Sangkum era
100-517: Later political career The Sangkum Reastr Niyum ( Khmer : សង្គមរាស្ត្រនិយម , Sângkôm Réastrnĭyôm [sɑŋkɔm riəhnijɔm] , lit. ' Popular Community ' ; French : Communauté socialiste populaire ), usually translated as Popular (or People's ) Socialist Community and commonly known simply as the Sangkum ( Khmer : សង្គម , Sângkôm [sɑŋkɔm] ; lit. ' Society ' or ' Community ' ),
200-399: A High Middle Ages palace. Some writers of the "realist" strain of modern Arthurian fiction have attempted a more sensible Camelot. Inspired by Alcock's Cadbury-Camelot excavation, some authors such as Marion Zimmer Bradley and Mary Stewart place their Camelots in that place and describe it accordingly. Camelot lends its name to the musical Camelot , which was adapted into a film of
300-646: A minor (fully unstressed) syllable. Such words have been described as sesquisyllabic (i.e. as having one-and-a-half syllables). There are also some disyllabic words in which the first syllable does not behave as a minor syllable, but takes secondary stress . Most such words are compounds , but some are single morphemes (generally loanwords). An example is ភាសា ('language'), pronounced [ˌpʰiəˈsaː] . Words with three or more syllables, if they are not compounds, are mostly loanwords, usually derived from Pali, Sanskrit, or more recently, French. They are nonetheless adapted to Khmer stress patterns. Primary stress falls on
400-530: A minor syllable . The language has been written in the Khmer script , an abugida descended from the Brahmi script via the southern Indian Pallava script , since at least the 7th century. The script's form and use has evolved over the centuries; its modern features include subscripted versions of consonants used to write clusters and a division of consonants into two series with different inherent vowels . Khmer
500-645: A derivation from the British Iron Age and Romano-British place name Camulodunum , one of the first capitals of Roman Britain and which would have significance in Romano-British culture . Indeed, John Morris , the English historian who specialized in the study of the institutions of the Roman Empire and the history of Sub-Roman Britain , suggested in his book The Age of Arthur that as
600-474: A dialect. Western Khmer , also called Cardamom Khmer or Chanthaburi Khmer, is spoken by a very small, isolated population in the Cardamom mountain range extending from western Cambodia into eastern Central Thailand . Although little studied, this variety is unique in that it maintains a definite system of vocal register that has all but disappeared in other dialects of modern Khmer. Phnom Penh Khmer
700-661: A final consonant. All consonant sounds except /b/, /d/, /r/, /s/ and the aspirates can appear as the coda (although final /r/ is heard in some dialects, most notably in Northern Khmer ). A minor syllable (unstressed syllable preceding the main syllable of a word) has a structure of CV-, CrV-, CVN- or CrVN- (where C is a consonant, V a vowel, and N a nasal consonant). The vowels in such syllables are usually short; in conversation they may be reduced to [ə] , although in careful or formal speech, including on television and radio, they are clearly articulated. An example of such
800-696: A form of "crony socialism" analogous to crony capitalism : state enterprises were set up and then managed by members of the Sangkum elite, often for their own personal gain. State organisations set up under the Sangkum included OROC, the Office royale de coopération , which handled trade, import and export. In 1957, Sihanouk set up a youth wing of the Sangkum, known as the "Royal Khmer Socialist Youth" (French: Jeunesse socialiste royale khmère , JSRK). Sihanouk's method of alternately criticising his opponents in various public forums, and then of offering them posts within
900-482: A former Roman fort, is a likely location of King Arthur's Camelot and that " Slack , on the outskirts of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire ," is where Arthur would have held court. This is because of the name, and also regarding its strategic location: it is but a few miles from the extreme south-west of Hen Ogledd (also making close to North Wales ), and would have been a flagship point in staving off attacks to
