Demand for Khmer spurs classes in town

By Nick Grabbe
Staff Writer

Published on November 10, 2006

When Surya Ry went with her parents to their native Cambodia last year, she couldn't speak with her cousins.

"Everyone else could speak Khmer and it was kind of weird," said the 14-year-old. "I felt ashamed because I couldn't talk back."

Now she's part of a group of students, ages 10 to 17, who get together every Thursday night in the Jones Library in Amherst to learn how to speak and write Khmer. Many of them can understand the language somewhat because their parents speak it to them, though they often respond in English.

Their volunteer teacher is Sokhen Mao, of Granby, a native of Cambodia who used to teach in the Amherst public schools. After the Jones Library class is over, he goes to the University of Massachusetts for a similar class with college students who grew up in the United States with Cambodian parents.

Chingy Zhao, 15, is taking the Khmer class because a lot of her friends are Cambodian and she wants to be able to underunderstand them better, she said. Her mother is Chinese and her father is Cambodian.

"(My father is) really proud of me" for wanting to learn Khmer, she said.

A group of Cambodians came to Amherst in the early 1980s, after fleeing war and political turmoil in their native country. There were Khmer classes in the public schools until 2003, when a ballot initiative turned the official focus to learning English.

Joanna Morse, a social studies teacher at Amherst Regional High School, visited Cambodia in 2002 while she was teaching in a refugee camp in Burma. When she came to Amherst the next year, she became the advisor to a club for students with Cambodian ancestry.

Last year, some of the students expressed an interest in studying the Khmer language. She got in touch with Mao and he agreed to teach them.

"I'm so impressed that after a full week of school, they come here in the evening and have the focus and energy to do this," Morse said. "There are a lot of other things they could do with their time."

Khmer is a difficult language to learn, she said. It has many vowel sounds and ways to combine consonants and bears no resemblance to English or other Western languages.

Luckar Thach, 17, finds it harder than his high school Spanish, which at least has nearly the same alphabet as English, he said. But he said he wants to be able to communicate better with his parents and perhaps visit Cambodia someday.

Sarah Yem, 17, started learning Khmer in elementary school.

"It's a part of me and I don't want to forget it," she said. As the most proficient student, she leaves the room for part of the class to tutor Darline Vuthy, 10, the youngest one.

"Teaching is always in my heart," said Mao, who now works for the Social Security Administration in Gardner. "When I heard the kids wanted to learn Khmer, since I'm still in town, I said I'm going to spend time with them."