By: ABC Radio Australia News Cambodia's endangered languages
The future of Cambodia's local languages looks bleak with warnings 19 languages face extinction within the next 90 years.
![S'aoch village chief Mr Noi (left) and his son, Tuem are among a handful of people who are fluent in the 5,000 year old language. [Robert Carmichael]](http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/201001/r501348_2652148.jpg "S'aoch village chief Mr Noi (left) and his son, Tuem are among a handful of people who are fluent in the 5,000 year old language. [Robert Carmichael]")
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S'aoch village chief Mr Noi (left) and his son, Tuem are among a handful of people who are fluent in the 5,000 year old language. [Robert Carmichael]
Robert Carmichael
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The United Nations cultural organisation UNESCO warns that one language becomes extinct every fortnight.
By the end of this century, the world will likely lose half of its 6,700 languages.
One such language that faces extinction, includes S'aoch - a language that is found in one small village in southern Cambodia.
With only ten people being fluent in the 5,000 year old language, experts believe S'aoch will last for about 10 years before it disappears.
That is because the 110 S'aoch people prefer to speak Khmer, the language of the majority of Cambodians, rather than their own tongue.
Dr Jean-Michel Filippi, a linguist who speaks more than a dozen languages, is studying S'aoch and has transcribed around 4,000 S'aoch words to date.
Working with village chief, Mr Noi and his son Tuem, Dr Filippi aims to publish a dictionary and grammar book in S'aoch.
Even though Dr Filppi says S'aoch has no chance of survival, he says he wants to persevere with his efforts.
"Culturally-speaking a language is a unique vision of the world," he said.
"You can take two languages which may appear to be - if not similar then very close to each other, like French for instance and English - in fact the vision of the world which applies in the French language or the English language are totally, totally different."
"If language disappears, a whole vision of the world disappears as well at the same time."
By the end of this century, the world will likely lose half of its 6,700 languages.
One such language that faces extinction, includes S'aoch - a language that is found in one small village in southern Cambodia.
With only ten people being fluent in the 5,000 year old language, experts believe S'aoch will last for about 10 years before it disappears.
That is because the 110 S'aoch people prefer to speak Khmer, the language of the majority of Cambodians, rather than their own tongue.
Dr Jean-Michel Filippi, a linguist who speaks more than a dozen languages, is studying S'aoch and has transcribed around 4,000 S'aoch words to date.
Working with village chief, Mr Noi and his son Tuem, Dr Filippi aims to publish a dictionary and grammar book in S'aoch.
Even though Dr Filppi says S'aoch has no chance of survival, he says he wants to persevere with his efforts.
"Culturally-speaking a language is a unique vision of the world," he said.
"You can take two languages which may appear to be - if not similar then very close to each other, like French for instance and English - in fact the vision of the world which applies in the French language or the English language are totally, totally different."
"If language disappears, a whole vision of the world disappears as well at the same time."
Poverty
Dr Filippi says the S'aoch suffered such extreme poverty that they have rejected their own language and culture in favour of Khmer, hoping things will improve.
"In the case of the S'aoch they apparently want to get rid of their language and their cultural institution because it is linked to their poverty."
"[The S'aoach] economic situation which compared to the Khmers is a very poor one," he said.
But the S'aoch people are not alone in facing language extinction.
The UN cultural body UNESCO says at least 19 languages spoken in Cambodia are at risk.
Blaise Kilian, UNESCO's joint programme coordinator in Phnom Penh, says the obvious factor in the demise of any language is having too few people who are fluent.
"But besides this you have the environment. You have the way people themselves - especially the new generation - react to the changing environment."
"How much they are interested in preserving and transmitting their own languages. It is a number of I would say internal and external factors which play an important role besides the number of speakers."
Mr Kilian says the outlook for many of Cambodia's languages is bleak. But measures are being taken to revitalise some minority languages in the country's north and north-east.
Education
One step is bilingual education for schoolchildren. CARE International, an NGO, started a bilingual school program seven years ago.
The program is now being run in 25 schools and last year benefited 1,900 children.
Ron Watt, CARE's education adviser, says the program has gone from strength to strength.
"Bilingual education is really spreading - people are very, very enthusiastic about it."
Ron Watt says that children in the first year of school use their own language for 80 percent of classes with the rest of instruction in Khmer.
The proportion of minority language used drops over the following two years, and by the time Grade 4 all instruction is in Khmer.
But despite these efforts, it remains to be seen whether these efforts will save those languages.
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