silesr2017 004 Mel and Khaonh Language Survey Report | SIL International
Mel and Khaonh Language Survey Report
Philip Lambrecht and Noel Mann
SIL International ®
SIL Electronic Survey Report 2017-004, March 2017 © 2017 SIL International ® All rights reserved
Abstract
The survey was done under the auspices of the ICC (International Cooperation Cambodia) and included the ethnic Mel and Khaonh people, in Kratie Province of Cambodia. It took place in 2009 to inquire about how ethnic Mel and Khaonh people identify and group themselves in terms of language, intelligibility between Mel varieties and Khaonh varieties, and language vitality. ICC conducted group and individual interviews, collected wordlists, and carried out one test of how well Khoanh people understand Mel. The general conclusions presented in this report are that there are three varieties of Mel, all of which are included by all Mel speakers in the same, comprehensible, language group, although they do recognize significant variation between the varieties. Khaonh speakers identify one variety of Khaonh. The variety of Mel used for comprehension testing was 88 percent lexically similar and marginally intelligible to Khaonh speakers. Though there were some reports of shared history and acceptance of each other as the same group, in general, Mel and Khaonh people see each other as distinct language and ethnic groups. There is one Mel village where there is a possibility that the children now, who know and use Mel language, may choose to speak Mel to their children in the future; however, the trend suggests they will not do that, and instead be like the other Mel villages, where the children are not proficient in Mel. Only some of the older Khaonh people, perhaps fewer than twenty, are proficient in speaking Khaonh, while most of the Khaonh population, and all of the children, speak only Khmer.
Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Ethnic and language names
1.2 Linguistic classification
1.3 Location and population
2 Methodology
2.1 Group interviews
2.2 Individual interviews
2.3 Lexical similarity comparison
2.3.1 Transcription leveling
2.3.2 Procedure
2.4 Comprehension test
3 Language varieties, intelligibility, and acceptance
3.1 Varieties of Mel and Khaonh
3.1.1 Roluos perceptions
3.1.2 Paklae perceptions
3.1.3 Changhab perceptions
3.1.4 Chhork perceptions
3.2 History of Mel and Khaonh
3.3 Perceived word differences
3.4 Intelligibility between Mel and Khaonh varieties
3.4.1 Lexical similarity comparison
3.4.2 Comprehension test
3.5 Summary of varieties, intelligibility, and acceptance
4 Language vitality
4.1 Roluos Village
4.1.1 Language use and proficiency – Roluos Village
4.1.2 Language preferences – Roluos Village
4.1.3 Perceptions of language vitality and loss – Roluos Village
4.1.4 Ethnic identity and mixing – Roluos Village
4.2 Paklae Village
4.2.1 Language use and proficiency – Paklae Village
4.2.2 Language preferences – Paklae Village
4.2.3 Perceptions of language vitality and loss – Paklae Village
4.2.4 Ethnic identity and mixing – Paklae Village
4.3 Chhork Village
4.3.1 Language use and proficiency – Chhork Village
4.3.2 Language preferences – Chhork Village
4.3.3 Perceptions of language vitality and loss – Chhork Village
4.3.4 Ethnic identity and mixing – Chhork Village
4.4 Changhab Village
4.4.1 Language use and proficiency – Changhab Village
4.4.2 Language preferences – Changhab Village
4.4.3 Perceptions of vitality and loss – Changhab Village
4.4.4 Ethnic identity and mixing – Changhab Village
4.5 Srae Tahaenh Village
4.6 Education
4.7 Summary of language vitality
References
1 Introduction
The goals of this language survey were to answer the following:
1. How many varieties of Mel and Khaonh languages are there?
2. Speakers of which varieties might be able to share the same language materials?
3. Which varieties of Mel and Khaonh might continue to be used in the next generation?
The data collection for this research was done by International Cooperation Cambodia (ICC) staff between November 27 and December 7, 2009 in six villages in Kratie Province of Cambodia. Some data was also collected by ICC staff in 2006, and some of the wordlists compared were taken by others at different times. Noel Mann did the wordlist comparison.
1.1 Ethnic and language names
The focus of this language survey is the ethnic Mel (pronounced [m əl]) and ethnic Khaonh (pronounced [kʰaoɲ]) people in Cambodia and the languages they speak. The ethnic Mel people speak the Mel
language, and, likewise, the ethnic Khaonh people speak the Khaonh language. 1 There are three sub-groups of Mel people: 1) people associated with Roluos village; 2) people associated with Paklae village; and 3) people associated with Changhab village. Ethnic Mel people from Roluos village are sometimes called Mel Kachroung, Kachroung, Mel Kanh Chrong, Kanh Chrong, or Onchrouk. Ethnic Mel people from Paklae village are sometimes called Mel Arach or Arach. Ethnic Mel people from Changhab village are sometimes called Kachrouk or Mel Kachrouk. People from all three of these groups usually just call themselves Mel, and they accept the proposition that people from the other sub-groups are also included in their larger Mel group. The name for the traditional language of all three groups of Mel people is the same as the ethnic name, Mel, but the way people from Paklae speak can also
be called Arach, and the way people from Changhab speak can be called Kachrouk, and so on. All of the Mel people we talked to, regardless of the village and variations in ethnic name and way of speaking, included all of the other Mel people with themselves in the same ethnic and language group.