1000-508: A location where Arthur holds court in the later romances, Carlisle and London perhaps being the most prominent. In the 15th century, the English writer Thomas Malory created the image of Camelot most familiar today in his Le Morte d'Arthur , a work based mostly on the French romances. He firmly identifies Camelot with Winchester in England, an identification that remained popular over
1100-441: A major Brittonic ruler and his war band from c. 470 . This early medieval settlement continued until around 580. The works were by far the largest known fortification of the period, double the size of comparative caers and with Mediterranean artefacts representing extensive trade and Saxon ones showing possible conquest. The use of the name Camelot and the support of Geoffrey Ashe helped ensure much publicity for
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#17327656123151200-533: A northern city based on the real Carlisle. Malory's identification of Camelot as Winchester was probably partially inspired by the latter city's history: it had been the capital of Wessex under Alfred the Great , and boasted the Winchester Round Table , an artefact constructed in the 13th century but widely believed to be the original by Malory's time. Caxton rejected the association, saying Camelot
1300-548: A permanent fixture in modern interpretations of the Arthurian legend. The symbolism of Camelot so impressed Alfred, Lord Tennyson that he wrote up a prose sketch on the castle as one of his earliest attempts to treat the legend. Modern stories typically retain Camelot's lack of precise location and its status as a symbol of the Arthurian world, though they typically transform the castle itself into romantically lavish visions of
1400-528: A powerful symbol of Arthur's court and universe. There is also a Kamaalot featured as the home of Percival 's mother in the romance Perlesvaus . In Palamedes and some other works, including the Post-Vulgate cycle, King Arthur's Camelot is eventually razed to the ground by the treacherous King Mark of Cornwall (who had besieged it earlier) in his invasion of Logres after the Battle of Camlann. In
1500-442: A typical Khmer declarative phrase is a steady rise throughout followed by an abrupt drop on the last syllable. Other intonation contours signify a different type of phrase such as the "full doubt" interrogative, similar to yes–no questions in English. Full doubt interrogatives remain fairly even in tone throughout, but rise sharply towards the end. Exclamatory phrases follow the typical steadily rising pattern, but rise sharply on
1600-452: A word is មនុស្ស mɔnuh, mɔnɨh, mĕəʾnuh ('person'), pronounced [mɔˈnuh] , or more casually [məˈnuh] . Stress in Khmer falls on the final syllable of a word. Because of this predictable pattern, stress is non- phonemic in Khmer (it does not distinguish different meanings). Most Khmer words consist of either one or two syllables. In most native disyllabic words, the first syllable is
1700-429: Is a zero copula language, instead preferring predicative adjectives (and even predicative nouns) unless using a copula for emphasis or to avoid ambiguity in more complex sentences. Basic word order is subject–verb–object (SVO), although subjects are often dropped ; prepositions are used rather than postpositions. Topic-Comment constructions are common and the language is generally head-initial (modifiers follow
1800-648: Is a classification scheme showing the development of the modern Khmer dialects. Standard Khmer , or Central Khmer , the language as taught in Cambodian schools and used by the media, is based on the dialect spoken throughout the Central Plain , a region encompassed by the northwest and central provinces. Northern Khmer (called Khmer Surin in Khmer) refers to the dialects spoken by many in several border provinces of present-day northeast Thailand. After
1900-579: Is a legendary castle and court associated with King Arthur . Absent in the early Arthurian material, Camelot first appeared in 12th-century French romances and, since the Lancelot-Grail cycle, eventually came to be described as the fantastic capital of Arthur's realm and a symbol of the Arthurian world. Medieval texts locate it somewhere in Great Britain and sometimes associate it with real cities, though more usually its precise location
2000-531: Is a member of the Austroasiatic language family, the autochthonous family in an area that stretches from the Malay Peninsula through Southeast Asia to East India. Austroasiatic, which also includes Mon , Vietnamese and Munda , has been studied since 1856 and was first proposed as a language family in 1907. Despite the amount of research, there is still doubt about the internal relationship of
