Khmer-English Electronic Translator - translator, dictionary in your hand

D-8 Cambodian (Khmer) English Electronic Translator Dictionary is a handy device to learn English and Khmer. It is designed to teach the English speaker the Khmer language, and is equally useful for the Khmer speaker to learn English. It talks and translates both languages with real human voices speaking at normal talking speed. Pronunciation is clear and by native speakers.

Translated text is in both English and Khmer letters on a black and white screen. There is no colour screen, but this a plus point because it uses AA batteries, so battery power can be extended. Romanised script for the Khmer word and sentence appears below the Khmer writing, so that you can read along with the pronunciation, if you can't read the Khmer writing.

In built in the device are two English dictionaries: Oxford American English Dictionary and the Collins British English Dictionary. This is useful as Cambodians tend to prefer American English, but all books teaching English at beginner and intermediate levels come from the United Kingdom. The learner of English will benefit from having both dictionaries at his fingertips.

The keyboard uses the Qwerty layout for English. Printed on top of each key is the Khmer letters. The layout of the Khmer keyboard is similar to the Khmer Unicode or Limon input systems. Anyone who can type in Khmer will be able to use this very easily. Since the Khmer alphabet is phonetic, with a bit of effort, even the beginner learner of Khmer will be able to type in a text after a few lessons.

Thousands of words and phrases, verb conjugations, noun and adjective inflections for English are included in this pocket device. It also functions as an organiser: calendar, calculator, measurement converter, six games, ebook reader. No internet connection is required for it to function. You can even take it to a remote jungle and use it, as long as you pack some spare batteries with you.

Business travellers, tourists, Khmer or English language learners will all benefit from this handy electronic device. Legal terms and governmental words can also be found here. Most useful and reasonably priced. It is considered a best-seller for Khmer and English languages.

Buy your device here today!

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Expat child in local school

More and more foreigners are choosing to call Singapore home for the long haul. The whole family comes as a package, so schooling is a big priority for these families. Singapore is proud to be chosen as a good place to bring up children. More importantly, many expatriates are finding that local school education is a better alternative to international schools. Why?

The beauty of Singapore is its multi-cultural landscape and people. Local schools offer complete integration into the local lifestyle, good quality education (that even the Americans want to learn from), and Chinese language. Parents no longer think of how their children will fit in back home but how well their children will be able to fit into a global workforce in the future. Bilingualism is the way to go.

Start the child speaking before three years old and he will have no problem with learning another language. This South African family has found this to be true for their two older children. They will soon be trilingual: English, Chinese, Afrikaans.

Have fun learning a new language!

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Tell Me More software - helps you learn more

Tell Me More language learning software is less well known than Rosetta Stone, but it is considered one of the top of the line packages available today. Available in nine languages, the entire package is interactive and well done. They even offer English as a Second Language for non-English speakers.

Priced similar to Fluenz and Rosetta Stone, it is not cheap, but offers a comprehensive language learning lesson in a box. There are various levels of lessons to choose from: beginner to advanced. I tried out the beginner lessons, since I know almost no French.

From the first word, you will learn to speak, read and write French. The only problem is there is no explanation on the French alphabet or pronunciation. Somehow, the "teacher" expects you to know which letter with the correct symbol to choose. I got it correct for the greetings, but I imagine that spelling will get more difficult as the lessons progress. If you don't explain the alphabet to me, how can I learn to spell correctly? For that matter, my pronunciation will also be affected as I don't know how to sound out each letter.

In each part of the lesson there is audio and pictures, along with the written sentences. What is puzzling is I am expected to guess the correct sentence when I've only been taught one of the sentences and not the others. You can right click on the word to get the pronunciation and translation into English, but simply by looking at the picture, you could end up with the wrong answer. Once you have clicked on the answer, a "Check Your Answer" box pops up. Click on the box to see if you got it right. If you did not, a yellow "Show Solution" box will pop up to show you the correct answer. Once you have got the correct answer, a green box will pop up to tell you you're correct and can move on to the next part of the lesson.

The software is interactive, so there is a voice recording function to record your voice and play it back. In both the native speaker's pronunciation and yours, the wave forms will be shown. I didn't find this useful as I have no idea how to interpret the wave form and adjust my pronunciation accordingly. The software will tell you on a coloured scale if your pronunciation meets the minimum standard. If it's blue, you have to keep repeating till it turns green before you can carry on. I found the Adobe Flash microphone a pain. It worked well on single syllable words but failed to pick up the first syllable in multi-syllable words. I had to speak loudly for it to pick up my voice. If I spoke too loudly, a box would pop up saying that there is a possible problem with my microphone. Word endings were not picked up either. I ended up getting fed up after about 3-4 attempts and moved on without "completing" that section.