Given the lexical similarity and apparent inherent intelligibility between Mel and Khaonh language varieties, the two varieties could be considered dialects of the same language. Furthermore, some Khaonh people we talked to included people from Paklae, Roluos, or Changhab villages (people who identify themselves as Mel) in their Khaonh ethnic group or as speakers of the Khaonh language. However, all Mel and Khaonh people recognize a distinction between Khaonh and Mel ethnicities and languages, and generally they do not include each other in the same group, in part because, in general, they do not consider the other language to be comprehensible. We will therefore use the two names, Mel and Khaonh, to maintain their distinction between the two peoples and languages.
1.2 Linguistic classification
Neither Mel nor Khaonh languages have been classified linguistically, though they are most lexically similar to languages in the South Bahnaric sub-branch of Eastern Mon-Khmer. Mel and Khaonh (grouping them together to compare lexical similarity) are most lexically similar to the Stieng language in the Snuol district of Kratie Province (80 percent), followed by the Stieng in Kaev Seima District of Mondul Kiri Province (77 percent), Ra’ong (76 percent), Thmon (74 percent), Kraol (73 percent), Stieng in Memot District, Tbong Khmum Province (70 percent), and Bunong (70 percent).
1 Neither Mel nor Khaonh have ISO codes, but a proposal for two ISO codes has been made.
Ken Gregerson examined some of our wordlists for lexical comparisons and has written some initial statements about the relationship of Mel, Khaonh, Kraol [rka], Thmon, and other South Bahnaric
languages. He tentatively made the following points (Gregerson 2010): 2
1. Mel, Khaonh, Kraol, and Thmon languages appear on first inspection to be South Bahnaric. That is,
the burden of proof would seem to be on any classification to the contrary.
2. Mel and Khaonh seem to form a subgroup, as do Kraol and Thmon.
3. Khaonh and Kraol seem to have some kind of relationship cross-cutting the grouping of each with
another language as its main affinity.
4. The similarity of some Mel, Khaonh, Kraol, and Thmon forms with Central Bahnaric may be due to loans from, say Tampuan [tpu], or it may speak to the greater connections of Central and South Bahnaric themselves.
1.3 Location and population
Mel and Khaonh people live in Kratie Province. Roluos, Paklae, Changhab, and Srae Tahaenh are the main Mel villages, although there are a few Mel families in Ou Krieng village as well. Chhork and Kasang are the main Khaonh villages, with a few families reported to live in Changkrang and Kaoh Dach villages as well. The total Mel population is about 3,295 individuals. The total Khaonh population is probably between 300 and 450 individuals. Most of the figures we used to calculate these populations were given to us from village leaders in 2009. These figures from the village leaders in 2009 are in bold type in table
1 and table 2. The rest of the figures in these tables (not in bold) were taken from talking to people in the community in general, between 2006 and 2009.
2 These points are from a preliminary manuscript, not for quotation without permission from Ken Gregerson.
Table 1. Mel Villages and Population
Other Ethnic Commune
F P Roluos
10 to 30 3% Mean Chey
Sam Paklae
100% less than 20 individuals total of Kraol, Bunong, Khmer, Chinese
Ou Krieng Ou Krieng
9 47 Khmer
88 57% Damrei
Kbal Changhab 155 783
1 Chitr Sambok
Tahaenh Kbal
Chuor a
a Kbal Chuor is listed as a Mel village because people in Roluos, Paklae, and Changhab said Mel people live there. However, when we asked Mel people in Srae Tahaenh, which is about 2km from Kbal Chuor, they said that there are
no Mel people in Kbal Chuor. We never went to Kbal Chuor to ask people.
Table 2. Khaonh Villages and Population
Other Ethnic District
Families Families
Percent
Bunong, Khmer, Kuy Borie
Chitr Thmei
Changkrang Kasang
Mukh Kaoh Dach
Kaoh Dach b 10
Kampul a
a Kandal Province (see Sections 3.1.5 and 4.3.4 for more details about this move.)
b The figures for Changkrang and Kaoh Dach villages were estimates given by the Khaonh group interviewed in Chhork; we did not get any official numbers for those villages.
The population figures we report, except for Chhork village, do not make it clear whether the ethnic families or individuals are mixed ethnicity or are 100 percent Mel or Khaonh ethnicity. In Chhork village, the village leader counted thirty Khaonh families (23 percent) in which both parents were ethnic Khaonh.
Maps
The language areas in these maps are general indications, not actual boundaries. We have no data about ethnic land ownership, just villages or areas that are associated with ethnic groups, around which these areas are drawn. The ethnic/language-identity make-up within any area is not homogeneous. For example, many villages/areas have people from more than one ethnicity, and Khmer people live in many villages/areas, including those included in ethnic minority areas in this map. Some ethnicities, such as Cham, are not represented. The areas in Ratanak Kiri Province roughly follow commune boundaries and the majority ethnic group represented in those communes, according to village-level records from the Ratanakiri Provincial Department of Planning in 2006. Also, though not indicated by the areas drawn on the maps, some language groups cross national boundaries, such as Bunong and Stieng. All maps were created by Philip Lambrecht using QGIS, with data points marked from GPS, and include Seamless Digital Chart of the World (SDCW) data from the Global Ministry Mapping System (GMMS).
Map 1. Mel and Khaonh villages and surrounding language areas
Map 2. Mel villages, north detail
Map 3. Mel and Khoanh villages, south detail
2 Methodology
The goals of our research were to find out how many varieties of Mel and Khaonh are spoken in Cambodia, which of those varieties might be able to use the same language materials, and which of those varieties might continue to be used in the next generation.
The way we define a language variety is according to how people group themselves by language. So, if people in three villages agree that they all speak the same language the same way, then we would say those people use the same variety. If people say that they speak the same language, but not in the same way as people in another village, then we report that the people in the two villages speak different varieties. So, we asked people what languages they speak and who else speaks the language in the same way and differently.