2100-597: Is an Austroasiatic language spoken natively by the Khmer people . This language is an official language and national language of Cambodia . The language is also widely spoken by Khmer people in Eastern Thailand and Isan , Thailand , also in Southeast and Mekong Delta of Vietnam . Khmer has been influenced considerably by Sanskrit and Pali especially in the royal and religious registers , through Hinduism and Buddhism , due to Old Khmer being
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#17327656123152200-416: Is common, and the perceived social relation between participants determines which sets of vocabulary, such as pronouns and honorifics, are proper. Khmer differs from neighboring languages such as Burmese , Thai , Lao , and Vietnamese in that it is not a tonal language . Words are stressed on the final syllable, hence many words conform to the typical Mon–Khmer pattern of a stressed syllable preceded by
2300-423: Is contrastive before a vowel. However, the aspirated sounds in that position may be analyzed as sequences of two phonemes : /ph/, /th/, /ch/, /kh/ . This analysis is supported by the fact that infixes can be inserted between the stop and the aspiration; for example [tʰom] ('big') becomes [tumhum] ('size') with a nominalizing infix. When one of these plosives occurs initially before another consonant, aspiration
2400-586: Is no longer contrastive and can be regarded as mere phonetic detail: slight aspiration is expected when the following consonant is not one of /ʔ/, /b/, /d/, /r/, /s/, /h/ (or /ŋ/ if the initial plosive is /k/ ). The voiced plosives are pronounced as implosives [ɓ, ɗ] by most speakers, but this feature is weak in educated speech, where they become [b, d] . In syllable-final position, /h/ and /ʋ/ approach [ç] and [w] respectively. The stops /p/, /t/, /c/, /k/ are unaspirated and have no audible release when occurring as syllable finals. In addition,
2500-495: Is not described: A un jor d'une Acenssion / Fu venuz de vers Carlion / Li rois Artus et tenu ot / Cort molt riche a Camaalot, / Si riche com au jor estut. King Arthur, one Ascension Day, had left Caerleon and held a most magnificent court at Camelot with all the splendour appropriate to the day. Nothing in Chrétien's poem suggests the level of importance Camelot would have in later romances. For Chrétien, Arthur's chief court
2600-739: Is not revealed. Most scholars regard it as being entirely fictional, its unspecified geography being perfect for chivalric romance writers. Nevertheless, arguments about the location of the "real Camelot" have occurred since the 15th century and continue today in popular works and for tourism purposes. The name's derivation is uncertain. It has numerous different spellings in medieval French Arthurian romances, including Camaalot , Camalot , Chamalot , Camehelot (sometimes read as Camchilot ), Camaaloth , Caamalot , Camahaloth , Camaelot , Kamaalot , Kamaaloth , Kaamalot , Kamahaloth , Kameloth , Kamaelot , Kamelot , Kaamelot , Cameloth , and Gamalaot . Arthurian scholar Ernst Brugger suggested that it
2700-460: Is primarily an analytic , isolating language . There are no inflections , conjugations or case endings. Instead, particles and auxiliary words are used to indicate grammatical relationships. General word order is subject–verb–object , and modifiers follow the word they modify. Classifiers appear after numbers when used to count nouns, though not always so consistently as in languages like Chinese . In spoken Khmer, topic-comment structure
2800-622: Is probably based on his personal familiarity with the town and its Roman ruins ; it is less clear that Caerleon was associated with Arthur before Geoffrey. Several French romances ( Perlesvaus , the Didot Perceval attributed to Robert de Boron , and even the early romances of Chrétien such as Erec and Enide and Yvain, the Knight of the Lion ) have Arthur hold court at "Carduel in Wales",
2900-450: Is rendered as Camaloduno . Arthur's court at Camelot is mentioned for the first time in Chrétien's poem Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart , dating to the 1170s, though it does not appear in all the manuscripts. In the C manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, fonds français 794, folio 27r), which might in fact contain the proper reading of Chretien's original text, instead of
