Cambodia's Minority Languages Face Bleak Future

Two S'aoch children in their village in Cambodia. Neither of them speaks S'aoch, 19 Jan 2010 (Photo: VOA's R.Carmichael)

The United Nations' cultural agency UNESCO warns that 19 Cambodian languages are at risk of extinction

Phnom Penh 21 January 2010
By Robert Carmichael, VOA

More than 20 languages are spoken in Cambodia, but most are minority languages and face extinction in the coming decades. Robert Carmichael has this report from Phnom Penh.

Jean-Michel Filippi is in a race. As the foremost scholar of S'aoch, the language of one of Cambodia's minority tribes, he has only a few years to record the language before it may be lost forever. To date he has recorded 4,000 words in S'aoch. His next step is to write a grammar book on the language.

Filippi says just 10 people are fluent in S'aoch and none uses the language in their daily life. That makes S'aoch the most endangered language in Cambodia. In a decade it will likely be extinct.For him, recording the language is one way to preserve a cultural view of the world.

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