Cambodian’s have accepted the notion that “nobody is
perfect” to such an extent that they do not even have the word “perfect” in
their language. You can say that something was good, very good or even
extremely good. But you cannot say that it was perfect.
We learn our mother tongue without thinking about the rules
that structure our language; we follow the rules almost naturally. When
learning a language, not only do you have to learn new vocabulary, you also have to learn new rules. Rules that sometimes can seem strange.
Cambodians pluralise words in a totally different way than
in the English language. For instance, we would add a ‘s’ onto the end of the
word such as: “he owns expensive cars”. In Khmer, you would say the word
for expensive twice to indicate that there is more than one expensive car, so
the sentence would be structured as: “he owns cars expensive expensive.”
Cambodians also seem to be so far advanced in eradicating
gender bias that they do not even have different words for he/she, him/her or
his/hers. The same word is used for them all. When I was trying to describe to
colleagues that I was going to visit a friend and her wife in Viet Nam, it took
minutes of confused sentences before they understand that:
- my friend was a female (not helped by platonic friendships with the opposite sex being abnormal here)
- my female friend was married to another female (again, a scenario not that common in Cambodia)
Such experiences have opened my eyes to the deficiencies
that languages can have. In that conversation, understanding was made more
difficult because the language cannot differentiate between she and he.
Languages enable us to communicate concepts but if we cannot even communicate
the concept of perfection, can that concept even exist?
I remember learning, rather sceptically, about how language
can restrict our knowledge, but now I have seen how this can happen and how it
is harming the education of Cambodian children.
In Khmer, they do not have a word for a lesson or
period, such as a period of maths in school. Instead they use the phrase “study
hour”. However, in Cambodian schools, a study hour is not the same as an hour.
In primary schools, a study hour is forty minutes and in secondary schools it
is fifty minutes.
At this point, I would like you to pause, ensure that you
have understood the paragraph above and then consider this question: if a primary
school child has five study hours in a day, how many (normal) hours does that
child study for?
If you can answer that question correctly, then you are
doing better than one of the Secretaries of State for Education in Cambodia,
and indeed a host of senior directors in the Ministry of Education, Youth and
Sport.
In the Cambodian national curriculum for primary education,
there are 950 study hours per year. If a study hour equals 40 minutes, then
this means that there are 633 hours and 20 minutes in a school year, which is
one of the lowest in the world and below the internationally expected 800 –
1000 hours per school year.
However, because the concept of a study hour equalling only
40 minutes has not been grasped, the Cambodian government reports
internationally that there are 950+ hours in a school year. At a meeting with
the top people from the Ministry of Education last week, I heard (yet again) that Cambodia
compares well to other countries.
Now that I see how the structure of Khmer affects their knowledge
and understanding, I wonder how the structure of English has affected my own
knowledge and understanding.
Gordon