3000-582: Is spoken in the Se San , Srepok and Sekong river valleys of Sesan and Siem Pang districts in Stung Treng Province . Following the decline of Angkor, the Khmer abandoned their northern territories, which the Lao then settled. In the 17th century, Chey Chetha XI led a Khmer force into Stung Treng to retake the area. The Khmer Khe living in this area of Stung Treng in modern times are presumed to be
3100-421: Is spoken in the capital and surrounding areas. This dialect is characterized by merging or complete elision of syllables, which speakers from other regions consider a "relaxed" pronunciation. For instance, "Phnom Penh" is sometimes shortened to "m'Penh". Another characteristic of Phnom Penh speech is observed in words with an "r" either as an initial consonant or as the second member of a consonant cluster (as in
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3200-532: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 917. Even Colchester Museum argues strongly regarding the historical Arthur: "It would be impossible and inconceivable to link him to the Colchester area, or to Essex more generally," pointing out that the connection between the name Camulodunum and Colchester was unknown until the 18th century. Arthurian scholar Peter Field has suggested that another Camulodunum,
3300-656: The Mabinogion and perhaps first written in the 11th century, draws a dramatic picture of Arthur's hall and his many powerful warriors who go from there on great adventures, placing it in Celliwig , an uncertain locale in Cornwall . Although the court at Celliwig is the most prominent in remaining early Welsh manuscripts, the various versions of the Welsh Triads agree in giving Arthur multiple courts, one in each of
3400-545: The Tavola Ritonda , Camelot is abandoned and falls to ruin after the death of Arthur. From Geoffrey's grand description of Caerleon, Camelot gains its impressive architecture, its many churches and the chivalry and courtesy of its inhabitants. Geoffrey's description in turn drew on an already established tradition in Welsh oral tradition of the grandeur of Arthur's court. The tale Culhwch and Olwen , associated with
3500-549: The Khmer Empire . The Northern Khmer dialect is spoken by over a million Khmers in the southern regions of Northeast Thailand and is treated by some linguists as a separate language. Khmer Krom, or Southern Khmer, is the first language of the Khmer of Vietnam , while the Khmer living in the remote Cardamom Mountains speak a very conservative dialect that still displays features of the Middle Khmer language. Khmer
3600-453: The Marxist variant nor with Anglo-Saxon " welfare socialism". Lacking a consistent political philosophy, it combined pseudo-socialist slogans with conservative social values , monarchism , nationalism and Theravada Buddhist teachings. It was stated that administrators would be " socialists for the well-being of the people and royalists for the prestige and cohesion of the nation". At
3700-620: The Second Indochina War also had a destabilising effect on both the political situation and the Cambodian economy. The Sangkum found itself locked in an increasingly bitter struggle with what it represented as 'foreign' elements of the Viet Minh and Pathet Lao within Cambodia: speaking on Phnom Penh radio after a group of Vietnamese communists was captured, Sihanouk stated that "I had them roasted [...] we had to feed them to
3800-476: The [r] is dropped and the vowel begins by dipping much lower in tone than standard speech and then rises, effectively doubling its length. Another example is the word រៀន [riən] ('study'), which is pronounced [ʀiən] , with the uvular "r" and the same intonation described above. Khmer Krom or Southern Khmer is spoken by the indigenous Khmer population of the Mekong Delta , formerly controlled by
3900-421: The elision of /r/ . Intonation often conveys semantic context in Khmer, as in distinguishing declarative statements , questions and exclamations. The available grammatical means of making such distinctions are not always used, or may be ambiguous; for example, the final interrogative particle ទេ /teː/ can also serve as an emphasizing (or in some cases negating) particle. The intonation pattern of
4000-600: The monarchy , and a conservative interpretation of Buddhism . The Sangkum came into existence after Sihanouk stepped down from the throne in 1955 in favour of his father Norodom Suramarit , with the intention of concentrating on politics. The movement was based on four small monarchist, rightist parties, including the Victorious Northeast party of Dap Chhuon and the Khmer Renovation party of Lon Nol . Sihanouk broadened this political base into