In addition, we wanted to know which varieties could probably be grouped together to use the same literature or spoken language materials. Our basis for suggesting varieties which could possibly be grouped together or not is acceptance and inherent intelligibility, as suggested by comprehension and lexical similarity.
In our assessment of vitality, our definition of vitality is that children are now speaking the language, at least in the home, and will possibly choose to speak the language to their children in the next generation. So, we at least wanted to be clear about whether or not the children are now speaking the language. And we wanted to have some idea, based on what languages people think are good to speak, about what choices today’s children will make about what languages to speak to their children in the next generation.
Therefore, our research questions are related to: •
identity—how do people group themselves in terms of ethnicity and language, and what are the perceived differences between their group and other groups?
inherent intelligibility—how well can people understand a different language variety based on its relatedness to their own variety, without having learned it?
• wordlist comparison—how do varieties group together based on lexical similarity? •
language use—what languages do people use in the home and other domains, and what languages do older people use as compared to younger people?
• language proficiency—what do people report about their ability to speak/understand Mel, Khaonh, and Khmer?
• language preferences—which varieties do people think are good to use, for them and their children, for different purposes?
The methods we used to answer our research questions are interviews, wordlist comparisons, and comprehension testing. We talked to people in every Mel and Khaonh ethnic village in Cambodia that we knew of except for Changkrang, Kaoh Dach, and Kbal Chuor. 3 The work we did in each village is listed in table 3, as well as some of the work the ICC research team did in 2006.
3 We did not go to or talk to anyone from Ou Krieng village, but a different ICC research team did research there in 2006 and we use their data. The 2006 team elicited 134 words and interviewed the village leader. They also took
the 134 item wordlists in Kasang and Srae Tahaenh in 2006. Both the 2006 team and ourselves took wordlists in Chhork (we extended the list from 134 to 357 words), interviewed a village leader in Kasang, and interviewed people in Chhork.
Table 3. Work done in each village
Commune Village
Total
Mel/Khaonh Language
Wordlist
Comprehension Interviews
Families Families
Test
Roluos Roluos
1 Group, Mean Chey
100% Mel Arach
Made Test
Ou Krieng Ou Krieng
9 Mel (Arach ?) 134
Leader
words
Kbal Damrei Changhab
65 42% Mel Kachrouk 209
1 Group
words
Sambok Srae
1 Group Tahaenh
75 73% Mel Kachrouk 134
words
Thmei Chhork
Changkrang Kasang
3 Subjects Leader
Kaoh Dach Kaoh Dach
10 Khaonh
2.1 Group interviews
We did group interviews by asking the village leader to bring together, usually the next day, ten to twenty Mel/Khaonh people, preferably older people knowledgeable about their history and culture. When the group gathered at the time set by the village leader, we spent between two and three hours following a questionnaire, asking about how people identified themselves, what languages they use when and how well they speak them, how well they understand other varieties, and so on. We tried to encourage participation from all the participants in the group interviews. A few of the individuals participating in the groups were not Mel or Khaonh ethnicity, but they were accepted by the others in the group. The groups we interviewed in Roluos, Paklae, and Chhork were all between twenty and twenty-five people, both men and women, most of them probably more than forty years old. The groups we interviewed in Changhab and Srae Tahaenh were seven and about fifteen people, both men and women, and most of them older.
2.2 Individual interviews
Because some of the things we wanted to learn about, like children’s language use or language proficiency, could vary from family to family and from generation to generation, we wanted to get a better representation of the range of responses in the village than we could get in the group interview. To do that we elicited information from randomly selected families/households by interviewing an individual from each of the selected families.
We chose the families/households by obtaining a list of all of the families in the village from the village leader and then randomly selecting about thirty families from that list, expecting to do about twenty interviews in the village. We did not want to interview families that were not Mel, and if we came across a non-Mel family in the list, we omitted them and went on to the next. We did, however, include families with one non-Mel parent.
To represent the selected families, we chose adults who were available and willing to be interviewed, and who were in a middle generation in the family, generally the parents rather than the children or the grandparents. Sometimes a few people from the family participated in the interview. Whether the family was represented by one or a few in the discussion, we chose one individual to report about him/herself, as well as answer questions, following a questionnaire, about the whole family. For example, we asked the individual to report what her first language was, as well as the first language of her grandparents, parents, her siblings, her spouse, her children (if any), and her grandchildren (if any). This leads us to make statements in this report such as, “70 percent of all responses were that they speak Khmer,” which does not mean that seventy people out of one hundred said they speak Khmer, but rather
a few individuals, the individuals we interviewed to represent whole families, collectively gave one hundred responses about themselves, their parents, their children, their spouses, etc., and seventy of those responses were that they or their family members speak Khmer. Our assumption in this methodology is that one person in the family can represent other family members for the things we asked about, such as language use.
We intended to show generational differences in responses by asking about grandparents, parents, children, and grandchildren. However, we do not have a record of the age of the individuals that responded for the rest of their family. So, we cannot say precisely whether all of the individuals, the individuals’ spouses, and the individuals’ siblings represent the same generation. Nevertheless, because we were looking for people to interview who were from a middle generation—individuals that probably
had children of their own 4 but not the “old” people in the family—we probably interviewed individuals that were in the middle of the age-range in the village. Our estimation, based on what we can remember about the people we interviewed, is that the individuals we interviewed were all between twenty and forty years old.
