LANGUAGE LEARNING with a REFUGEE and a ROMANTIC

My voi no hell an my wi dow loa wi fren

PLEASE TRANSLATE (answer below)

Khmer is the official language of Cambodia and is spoken by virtually all Cambodians. Its origins lie mainly in a local language from the Mon-Khmer family and the two ancient Indian languages, Pali and Sanskrit.

A little Grammar.

Khmer and English grammar are alike in one very important aspect – their typical word order of SVO: Subject followed by Verb, followed by Object.

 But there are lots of differences.

Unlike English, Khmer does not have a distinctive plural form of nouns. Words that represent quantity (e.g., several, some, five, a few, a little) have to be added after the nouns to show the plural form:

When listening to Cambodians talking English…. they say

 

The bike cost 5 dollar     not       The bike costs 5 dollars

 Unlike in English, there is no article use in Khmer. I have (a) bike.

Mind you lots of English people say I go pub.

My first few days of listening to Cambodians speaking English was a head wrecker and very tiring due to influence of their language on the way they speak English. Also like a lot of eastern people certain sounds are extremely difficult like th, x and the famous R.

Here are some words and the way they sound to me

Health             hell

Voice               voi

Otherwise       otherwi

Province          provin

Six                    si

Partnership     partnersip

Next                 neck

Road                loa

Without           widow

How did your translation go

My voice not healthy and my wife is down the road with a friend

I’m sure they are equally baffled by us trying out their language which is what I have been doing for the last week under the expert tutelage of our gracious Kymer teacher Dara.

Dara is a gifted if old fashioned teacher. He had us saying phrases in Kymer after one day. He has brilliant English and probably French and Thai. He lived in a refugee camp in Thailand during this country’s troubles. But the most noticeable characteristic of this man is that he is a born romantic and he has a host of women from different countries and children (eleven, I am told, ranging from 32 years to 8 ). He openly admits to crying to such country heartbreakers like “Don’t Cry Joni” by Conway Twitty. [I like his choice as it is a reverse dear john song..see lyrics below and youtube link] and films such as A Million Tears Drops (which might be Japanese, but I ‘m not sure). But Conway T also has a song of this title. So how confusing is this.

Don’t Cry Joni (Lyrics)…a song where a John comes out on top (ahem)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mmj8QgKHl4

Woman-Jimmy please say you'll wait for me
I'll grow up someday you'll see
Saving all my kisses just for you
Signed with love forever true.

Man- Slowly I read her note once more
Then I went over to the house next door
Her tear-drops fell like rain that day
When I told Joni what I had to say.

Man- Joni, Joni please don't cry
You'll forget me by and by
You're just fifteen and I'm twenty two,
and Joni I just can’t wait for you.

Man - Soon I left our little home town,
Got me a job and tried to settle down
But these words kept haunting my memory,
the words that Joni said to me.

Woman- Jimmy please say you'll wait for me
I'll grow up some day you'll see
Saving all my kisses just for you 
Signed with love forever true.

Man - I packed my clothes and I caught a plane
and I had to see Joni. I had to explain,
how my heart was filled with her memory
and ask my Joni if she'd marry me

I ran all the way to the house next door
but things weren't like they were before
My tear-drops fell like rain that day
When I heard what Joni had to say.

Woman- Jimmy, Jimmy please don't cry
You'll forget me by and by.
It's been five years since you've been gone
Jimmy, I - (married) - your best friend John.

A Million Tear Drops

Hyakuman Tsubu no Namida (Japanese)

Un milione di lacrime (Italian)

ひゃくまんつぶの涙 (Japanese)

遺忘的淚 (Chinese (Taiwan))

Genres: drama, romance, supernatural

Plot Summary: Hiromu is a high school boy who has everything he could ever want: a normal life, friends, and a girlfriend. That is until one day Hiromu asks everyone where Tetsuya is and no one knows. All of his classmates think he is crazy for insisting that this Tetsuya person exists since no one has heard of him. Then on his way home from school Hiromu finally meets a boy who remembers Tetsuya and says that Tetsuya was "delicious" and this isn't the only strange occurrence. This boy seems to think that Hiromu's name is Glorious Lily and that his lover is not his girlfriend, but a beautiful, emotionless girl named Valeriana. With the help of this mysterious boy Hiromu uncovers his past, who Valeriana is and who, or what, he is.

It is hard for us cushy westerners to imagine what life through war and ethnic cleansing is like and what psychological damage is done. Who do you trust and why wouldn’t one cry at emotional times and why not be comforted by romance.

Trauma experiences

The trauma experiences of refugee young people may have included:

·         constant exposure to physical and emotional danger;

·         loss of home and family;

·         displacement in refugee camps;

·         injury and abuse;

·         exploitation - sometimes forced as child soldiers into acts of violence, abuse, torture and rape or watching others commit these abuses;

·         sexual assault.

How does one recover, adapt, live on ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????

“The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables.
Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day
I would be grounded, rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away
to where the darkness lives.

The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight.
Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do.
I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling.
You will find a good man soon.”

The first psycho therapist told me to spend
three hours each day sitting in a dark closet
with my eyes closed and ears plugged.
I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking
about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.

The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth.
Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness
when they care more about what they give
than what they get.

The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.”

The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me
forget what the trauma said.

The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”

But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped
from the George Washington Bridge
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”

My bones said, “Write the poems.” 
― Andrea Gibson, The Madness Vase

Yes our Dara lover of languages, women and children is one of the original romantics and a testimony to human warmth and survival.

 (AKUN Dara = Thanks Dara      ឣរគុណ         (aw kohn))

A Million Tear Drops…Conway Twitty

Well, I picked up my baby at the usual time last night
It was one of those nights when nothing seemed to turn out right
Guess I did something wrong she made me take her home
She gave me back my ring and then she said goodbye.

Now there are millions of teardrops
Drop, drip, droppin' from my eyes.

I know I shouldn’t worry she’s done the same thing before
But every time she leaves me it hurts me more and more
I thought that I was tough and all that stuff
I even said that no one could ever make me cry.

Now there are millions of teardrops
Drop, drip, droppin' from my eyes.

I couldn’t keep the tears from flowing
I couldn’t keep the pain from showing
Nothing I did seem to help at all
The tears fell like a waterfall.


All day long I try to get her out of my mind
But nothing seems to help because I think about her all the time
This heartbreak is something I can’t take
I gotta find that girl and make her realize.

And stop these millions of teardrops
Drop, drip, droppin' from my eyes.

And stop these millions of teardrops
Drop, drip, droppin' from my eyes.

And stop these millions of teardrops
Drop, drip, droppin' from my eyes... 

Did anyone make it this far ???????????????