4100-520: The "Carduel" of the French romances. The Lancelot-Grail cycle and the texts it influenced depict the city of Camelot as standing along a river, downstream from Astolat . It is surrounded by plains and forests, and its magnificent cathedral, St. Stephen's , originally established by Josephus , the son of Joseph of Arimathea , is the religious centre for Arthur's Knights of the Round Table . There, Arthur and Guinevere are married and there are
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4200-497: The 15th century, with its earlier name being Carmore or Carmure . Graham Phillips rejected the word "Camelot" entirely as just Chrétien's invention and instead proposed the old Roman city of Viroconium (near Shrewsbury in modern England) as Arthur's capital, citing archaeological evidence of a grand palace having been in use around 500 AD. Alistair Moffat identified Camelot with Roxburgh in Scotland. Camelot has become
4300-451: The 9th century until the 13th century. The following centuries saw changes in morphology , phonology and lexicon . The language of this transition period, from about the 14th to 18th centuries, is referred to as Middle Khmer and saw borrowings from Thai in the literary register. Modern Khmer is dated from the 19th century to today. The following table shows the conventionally accepted historical stages of Khmer. Just as modern Khmer
4400-781: The Celtic kingdoms from the Angles and others. Other places in Britain with names related to "Camel" have also been suggested, such as Camelford in Cornwall, located down the River Camel from where Geoffrey places Camlann, the scene of Arthur's final battle. The area's connections with Camelot and Camlann are merely speculative. Further north, Camelon and its connections with Arthur's O'on have been mentioned in relation to Camelot, but Camelon may be an antiquarian neologism coined after
4500-525: The English county of Lancashire . The Camelot Group was the first operator of the UK National Lottery with lottery machines named after characters, places, and objects in Arthurian legend. In American contexts, Camelot era refers to the presidency of John F. Kennedy . In a 1963 Life interview, Jacqueline , his widow, referenced a line from the Lerner and Loewe musical to describe
4600-513: The English word "bread"). The "r", trilled or flapped in other dialects, is either pronounced as a uvular trill or not pronounced at all. This alters the quality of any preceding consonant, causing a harder, more emphasized pronunciation. Another unique result is that the syllable is spoken with a low-rising or "dipping" tone much like the "hỏi" tone in Vietnamese . For example, some people pronounce ត្រី [trəj] ('fish') as [tʰəj] :
4700-603: The Khmer Empire but part of Vietnam since 1698. Khmers are persecuted by the Vietnamese government for using their native language and, since the 1950s, have been forced to take Vietnamese names. Consequently, very little research has been published regarding this dialect. It has been generally influenced by Vietnamese for three centuries and accordingly displays a pronounced accent, tendency toward monosyllabic words and lexical differences from Standard Khmer. Khmer Khe
4800-483: The Romano-British town of Camulodunum (modern Colchester ) was derived from the Celtic god Camulus . However, it was located well within territory usually thought to have been conquered early in the 5th century by Saxons, so it is unlikely to have been the location of any "true" Camelot, as Arthur is traditionally dated to the late 5th and early 6th century. The town was definitely known as Colchester as early as
4900-452: The Sangkum era, especially given the relative stability of the years 1955–1965 in comparison to later periods. After the 1991 political settlement and Sihanouk's 1993 restoration as king, a number of Cambodian political parties used the term "Sangkum" in their name in order to associate themselves with this period. Khmer language Khmer ( / k ə ˈ m ɛər / kə- MAIR ; ខ្មែរ , UNGEGN : Khmêr [kʰmae] )
5000-410: The Sangkum in 1957, many republican moderates simply avoided politics altogether until the period immediately after 1970. The only notable element to remain outside the Sangkum, other than the hardline communists, was the right-wing, anti-monarchist nationalist Son Ngoc Thanh , whose Khmer Serei irregulars maintained armed resistance with funding from Thailand . Sihanouk was to label his opponents on