At the end of the entire lesson, a graph will show how much of the lesson you have completed (meaning how much you got correct) and what lessons need to be repeated. The only problem is that when you click on "continue", it makes you repeat the entire lesson instead of allowing you to choose only those parts that you failed to get correct. I suppose if you're a serious learner of the language, repetition will help you remember.

Overall, Tell Me More language learning software is an excellent package. The beauty of this software lies in the fact that you can choose the language of instruction. If you don't know English, you can choose Chinese, Japanese, Italian, etc, as the medium of instruction, whereas Fluenz and Rosetta Stone are entirely from the English-speaker's standpoint. At the end of the entire set of lessons, you will have mastered the language you are learning. Well worth the money spent.

Have fun learning a language!

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Use stamps to learn sign language

Singapore has just launched a new set of stamps to teach people sign language phrases. What a great way to learn!

You can also learn to sign properly and be of service to the hearing impaired!

Have fun talking with your hands!

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Is Matt Redman Chinese in his thinking?

Matt Redman and his Grammy awards

Contemporary Gospel music singer and song writer, Matt Redman, recently won two Grammy's for his song "10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)". I love this song. I sing it often and have heard many groups sing it too. What struck me last Saturday as we were singing the song was, "I wonder if Matt Redman is Chinese?"

Silly thought. Of course not!

What triggered that thought was his use of the phrase "10,000 Reasons". In Chinese, we use the number 10,000 or 万 to describe "everything", "all", or anything uncountable. We do have words for numbers greater than 10,000, but somehow, 10,000 is good enough to describe what cannot be counted, which is precisely what Matt was trying to describe. We have an infinite number of reasons to bless God.

I remembered my friend had posted a link for the Chinese translation of Matt's song. I hunted it down and found it. The Taiwanese did an excellent translation, as they always do. Since "ten thousand" has way more syllables than 万 in Chinese, they used 上万 instead, which simply means "tens of thousands". How good can it get? Whichever word you use, it still means the same. There are infinite reasons to bless the Lord.

Matt Redman is definitely not Chinese, but the way he writes song lyrics certainly is! So, who said English (west) and Chinese (east) may never meet?

Have fun learning a new language to bless the Lord!

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Start language before age three

The Straits Times, Singapore, 11 June 2013

At the recent International Symposium on Bilingualisam held in Singapore, experts say that children learn language best before the age of three. To help them learn a language well at that young age, it is best to speak to the child in the language you are strongest in. If you speak in a language that you are not fluent in, the child will learn all your mistakes and be limited in his/her vocabulary.

At that age, the child is simply a sponge, not a thinking individual. What the experts advise is probably correct. I have heard of children growing up in a bilingual household from birth. One parent speaks to the child in one language and the other parent speaks to the child in another language. As the child grows up, he will speak to either parent in the language he has heard out of that parent's mouth from birth. He becomes effectively bilingual without even realising that he is so.

Miracle? Not really. It's just how we're wired, I suppose. My Filipino friends have lived in Vietnam for many years. Both speak Vietnamese fluently. When their two children were born in Vietnam, they decided to speak English at home, instead of Tagalog, their native language. The children picked up Vietnamese from their domestic help and local friends. When it was time for school, the mother began an uphill battle to teach them Filipino (the national language of The Philippines, known locally as Tagalog). I suppose to their young minds, they saw no need to learn their native language when they live in Vietnam and mix around local people, not Filipinos. Hiring a Filipino teacher to teach them didn't help the process. Should the parents have made a different decision? Only parents can make that decision, not anyone else.

My aunt and uncle bought many DVDs to teach children Mandarin for their granddaughter who has heard nothing but English since birth. The little girl had no interest in watching Mandarin lessons, preferring to watch DVDs on ballet and orchestra performances. One day, she suddenly pointed to one of the Mandarin DVDs and asked to watch it. That was the point of no return. At 10 now, she attends Mandarin lessons once a week and can write quite a few Chinese characters from memory, including her own name. While she may never be fluent since her home environment is purely English-speaking, she has an interest that could be pursued more aggressively in the near future.

If you want your child to be exposed to more than just one language or culture, start early. You may not know another language, but you can use children's DVDs, picture books, or even introduce your child to a foreign friend in your neighbourbood to get started. A whole world awaits you out there!

Happy learning a new language!

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"Human Japanese" - Sensei in a Box

Human Japanese 2.0
Human Japanese: This simple, affordable package to teach you Japanese is really a very good deal. 40 lessons are included in this package. It is excellent for the English speaking, absolute beginner or someone who needs a refresher course in Japanese. I took Japanese in university and never ever used it again. I can still read the Hiragana and Katakana characters, but my vocabulary is close to non-existent now. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this package reminded me of what has been hidden in the recesses of my mind. I enjoyed every lesson.

