Khnumbers

I've had 13 one-hour Khmer lessons now.  I can meet and greet, discuss family, occupational skills, daily activities and the weather. I know my colours, dates and days, and I can tell time. In theory, I can bargain at the market. As of this afternoon, I can inform you in Khmer that I did laundry and made pickles this morning.

Prek nih, khnyom twer cherook bon-lai.  

Speaking at a normal pace is still a problem. I am Queen of the Ellipsis:  Khnyom... som... sooah... mooey... ... ... bahn-eh!  ("I would like to ask a question", but by the time I finish the sentence, the listener has either dozed off or walked away.)

This is my first experience learning a language that doesn't use the Roman alphabet, and unfortunately, there is no standard for Romanising Khmer.  What you see above is my effort to transliterate what I'm hearing my teachers say. So, you ask, why don't I just learn the Khmer script? Because it's a beastly task. I'll probably have a go at it at some point, but I need to attain a certain level of spoken fluency first.  If you don't believe me when I say that learning the Khmer script is daunting, please just check out the "notable features" bullet points on the Omniglot page.

Many of the basic conversations, of course, involve numbers.  How old are you? What time do you eat breakfast? How much does a kilo of avocados cost?  It's quite common to ask someone's age in order to address them correctly.  Khmers will address someone as older sister or brother, younger sister or brother, aunt, uncle, etc., rather than using the person's proper name, or even the 3rd-person pronoun.  Example:  Instead of telling the younger bank clerk, "Wah, your new eyeglasses are cool!", I would say, "Wah, younger sister's new eyeglasses are cool!"  [Note: this did not result in any discount on the damned exorbitant bank fees.]  It is also quite common, my teacher informs me, to ask about someone's salary and to treat her with greater respect if it's higher than your own. I find this appalling and plan to feign ignorance should anyone ask me how much money I have. Some local customs just aren't worth adopting, I say.

It's not simply that there are some numbers I don't wish to discuss. My brain seizes when it comes to Khmer numbers in general.

Numbers are numbers -- how hard can it be?

0-5 are no problem.  Beyond 5, there is arithmetic required, and I am arithmetically challenged. I am in fact totally innumerate.

In Khmer, the word for 6 is 5+1, 7 is 5+2, and so on through 9.  So when I hear the Khmer word for 9, it takes me a moment to translate the 5 and the 4, then another instant to add them.  The textbook way to say 9 is prahm-booun (five-four), but to make matters worse, no one actually says prahm-booun.  They abbreviate it to m'booun.  Six weeks in this country, and I show no sign of being able to distinguish between booun and m'booun, especially when they're rattled off quickly by a tuktuk driver in a rainstorm or a harried mango seller. In short, 6-9 sound exactly like 1-4 to my ear.  

I am rarely an apologist for English, which I think is one of the world's most fiendish languages to learn, but it does behave sensibly when it comes to numbers.  You can readily see the link between the single-digit numerals and their multiple of 10:  two - twenty; three - thirty; four - forty, etc.  That link does not exist in Khmer:  bpii - m'pei (2 - 20); bei - sahmseup (3 - 30); booun - saehseup (4 - 40), etc.  So when I want to tell someone my age, I must first conjure up the word for fifty (which is totally unrelated to the number five) and add 2.  When I turn 56, I'll have to add 5 and 1, or lie about my age for the next few years.  (Actually, if I can't say 53 smoothly and confidently in Khmer before my next birthday, I'll just hang it up and declare myself a deaf-mute.)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the local currency is the riel, and 4000 riel = USD1. Many sellers in the markets quote prices in riel, and the electric bill comes denominated in riel.  So now, in addition to having to translate the number-words in my head, I also have to do the arithmetic to convert the riel to dollars. When presented with the price per kilo by a fruit merchant or with the electric bill by my landlady (who speaks no English), I want to crawl under my bed like a spaniel in a thunderstorm. The numeric verbiage streams from these women's mouths in paragraphs.  

Khmer has words for one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, and one million. My electric bill last month was 97,500 riel.  In English, we say that as 97 thousand, 5 hundred. To express the same number in Khmer, you say 9 ten-thousands, 7 thousand, 5 hundred. And, of course, that really means they're saying 5+4 ten-thousands, 5+2 thousand, 5 hundred. Yee, when she noticed my eyes rolling back in my head, showed me the bill and let me read the number for myself. Otherwise I'd be sitting here in the dark, having been unable to translate the amount before the due date. (They tell me the electric company is very quick to cut off power if the payment is late.)  

I am tremendously motivated to learn Khmer, and I know I'm being impatient. A few months from now, when I aim to rattle off numbers like a Cambodian croupier, I hope I'll look back on this post, read the frustration in it and feel a sense of accomplishment.