5100-403: The Sangkum in a demand that they positively contribute to Cambodian society, had the dual effect of stifling dissent and of integrating much of the opposition into his regime. Sihanouk attempted to construct an image of Cambodia as a "Southeast Asian Camelot ", an oasis of peace and social order amidst the conflict affecting the rest of the region. Internationally, an official policy of neutrality
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#17327656123155200-617: The Sangkum in an attempt to work with the system. In the early 1960s, Samphan – later to become the head of state under the Khmer Rouge – was called on by Sihanouk to implement a series of economic reforms based on plans outlined in Samphan's PhD thesis. While the Democratic Party, the representatives of moderate, progressive republican politics in the Cambodian political milieu, were effectively incorporated into
5300-539: The Sangkum in order to fight the 1955 parliamentary election , the first after independence. Despite its apolitical image, the Sangkum effectively functioned as the pro-Sihanouk party. It won an overwhelming victory in the elections: there were subsequently allegations of massive electoral fraud, and of intimidation directed against both the opposing Democratic Party and the socialist Krom Pracheachon . Despite its name, Sangkum's "Royal-Buddhist socialism" or "Khmer socialism" had little to do with socialism , neither with
5400-627: The Standard Khmer system and that of the Battambang dialect on which the standard is based. In addition, some diphthongs and triphthongs are analyzed as a vowel nucleus plus a semivowel ( /j/ or /w/ ) coda because they cannot be followed by a final consonant. These include: (with short monophthongs) /ɨw/ , /əw/ , /aj/ , /aw/ , /uj/ ; (with long monophthongs) /əːj/ , /aːj/ ; (with long diphthongs) /iəj/ , /iəw/ , /ɨəj/ , /aoj/ , /aəj/ and /uəj/ . The independent vowels are
5500-471: The Welsh town. Most Arthurian romances of this period produced in English or Welsh did not follow this trend; Camelot was referred to infrequently, and usually in translations from French. One exception is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , which locates Arthur's court at "Camelot"; however, in Britain, Arthur's court was generally located at Caerleon, or at Carlisle , which is usually identified with
5600-598: The areas inhabited by the Celtic Britons : Cornwall, Wales and the Hen Ogledd . This perhaps reflects the influence of widespread oral traditions common by the 9th century which are recorded in various place names and features such as Arthur's Seat , indicating Arthur was a hero known and associated with many locations across Brittonic areas of Britain as well as Brittany . Even at this stage Arthur could not be tied to one location. Many other places are listed as
5700-573: The centuries, though it was rejected by Malory's own editor, William Caxton , who preferred a Welsh location. Arthurian scholar Norris J. Lacy commented that "Camelot, located no where in particular, can be anywhere." The romancers' versions of Camelot draw on earlier traditions of Arthur's fabulous court. The Celliwig of Culhwch and Olwen appears in the Welsh Triads as well; this early Welsh material places Wales' greatest leader outside its national boundaries. Geoffrey's description of Caerleon
5800-414: The clusters consisting of a plosive followed by /ʔ/, /b/, /d/ , in those beginning /ʔ/, /m/, /l/ , and in the cluster /kŋ-/ . After the initial consonant or consonant cluster comes the syllabic nucleus , which is one of the vowels listed above. This vowel may end the syllable or may be followed by a coda , which is a single consonant. If the syllable is stressed and the vowel is short, there must be
5900-472: The communists – Khieu Samphan , Hou Yuon and Hu Nim – fled to the forests in 1967-8, though at the time it was widely rumoured that they had been murdered by the Sangkum's police (after their reappearance in the 1970s, they were referred to in the press as the "Three Ghosts"). Amid increasing political instability, Sihanouk was eventually deposed in 1970 by Lon Nol and the rightists led by In Tam and Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak . Subsequent to