We did individual interviews in two villages: 19 interviews in Roluos and 20 in Paklae. In Roluos, we did not get a response for three of the families we had randomly selected; two because they were staying in their fields, farther than we wanted to go to find them, and one because the family had gone to the forest and was not coming back soon. In Paklae, one family we selected did not respond because of illness. When these families did not respond, we interviewed the next family on the list of randomly selected families.
2.3 Lexical similarity comparison
This section describes the lexical comparison approach for computing lexical similarity among the Bahnaric varieties in this survey.
Lexical comparison is an approximation of the percentage of cognates shared by two or more language varieties. The results from this approach do not provide an absolute measure of the relationship between language varieties, but rather a relative measure of the lexical relationship between varieties.
2.3.1 Transcription leveling
For this comparison, wordlists from several different sources were used. While the transcriptions seem to
be of high quality, there is some variation in the transcription conventions. Thus, there seemed to be a need to level the wordlists using the same transcription metric in order to make the comparison meaningful. The following conventions were used:
• Replacements were made in the raw data: ʔb=ɓ, ʔd=ɗ, ʔɡ=ɠ, ʀ/ɾ=r, y=j. •
Consonant and vowels given equivalent status: w – u/u – w, j – i/i – j. Equivalent forms were posited for these segments when it made a match in the lexical set more plausible. When more than
4 Two of the 39 individuals we interviewed did not have children. One of the two had never married. Six of the 39 interviewees had grandchildren, though two of them said that their grandchildren were still babies.
one form is available for comparison between varieties, the more optimal match is used. The only limitation in reinterpreting these vowel and consonant transcriptions is that while diphthongs are allowed, tripthongs are not.
• Vowels clarified: ɑ=a (open central unrounded), ʌ=ɜ, ɵ=ɘ (Barr and Pawley 2013:60). Since vowels and consonants that appear to be raised in some varieties corresponded to non-raised
segments in the other varieties, these features are lowered to represent full segments in this comparison except for aspirated stops. Table 4 highlights raised elements that are considered full segments in this analysis.
Table 4. Segmental interpretation of raised elements
‘wash ‘abdomen’ ‘blood’ ‘child’ ‘dog’ ‘four’ ‘neck’ ‘new’
‘scratch
‘tongue’
(v)’ Kraol
(v)’
pu ən kaw təmej kʰwaːc ləmpiət raw Kraol
k ənɗul m
əhãːm Kawn caw
(APK)
(RVG) ⁿʔdul m əhaːm Kawn caw puən kaw təmej kʰwaːc ləmpiət raw
Stieng k (DKH)
kʷac l əpiət laːŋ Stieng
ɔndo̞ːl
m ᵊham ko ᵒ̞n soʷ poan koʷ mej
ᵐʔəj kʷac pa ᵋlᵊpiɜt raʷ Stieng
(TPS) ɔ̝l
koan
ᵐhaːm ɜᵘ pu ɜn
k ɜ̝u
ᵐbɛː kʷac lapi ɜt laŋ Stieng
k ɔndʊl
ᵐhaːm (KRG) ko ᵊn so̞ː
pu ᶟn ko̞ː
(OAM) po̞l
kʷaːc l ᵊpiːɜt raʷ Ra’ong
ᵐhaːm k ɔːn
paⁱlpiᵊt raw Mnong
p (SRL)
ʊl
ᵐᵊhaːm k ɔn
soː pʷoan k ɔ
mhe
kwac
raw (DCL)
mpjăt Mel
pwăn trôko mhe
kwak
k (RLS)
l ᵊpiət ᵊraw Mel
ətʊːl
m əhaːm kɔːn
s ɔː
ɓuən
k ɔː məhae kəwaːc
m ᵊheː kʷaːc l ᵊpiət raw Mel
k ᵊtʊːl ᵑhãːm k ɒːn
s ɒː puən
(OKG)
m ᵊhɛː k ᵊkwac l ᵊpiɜt ʀaʷ Khaonh
k (STH)
ɔnɗʊl
ᵑhãːm k ɒːn
s ɒː puən
k ɒː
ᵐpeæt ʀaw Thmon
k (CHK)
əndʊl
ŋhaːm kawn saw poan kaːw məhae kwaːc
l (MMM) ᵊhaj kʷat ᵊpiɜt raʷ Stieng
ɗʊl
ᵐhaːm kaʷn caʷ pu ᵊn kaʷ m
ᵐbiːt laːŋ Stieng
k (KTT)
ɔnt̪ʊːl
ⁿhaːm k ɔːn
so̞ː
ɟik
ko̞ː ᵐbᵉɛː kwac
ⁿdʊːl ᵐhaːm k ɔːn
s ɔ̝ːᵘ s
k ɔ̝ːᵘ m ɛːᵉ kwaːc
ᵐbiːt leaŋ
(TKR)
Breathy syllables with initial stop consonants were reinterpreted as allowing for both voiced and voiceless initial stops. Where [h] is interpreted as a segment in some of the languages and corresponds regularly to an aspirated stop in other languages this is interpreted as an aspirated stop.
2.3.2 Procedure
Bahnaric languages, like other Mon-Khmer languages, are sesquisyllabic. Sesquisyllabic languages have a minor syllable and a major syllable. The minor syllable comes first and is unstressed while the following major syllable is stressed. Over time, these minor syllables are subject to innovation and sometimes collapse onto the main syllable, while the major syllable is usually retained and can be reliably reconstructed. In some Mon-Khmer varieties the minor syllable may be lost entirely. In Proto South Bahnaric, Sidwell (Sidwell 2000:15) states:
Often the main syllables correspond regularly and it is only the minor syllables which do not agree. In these cases it is obvious that there is one root with different prefixes, and it is straightforward to reconstruct alternate protoforms with the same main syllable, e.g. *p ɑːŋ~*nəpɑːŋ~*pəpɑːŋ ʻpalm, sole’… the main syllable *pɑːŋ is reconstructed securely, and it may or may not have occurred with the minor syllables indicated.
