge family, and lots of complicated answers that I may or may not get clarification on…Yikes.
I read an entire 500 page (Harry Potter like) book in the space between a toast-with-peanut-butter-and-strawberry-jam-breakfast and lunch.
My little sister had an IV put in on our dining table and rested there for the evening…and she is carrying the silly thing around with her as she goes about her normal activities. I know she must be very sick in order for her to allow this kind of treatment.
My other little sister is reading the “Fair Trial Handbook,” dually written in Khmer and English and just asked me how to pronounce the words ‘detained,’ ‘custody,’ and ‘trial.’
My grandmother just came into my room and told me to close my door after looking under my bed with a flashlight. This is not an unusual event, though tonight she actually gave me an explanation. What is it, you ask? Well, she was checking to make sure a gangster (in Khmer, bong tom, bong toet, or, big older brother, little older brother) hadn’t snuck silently through the locked gate while we were eating dinner 20 feet away and somehow made it up to my room where he hid under the bed and was planning to choke me when I went to sleep. She even clutched her throat to demonstrate what was going to happen and made the matching sounds with her elder voice. Twice.
Lots of things sound the same to me in Khmer…including the words for: fork, wet, and pretty clothes; small, fat, cheap, shop, and short; dog, clever, crazy, lazy, and borrow, holiday, mine, sleep, pretty, and trash. My family laughs at my frustration often. They continued to laugh when we sat down so that I could begin to chart some of the levels of the verbs; for example, the word ‘eat’ is actually six words for six different classes of people: The King, Monk, grandparents and oldest aunts/uncles, people who are older, people who are younger, and animals/children. And they laughed yet more when I tried to make a fairly complete family tree, and having completed my mom’s side of 4 sisters and their full families, children, sexes, ages, names, and places of residence, I asked how many brothers and sisters my dad had and the answer was…10. A huge family, and lots of complicated answers that I may or may not get clarification on…Yikes.
No comments:
Post a Comment