6000-527: The consonants /ɡ/ , /f/ , /ʃ/ and /z/ occur occasionally in recent loan words in the speech of Cambodians familiar with French and other languages. Various authors have proposed slightly different analyses of the Khmer vowel system. This may be in part because of the wide degree of variation in pronunciation between individual speakers, even within a dialectal region. The description below follows Huffman (1970). The number of vowel nuclei and their values vary between dialects; differences exist even between
6100-485: The coup, the Khmer Rumdo ("Liberation Khmer") guerrillas, armed and trained by North Vietnam , continued armed resistance on Sihanouk's behalf against his own former colleagues. Sihanouk's tactic of making common cause with the Khmer communist insurgents was to attract a huge number of recruits to their side. The Sangkum was formally dissolved on 18 February 1971. Elements of Sihanouk's Sangkum regime went on to form
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#17327656123156200-520: The descendants of Romanized Britons looked back to a golden age of peace and prosperity under Rome, the name "Camelot" of Arthurian legend may have referred to the capital of Britannia (Camulodunum) in Roman times. It is unclear, however, where Chrétien de Troyes would have encountered the name Camulodunum, or why he would render it as Camaalot , though Urban T. Holmes argued Chrétien could have had access to Book 2 of Pliny's Natural History , where it
6300-468: The descendants of this group. Their dialect is thought to resemble that of pre-modern Siem Reap. Linguistic study of the Khmer language divides its history into four periods one of which, the Old Khmer period, is subdivided into pre-Angkorian and Angkorian. Pre-Angkorian Khmer is the Old Khmer language from 600 CE through 800. Angkorian Khmer is the language as it was spoken in the Khmer Empire from
6400-531: The fall of the Khmer Empire in the early 15th century, the Dongrek Mountains served as a natural border leaving the Khmer north of the mountains under the sphere of influence of the Kingdom of Lan Xang . The conquests of Cambodia by Naresuan the Great for Ayutthaya furthered their political and economic isolation from Cambodia proper, leading to a dialect that developed relatively independently from
6500-566: The family. Khmer is spoken by some 13 million people in Cambodia , where it is the official language. It is also a second language for most of the minority groups and indigenous hill tribes there. Additionally there are a million speakers of Khmer native to southern Vietnam (1999 census) and 1.4 million in northeast Thailand (2006). Khmer dialects , although mutually intelligible, are sometimes quite marked. Notable variations are found in speakers from Phnom Penh (Cambodia's capital city),
6600-400: The final syllable, with secondary stress on every second syllable from the end. Thus in a three-syllable word, the first syllable has secondary stress; in a four-syllable word, the second syllable has secondary stress; in a five-syllable word, the first and third syllables have secondary stress, and so on. Long polysyllables are not often used in conversation. Compounds, however, preserve
6700-402: The finds, but Alcock himself later grew embarrassed by the supposed Arthurian connection to the site. Following the arguments of David Dumville , Alcock felt the site was too late and too uncertain to be a tenable Camelot. Modern archaeologists follow him in rejecting the name, calling it instead Cadbury Castle hill fort. Despite this, Cadbury remains widely associated with Camelot. The name of
6800-404: The government sponsored Cultural Committee to define and standardize the modern language, they championed Khmerization, purging of foreign elements, reviving affixation, and the use of Old Khmer roots and historical Pali and Sanskrit to coin new words for modern ideas. Opponents, led by Keng Vannsak , who embraced "total Khmerization" by denouncing the reversion to classical languages and favoring
6900-416: The language of higher education and the intellectual class. By 1907, the French had wrested over half of modern-day Cambodia, including the north and northwest where Thai had been the prestige language, back from Thai control and reintegrated it into the country. Many native scholars in the early 20th century, led by a monk named Chuon Nath , resisted the French and Thai influences on their language. Forming