Since the non-main syllables can often obscure the historical relationship between languages, the non-main syllables should be removed in the first phase of the lexical comparison. Consider for example, the following dataset of Bahnaric languages in table 5.
Table 5. Bahnaric lexical sets showing full forms ‘egg
‘root (tree)’
(chicken)’
TMP kaː katap ʔjɛr ʔmhmao pakaːw kanoŋ PKL
kaː
kətap ʔiɨ
təmuːc
pəkaw
əriɛh
RYA
kaː
kətap
tʰmow
təmaw
tɨmɔː
For the first word ‘fish’ the form is unambiguously monosyllabic, thus no further analysis is required and these forms can be directly compared. For the word ‘egg’, the word ‘chicken’ is sometimes included as an elaboration, variously [ ʔjɛr] and [ʔiɨ], these can be eliminated. Also, the minor syllable [ka] and [k ə] can be removed. The words for stone are more complicated with minor syllables variously [ʔmh], [t ə], [tʰ], and [tɨ] which can be removed. Considering the word forms for ‘flower’ the minor syllable has various forms [pa], [p ə], and [p], which can be eliminated. Finally, the word forms for ‘root’ have minor syllables with forms [ka] and [ ə], which can also be eliminated. Thus, these morphemes are ignored. Applying these basic steps, we can clarify the data by eliminating minor and supplemental syllables, as
shown in table 6. 5
5 While illustrating this procedure as though using hand methods, the analysis was performed by the lexical comparison program Cog (Daspit 2014).
Table 6. Bahnaric lexical sets showing roots
‘root (tree)’ TMP
‘fish’
‘egg (chicken)’
Considering that some forms may vary phonetically depending on the conventions of the team transcribing them, alternate comparison forms, one with an approximant and one with a vowel, were posited for ‘stone’ and ‘flower’. For these forms, the algorithm is optimized to use the most similar forms in the comparison. Furthermore, vowel length and breathiness are ignored. Thus, this set can be simplified into the following lexical set in table 7:
Table 7. Bahnaric lexical sets showing roots and simplifications
‘root (tree)’ TMP
‘fish’
‘egg (chicken)’ ‘stone’
kaw, kau
riɛh RYA
kaw, kau
riɛh SRL
ka
tap
mow, mou
kaw, kau
reəh TPS
ka
tap
maw, mau
kaw, kau
riəh BSR
kau, kaw
From the data shown in table 7 relationships between the word forms emerge. Using this data, a method adapted from Blair (Blair 1990:31–33) is applied to clarify which forms are lexically similar and which forms are not lexically similar. Table 8 shows the criteria used in this method:
Table 8. Criteria for lexical similarity
Criteria Category 1
a. Exact consonant matches
b. Vowels or diphthongs differing by one or fewer features
c. Phonetically similar consonants in three or more word pairs Category 2
a. Phonetically similar consonants in fewer than three word pairs
b. Vowels or diphthongs differing by two or more features Category 3
a. Non-phonetically similar consonants
b. A consonant correspondence with nothing in fewer than three word pairs Ignore
a. Non-root syllables (minor syllables and elaborative syllables)
b. A consonant correspondence with nothing in three or more word pairs
c. Interconsonantal schwa [ə]
d. Word initial, final, or intervocalic [h]
e. Vowel Length
f. Breathiness
g. [r] corresponding to nothing word final
h. [r] or [l] corresponding to nothing in a consonant cluster (C_)
i. Breathiness
For the Bahnaric wordlists, the phonetic inventory with phonetically similar segments (connected by lines) is shown for consonants in figure 1 and for vowels in figure 2.
Figure 1. Bahnaric consonant inventory. The following consonants occur word-finally [p, t, c, k, ʔ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, r, l, w, j, ç, x, h]. Of these
word-final consonants [x] is limited in distribution to occurring only in the word-final position in a few cases. The recurrence of some sound correspondences is limited to specific environments. For example, the [s–c] relationship is prevalent word-initially while the [t– k] and [ç–h] relationships are evidenced word-finally. In addition to these vowels there is an abundance of diphthongs with [au] being the most common.
Figure 2. Bahnaric vowel inventory.
Returning to the Bahnaric dataset, the lexical similarity of word forms can be established based on the criteria from table 9. This yields the result shown in table 10.
Table 9. Lexical similarity criteria application ‘fish’ ‘egg (chicken)’ ‘stone’
‘root (tree)’ TMP-PKL
‘flower’
1a,1b,3b 1a,1b,1a 3a,2b,3a TMP-RYA
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
1a,1b,1a 3a,2b,3a TMP-SRL
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a 3a,1b,3a TMP-TPS
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a 3a,1b,3a TMP-BSR
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
1a,1b
3a,2b,3a PKL-RYA
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
3a,2b,3b 1a,1b
1a,1b,3b 1a,1b,1a 1a,1b,1a PKL-SRL
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
1a,1b,3b 1a,1b,1a 1a,1b,1a PKL-TPS
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
1a,1b,3b 1a,1b,1a 1a,1b,1a PKL-BSR
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
1a,1b,1a RYA-SRL
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
3a,2b,3b 1a,1b
1a,1b,1a 1a,1b,1a RYA-TPS
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a 1a,1b,1a RYA-BSR
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a SRL-TPS
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
3a,2b,3b 1a,1b
1a,1b,1a 1a,1b,1a SRL-BSR
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a TPS-BSR
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
3a,2b,3b 1a,1b
1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
3a,2b,3b 1a,1b
1a,1b,1a
Once the categories have been assigned for all of the phones, a phone table is used to determine whether the words thus compared are lexically similar or not. This phone table (table 10) is based on the number of phones and specifies the minimum conditions the word forms must meet in order to be considered lexically similar.