So what do you get anyway? The first lesson covers pronunciation. You can click on a word under "foreigner" and it will pronounce the word in an American accent. Click on the "native" and you will get the correct pronunciation. All voices are native Japanese. There is no voice recorder or playback for you to check your pronunciation, but that is about the only drawback of this package. After pronunciation is explained, we move on to handwriting. As with all Japanese classes, we begin with Hiragana, one of the three character sets used in Japanese writing.

I appreciated the tip to use a wooden pencil and square-lined paper to practice writing each character. It really does make a difference to the beginner who is used to writing the English alphabet and not drawing foreign characters. There is a story of a Japanese man who refused to marry a lady because she had poor handwriting. Beautiful handwriting is important to the Japanese, so little tips like this will help you be more accepted in Japanese society.

As you learn to write, you will also learn grammar, as explained from an English grammar point of view. Each part of the sentence is taken apart and explained in detail. This is vital because Japanese grammar is nothing like that of English. The verbs are at the end of the sentence. Tenses and verb forms are all at the end. As suggested in the lesson, do not try to understand Japanese grammar with English glasses on. Just learn it as it is. Learning will be much easier.

At the end of each lesson is a fun quiz to help you remember the lesson and reinforce what you have just learned. Each answer you input has a Japanese voice telling you if you are correct or wrong. Since you may not know what the voice is saying, it can be puzzling, but you'll get the hang of it after a few correct or wrong answers. That's all part of the immersion process.

On the side panel of every page is a search bar to look up any words in the lesson. The useful feature is like having a dictionary handy while going through the lesson.

A bonus to this package is the chapters on Japanese culture. These are inserted after every few lessons. Part of learning a language is learning a new culture. Every small detail is explained clearly, assuming you know nothing of Japan before embarking on this package. Little nuggets like this make the lessons come alive. It could also relieve the stress or boredom of handwriting and grammar.

However, do note that the approach to all lessons comes from the American point of view. Some analogies used are typically American, which the non-American may not understand or be familiar with. While I am exposed to American culture a lot, there were some examples that I could not relate to at all. If you can get past these minor irritations, this package is really a very good deal. The software is user friendly. Tech support responds immediately to questions. Photos are nice. Voices are clear. It is just like having a personal Japanese tutor, except that this is a teacher in a box. As with every language learning package, you can use other packages like Pimsleur to supplement your learning.

Learning Japanese will be a fun and successful experience!

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Keep repeating, it'll stick in your head eventually

Repetition is the mother of learning.

I don't know if that was ever said by anyone famous, but it's a phrase that's stuck in my head for years. If we repeat something often enough, we'll learn. Here's another version:

Practice makes perfect.

This truth applies to learning anything: language, skill, habit, schoolwork, geography, you name it. People say this to me often: "Oh, you're a linguist!" or "You have a natural flair for languages." Well, maybe or maybe not. If you asked any of my classmates from school, they'll laugh out loud in your face over that statement. One of my classmates told me her best memory of me in school was hiding a storybook inside my Chinese textbook and reading during Chinese class! Another classmate remarked recently, "Since when did you start speaking Malay?! You never took Malay in school! Now you're spouting Malay all over!"

They're both right. I was atrocious at anything other than English in school. I scraped through Chinese exams annually. I had a wonderful Taiwanese housewife who gave me a love for Chinese when I was 13 years old, but sadly, by that time, I was so far behind to be able to catch up and do well in Chinese.

I don't know when languages became easier for me, but I can honestly say that every language I've learned took hard work. Lots of repetition. Many, many nights of words floating in my head as I slept. Many mornings I woke up with foreign words running around in my mind, refusing to let me rest. This is why I firmly believe in the above two cliches. Repetition does allow for learning.

This is why I like this blog post Men need to hear things twice by my friend, Lloyd Estrada. He's talking about how men hear things and process them. Well, Lloyd and his wife, Dahl, are now fairly fluent Spanish speakers, having been at the language for a year now. Obviously, they had lots of repetition practice!

There is no substitute for plain hard work. Do you want to learn a language? Well, get moving!

The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. (Chinese saying)

Happy learning a language!

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Is your language corrupted?

A professional translator was lamenting to me recently. He is upset over the quality of younger translators who think they know their own language, Indonesian, well enough to translate from English to Indonesian orally. However, these youngsters actually don't know their home language well enough to speak a full sentence without using an English word somewhere. What's the problem? They studied in an English-speaking country for a few years and got so used to speaking English that they've forgotten how to string a proper sentence in their home language.