Table 10. Phone table for lexical similarity Phones Category 1
Category 2
Category 3
Applying the constraints in table 10 to our data, we see the results shown in table 11.
Table 11. Lexical similarity analysis ‘egg
‘root (tree)’
(chicken)’
TMP-PKL
NOT SIM TMP-RYA
NOT SIM TMP-SRL
NOT SIM TMP-TPS
NOT SIM TMP-BSR
NOT SIM PKL-RYA
LEX SIM PKL-SRL
LEX SIM PKL-TPS
LEX SIM PKL-BSR
LEX SIM RYA-SRL
LEX SIM RYA-TPS
LEX SIM RYA-BSR
LEX SIM SRL-TPS
LEX SIM SRL-BSR
LEX SIM TPS-BSR
In table 11 ‘LEX SIM’ means the word pairs are lexically similar, and ‘NOT SIM’ means the word pairs are not lexically similar. From the composite of all these variety comparisons using the root forms, we compute the percentage of lexical similarity and generate the lexical matrix (tables 14 and 15). The number of root forms compared for this report is 85, following the methodology used by Julie Barr (Barr and Pawley 2013). All of the comparisons between wordlists are of 80–85 items, except for the comparison between Mel-Srae Tahaenh and Bunong-Ou Rona (66 items compared) and the comparison between Mel-Srae Tahaenh and Bunong Preh-VN (67 items compared).
2.4 Comprehension test
The method we used for comprehension testing generally follows Angela Kluge’s retelling method (Kluge 2007). We used a story recorded in Paklae village to test how well Khaonh people in Chhork village understood Mel language from Paklae village. The Paklae story was told by an ethnic Mel woman, about age 50, who had always lived in Paklae village and whose parents were both ethnic Mel and from Paklae village. The story was approximately three minutes of narrative about a time when thieves came to her house. We roughly transcribed the story and translated it word by word so that we had a good idea about the content of the story, phrase by phrase. With this understanding, we divided the story into 15 segments ranging from 6 to 17 seconds (average 12 seconds).
We made this recording into a test that we could score by first playing the story, segment by segment, for eleven ethnic Mel speakers from Paklae, and, in turn, ask them to repeat, or re-tell, exactly what they had heard in each segment immediately after listening to it. Because most people in Paklae are quite proficient in Khmer language, we had them re-tell the Mel segments in Khmer language, so their re-telling involved recalling and translating at the same time; however, this was apparently easy for all of them. When each person re-told each segment in Khmer, we wrote down everything he/she said. Then, the details of the story that at least nine out of eleven people re-told were counted as points by which to score the test. For example, in segment number nine, all eleven people in Paklae mentioned something about someone being “afraid,” and ten people mentioned the sequence “take off necklace and put it into the wall.” So, when we scored responses from Chhork village for that segment, we gave the responses one point for mentioning “afraid” and one point for “take off necklace and put it into the wall.” If the Chhork response did not mention either of these elements, they received no points for
Mel speakers from Paklae. In all 15 segments, there were 26 elements re-told by at least nine of the eleven Paklae people, and so there were 26 possible points for the test.
Before we asked the eleven people in Paklae to re-tell the story in order to identify the elements/points in each segment, we gave them a practice test, asking them to retell segments of a short Khmer story we made up. We kept going through the practice test with each person until he/she understood what to do and could retell accurately what was in each segment. If the person did not really get the process or did not re-tell accurately, we did not use his/her responses for scoring. The eleven people in Paklae that passed the practice testing and were scored were all ethnic Mel from Paklae village and spoke Mel language from childhood.
Before we gave this Paklae comprehension test to people in Chhork and Kasang, we made sure they also understood the test procedure by using the same Khmer language practice test, and we also gave them a control test—a test of their own language variety—which we could compare with their score on the Paklae variety test. Normally, this control test of their own language variety would be based on a story in the Khaonh language as spoken in Chhork village. However, because Khmer has become the primary language used by most people in Chhork village, we decided to use a Khmer language story as the control test. We made the assumption that everyone in Chhork speaks Khmer with high or near native proficiency, and therefore we expected that the people we tested in Chhork should get close to 100 percent on a Khmer test, higher than we expected that they would score on a Khaonh test. Our justification for this assumption was 1) what people reported in the group interview about their proficiency in Khmer and Khaonh; 2) our observation that it was easy to communicate with people in Khmer; and 3) our impression that the story teller from Chhork—an older Khaonh woman that the group we interviewed had put forward as a good Khaonh story teller—was actually more fluent in Khmer than Khaonh because she used Khmer more. Furthermore, the village leader could only come up with a list of about 15 older people in Chhork village who really know Khaonh language and could take the comprehension test. So, we concluded that Khmer is the language Khaonh people in Chhork village, as a whole, are most proficient in. Therefore, we used Khmer for the control test story rather than Khaonh.
We gave the Khmer practice test, the Khmer control test, and the Mel test from Paklae to six people in Chhork village. All six of these people were from Chhork, were ethnic Khaonh, and were recommended by the village leader as people who could speak Khaonh proficiently. All six of them understood the testing process and could re-tell accurately, judging by their performance on the practice test. Also, all six of them were between 53 and 63 years old. We wanted to test ten people, but the other
15 people on the village leader’s list of proficient Khaonh speakers were not able to master the practice test, were hearing impaired, were not in the village, did not want to take the test, or said they did not really know Khaonh language. So, we found three more people to test in Kasang village. The Khaonh people in Kasang village speak Khaonh in the same way as Chhork people, and the three individuals we tested were actually born in Chhork village. We wanted to test more people in Kasang, so that we could have a total of ten scores for the Paklae test, but we ran out of time.
We ended up with seven valid scores for the Paklae test. One of the eight Khaonh people that took the Paklae test did not score above 82 percent on the Khmer control test, so we did not include her score in the analysis.
3 Language varieties, intelligibility, and acceptance
One goal of our research was to find out how well speakers of Mel and Khaonh varieties understand each other as a basis for defining groups of people that could potentially use the same language materials. To do that, we interviewed groups of about ten to thirty people representing Mel/Khaonh people in their villages, we compared wordlists, and we tested how well Khaonh people understand Mel language as spoken in Paklae village.
3.1 Varieties of Mel and Khaonh
There are three main groups of Mel people: those from Roluos village, those from Paklae, and those from Changhab. Mel people in other villages, such as Srae Tahaenh or Ou Krieng, used to live in the same villages with people from Roluos, Paklae, or Changhab and separated in the relatively recent past. In all of the Mel villages we went to—Roluos, Paklae, Changhab, and Srae Tahaenh—there is a shared understanding that there is a Mel ethnic group as well as a Mel language, the language that Mel people traditionally speak. There is also an understanding that the three groups speak differently from each other, and there are unique ethnic/language names for the three groups. Mel people agree that all of the Mel varieties are mutually intelligible, though people have different ideas about how well they understand each other, and people have different ideas about what the differences in vocabulary and pronunciation are between the different varieties.
There is one main group of ethnic Khaonh people in Cambodia, the people that are associated with Chhork village, both the people that presently live in Chhork and those that separated after the time of the Khmer Rouge, such as the people in Kasang village. Accordingly, Khaonh people perceive no variation in the way Khaonh is spoken—they all speak the same way, they say.
3.1.1 Roluos perceptions
Mel people in Roluos village call themselves and their language Mel, which, apart from being their name, does not have any meaning. They said that the Mel people from Paklae call them “Mel Kachroung.” “Kachroung” means something like “support each other in unity,” and they accept that longer name for themselves as well, though their practice in the interviews was to refer to themselves simply as Mel.
The people in Roluos consider the Mel people in Paklae and Changhab, as well as the Khaonh people, to all have a common origin with themselves. One elderly man in the group interview said that the Arach (from Paklae), the Kachrouk (from Changhab), and the Khaonh people are all Mel, but they separated from each other and acquired different names.
“Arach” and “Mel Arach” are names that Mel people in Roluos use to refer to the Mel people in Paklae, though they can and do call them simply “Mel” as well. The Roluos group said that the name Arach means “laugh.” We asked if it were acceptable to call Roluos people “Arach,” and some people did not think it would be bad, but their conclusion was that Roluos people are not Arach. One man from Roluos, in informal conversation, said that “Arach” is what the Kraol people call the Mel people, and he added that Onchrouk is another “funny” name for Mel people in Rolous. He also said that Kraol people call Khmer people “Phrum.” The Roluos group described the Paklae way of speaking as noisy and like quarreling.
The group interviewed said that the Paklae speech is heavy sounding, while Roluos speaking is soft. In comparison with Changhab, they said people in Paklae sound curt and loud, less friendly. We asked how well children in Roluos can understand Paklae speaking and the group said children in Roluos do not really speak Mel, they always use Khmer, so they would not understand Mel from Paklae, or anywhere, very well. But older people from Roluos that do speak Mel can understand most of what Paklae people say.
“Kachrouk” and “Mel Kachrouk” are names that refer to Mel people in Changhab village, the Roluos group said, but they think it is acceptable to just call them “Mel.” They do not know what “Kachrouk” means. In describing the way the Changhab language sounds, people commented that it sounds more musical, more friendly, not loud like Paklae, and that Changhab people use long words. They also described Changhab speech as heavier than both Roluos and Paklae. The Roluos group interview participants estimated that old people in Roluos can understand about 70 percent of what Mel people from Changhab say.
Khaonh people speak a “mixed language,” according to an elderly man in the Roluos group interview. He explained that Khaonh language sounds like a mix between Mel, Bunong, and Kraol languages. One elderly woman said that Khaonh people speak very differently, but an elderly man Khaonh people speak a “mixed language,” according to an elderly man in the Roluos group interview. He explained that Khaonh language sounds like a mix between Mel, Bunong, and Kraol languages. One elderly woman said that Khaonh people speak very differently, but an elderly man
Out of all these varieties of speaking, Mel people from Roluos think that their way of speaking Mel is the most correct. But, they perceive that they are losing the Mel language in Roluos and that the Mel language in Paklae village is more vital. They would be very happy if the Mel language were preserved, and they think that Paklae people might have the best chance of preserving the Mel language. If the Roluos people heard Paklae people speaking Mel on a radio broadcast, they said they would be happy to listen to that.