Let me give you some examples.
English speaker: The Gospel cannot be stopped.
Indonesian translator: Injil ini tidak bisa di-stop.

Why use the English word "stop" when you can use the Indonesian word "berhenti"?

Another example:
English speaker: I want to encourage you today.
Indonesian translator: Hari ini, saya mau men-encourage anda.

We feel sorry for the listeners who know no English. How will they understand the entire speech? Will they get anything out of it? Another Indonesian friend said to me that young people in the big cities of Indonesia will be able to understand English words used here and there, but those in the small towns or remote areas will have no clue what is being said. So, for their benefit alone, we should speak proper Indonesian, not corrupted Indonesian.

Language today is evolving. As the world becomes increasingly global and English is widely spoken everywhere, it is inevitable that our native languages end up being peppered with English words, instead of using the correct local equivalent. The question that must be asked then is "how pure can we keep a language?" What is the purpose of language to begin with? Is it simply for communication? If yes, then what form of communication? Written? Oral?

I think everyone will agree that written work should be kept pure, free of foreign words that have a local equivalent. A piece of written work is a formal piece of writing. Apart from typographical errors which must be avoided at all cost, the language used should be pure and unadulterated by foreign words.

If the communication is oral, then so too should be sentences be purely in that language. Do not "Indonesianise" words to make them sound "correct". An example would be in the second example above: "men-encourage". What's that? All the translator did was add the local prefix "men" to the English word "encourage" to make it sound right. Wrong. It just shows his lack of proficiency in the Indonesian language.

As we travel on this journey of language learning, let us do our best to learn a language well. Let us not show our laziness or refusal to go the extra mile, just because. At the end of the journey, we will be able to proudly say, "I can speak (language)!"

You can do it! Happy learning!

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Invite me or force me?

If you invite me to do something, do I have a choice to say 'yes' or 'no'? If the question is in English, the answer would be a definite "Yes, you have a choice". After all, you didn't say that I had to do it. I can always choose to say "no" if I don't feel like it or it is not convenient.

However, I have discovered this may not be true in other languages. I found that in two Asian languages (Khmer and Indonesian), when you say you are inviting someone to do something, it is simply being polite. In some instances, the thing you are invited to do is compulsory. Huh? I have reacted in one of two ways: frustration or laughter.

Let me give you examples of what I mean:
I was on a bus going from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The bus company is a Cambodian one, so the bus attendant gave instructions in both Khmer and English. As we approached the border crossing, the Attendant stood in front of the bus to give us passengers instructions when crossing the border. He was polite in saying in English: "When the bus stops at the border, you are invited to get off the bus and get your passport stamped at the checkpoint..." He repeated the same instructions in Khmer. Since I understand both English and Khmer, I knew that the English was simply a literal translation of the Khmer. Since I was sitting in the front row, I had to do all that I could to stop myself from bursting out laughing!

Why? Every passenger has to get off the bus to get his passport stamped at the border crossing. We have no choice! I was relating the story to my Filipino friends living in Phnom Penh, and they promptly burst out laughing when I got to "you are invited to get off the bus". If we don't have a choice in the matter, don't "invite" us, tell us politely!

Example 2: Each month, I receive an email and a phone text message informing me of the monthly meeting I must attend. The opening line always reads: "You are invited to the monthly Workers' Prayer Meeting ..." At the end of the email and the text message, this line appears: "Attendance is compulsory." When I first started receiving these messages, I was flabbergasted! As in the example above, my reaction was, "What do you mean 'invite' me then tell me that I have to go?!" The next reaction became frustration. The ones who crafted the messages are Indonesians who have varying levels of English proficiency. My Indonesian friend laughed at me. She explained that the use of the word "invite" in Indonesian denotes politeness. Yes, well, if used in English, it takes on an entirely different connotation! My last retort was that they need to study English all over again.

What's the problem here? We simply speak the foreign language in exactly the same way we would our native language. We literally translate the sentence in our heads, then speak it out, thinking it is correct. Wrong move! No two languages are exactly alike. We need to learn a language well enough to speak it the way it should be spoken. No word for word translations. Misunderstanding results when we think we know what we are saying but have actually unintentionally communicated the wrong message.

So what should the instructions or email/text message read in English?

When we arrive at the border crossing, please get off the bus and have your passport stamped by the Immigration Officer before boarding the bus again.

Kindly note that the monthly Workers' Prayer Meeting will be held as follows: (date, time, venue). Please note that attendance is compulsory.

At the end of the day, we're not all perfect. Learning is lifelong. Let's learn to laugh at ourselves and enjoy the learning journey! We'll get there someday.

Have fun learning a language!

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