3.1.2 Paklae perceptions
Mel people in Paklae identify themselves as ethnic Mel, along with the Mel people in Roluos, Changhab, and Srae Tahaenh villages. When we asked them which villages speak the same language, their first response was only Roluos and themselves, but when we asked how they grouped other villages, they said Changhab and Srae Tahaenh also speak the same language. They said that all of these Mel villages speak Mel language, but they speak differently. Paklae people recognize three groups of Mel people and language. Roluos people are called Mel Kanh Chrong, and the way they speak is “light.” Changhab people are called Mel Kachrouk, and the way they speak Mel is very different from Paklae—long, quiet, and heavy. Paklae people are called Mel Arach. They said “arach” means “laugh,” but they do not know of any meaning for “Mel.” They see the name Arach or Mel Arach as a name that was used more in the past; in the group interview they usually called themselves Mel.
We asked how well children from Paklae can understand the other groups, and they replied that their children can understand people from Roluos well, but they can only understand some of what Changhab people say. Neither children nor adults can understand Khaonh, they said.
Out of all of the varieties of Mel language, Paklae people think that their way of speaking Mel is the right way because it is not “mixed” like the way Roluos people speak. They think that if someone were to develop a written form of Mel language, it should follow the way they speak in Paklae.
3.1.3 Changhab perceptions
Mel people in Changhab include themselves in the same Mel ethnic group as Mel people in Roluos, Paklae, and Srae Tahaenh. The seven or so people we interviewed as a group said that they call themselves (and other people can call them) Mel or Mel Kachrouk. They do not know what “Mel” or “Kachrouk” means. But, they said calling them “Kachrouk” is like Khmer calling Vietnamese people “Yuon,” a Khmer word that means Vietnamese and is sometimes used in a derogatory way. Nevertheless, they said they are not offended or angry if people call them Mel Kachrouk. In regard to language, their point of view is that they and the Mel people in the other villages speak the same language, but in different ways.
They recognize the names “Mel Arach” and “Arach” as referring to the Mel people in or from Paklae, and their language. But they did not know what “Arach” means; it is not a word in Mel language, they said. The group we talked with perceives the Paklae way of speaking to be different from the Changhab way of speaking, comparing the difference between them to the difference between North and South Vietnamese. They further described Mel language from Paklae to be like religious language from ancient times, like “old language,” and as similar to Kraol language, which makes it less pure than the Mel spoken in Changhab.
The Changhab people said they rarely meet people from Paklae, maybe once or twice each year, and they only meet people from Roluos when those people stop in Changhab on the way to Kratie town. They think that Mel language from Roluos is even more different than Mel from Paklae, estimating that they can understand 90 percent of what Paklae people say, but only 50 percent of what Roluos people say. One older man said that Roluos people speak Mel, but when he talks to them when they stop on their way to town he can only understand 1 percent. The group conveyed to us that their way of speaking Mel in Changhab is pure and the most correct.
Mel people in Srae Tahaenh and Kbal Chuor villages came from Changhab, for the most part, the group participants said, so the way they speak is the same as Changhab. When we asked the Changhab group about Khaonh people, they said they do not have contact with them and that they speak a different language, of which they only understand one or two words. One man said he met Khaonh people during the French colonial time, and he remembered that when they said “go today” he thought they were saying “go tomorrow.”
3.1.4 Chhork perceptions
The Khaonh people in Chhork village identify themselves as ethnic Khaonh people and they call their traditional language Khaonh as well. They said that the name “Khaonh” does not have any meaning. Chhork people include the Khaonh people from Kasang, Kaoh Dach, and Changkrang villages in the same ethnic group as themselves, and they say that they all speak Khaonh language in exactly the same way. We asked the group interview participants if there is anything unique about the Khaonh people that separates them from other ethnic groups, besides the language. They said that Khaonh people make a kind of offering to spirits that Bunong people do not make, though they said Kraol people do something similar.
The Khaonh people in Chhork are aware of Mel people in Changhab, Paklae, and Roluos, and they have some ideas about who those people are and what they speak, but they said in the group interview that they do not have much contact with them. For example, they said that they never visit Changhab and Changhab people never come to Chhork; they only heard about Changhab people from their parents. Their understanding is that the people in Changhab speak Kraol language. Their perception of Paklae people is that Paklae people speak Arach language, which they described as heavier than Khaonh. They estimate they understand about 70 percent of what Paklae people say. A man who went to Paklae said
he and the Paklae people had difficulty communicating when using Mel/Khaonh. He could understand some, but he could not speak the way they speak, so they ended up using Khmer language with each other. About Srae Tahaenh village, Chhork people think that the Mel people there speak Kachrouk language, which they also described as heavier than Khaonh.
Going by the group interview discussion, out of all of these varieties of language, the Khaonh people in Chhork think that Khmer language is most acceptable. They think Khmer sounds good, and they use Khmer more than Khaonh language, which they think is second best. They prefer Khmer over Khaonh because Khaonh has no alphabet, they explained.
3.1.4.1 Khaonh responses to a Paklae recording Five Khaonh people from Chhork village and three from Kasang village took a comprehension test of Mel
language from Paklae village. In addition, after the comprehension test, we asked them some questions about the language in the test story they had just heard.
After they had taken the test, one of the later questions we asked was if they had ever met Mel people and heard the Mel language. Five of the eight said they had never met Mel speakers. One of those five had never met Mel speakers herself, but her mother has siblings living in Paklae. The other three test-takers had met Mel speakers in Paklae or Changhab, to buy animals, or in the forest. Two of the test- takers have relatives living in Paklae.