7000-829: The language of the historical empires of Chenla and Angkor . The vast majority of Khmer speakers speak Central Khmer , the dialect of the central plain where the Khmer are most heavily concentrated. Within Cambodia, regional accents exist in remote areas but these are regarded as varieties of Central Khmer. Two exceptions are the speech of the capital, Phnom Penh , and that of the Khmer Khe in Stung Treng province , both of which differ sufficiently enough from Central Khmer to be considered separate dialects of Khmer. Outside of Cambodia, three distinct dialects are spoken by ethnic Khmers native to areas that were historically part of
7100-569: The languages of Austroasiatic. Diffloth places Khmer in an eastern branch of the Mon-Khmer languages . In these classification schemes Khmer's closest genetic relatives are the Bahnaric and Pearic languages . More recent classifications doubt the validity of the Mon-Khmer sub-grouping and place the Khmer language as its own branch of Austroasiatic equidistant from the other 12 branches of
7200-517: The last syllable instead of falling. Khmer is primarily an analytic language with no inflection . Syntactic relations are mainly determined by word order. Old and Middle Khmer used particles to mark grammatical categories and many of these have survived in Modern Khmer but are used sparingly, mostly in literary or formal language. Khmer makes extensive use of auxiliary verbs , "directionals" and serial verb construction . Colloquial Khmer
7300-571: The midpoint of the Middle Khmer period. This has resulted in a distinct accent influenced by the surrounding tonal languages Lao and Thai , lexical differences, and phonemic differences in both vowels and distribution of consonants. Syllable-final /r/ , which has become silent in other dialects of Khmer, is still pronounced in Northern Khmer. Some linguists classify Northern Khmer as a separate but closely related language rather than
7400-572: The military in Sihanouk's name, came to alienate many of the remaining communists, especially the more moderate pro-Sihanouk faction who owed a strong allegiance to Vietnam and the Viet Minh . Sihanouk's public criticism of the 'Khmer Viet Minh' had the damaging effect of increasing the power of the hardline, anti-Vietnamese, but also anti-monarchical members of the CPK, led by Pol Pot . Escalation of
7500-504: The modern Khmer language dictionary that is still in use today, helping preserve Khmer during the French colonial period. The phonological system described here is the inventory of sounds of the standard spoken language, represented using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The voiceless plosives /p/, /t/, /c/, /k/ may occur with or without aspiration (as [p] vs. [pʰ] , etc.); this difference
7600-527: The place name there is the Old French phrase con lui plot , meaning "as he pleased". The other manuscripts spell the name variously as Chamalot (MS A, f. f. 196r), Camehelot (MS E, f. 1r), Chamaalot (MS G, f. 34f), and Camalot (MS T, f. 41v); the name is missing, along with the rest of the passage containing it, in MS V (Vatican, Biblioteca Vaticana, Regina 1725). Camelot is mentioned only in passing and
7700-412: The power and influence of the Cambodian status quo through authoritarianism. Others, however, have noted that it vastly increased the participation of ordinary Cambodians in democracy, and describe it as a pragmatic movement which genuinely sought to bring community development to Cambodia through "expert guidance and gentle persuasion". There is a certain degree of nostalgia amongst older Cambodians for
7800-439: The right as the "Khmer Bleu" to distinguish them from his opponents on the left. However, it seems that during the late 1950s and early 1960s there was relatively little violent repression of opposition to the Sangkum (although there was repeated political intimidation of the leftist Pracheachon party, who were accused of being pro-Vietnam) and the country as a whole experienced a period of comparative stability. The one exception
7900-494: The royalist party FUNCINPEC and its military wing, the Sihanouk National Army or ANS, which controlled large parts of rural Cambodia during the 1980s. Opinion remains sharply divided on the Sangkum movement, as on Sihanouk himself. Many commentators, particularly those on the left or those personally opposed to Sihanouk, have described the Sangkum as essentially a conservative movement which sought to maintain
8000-578: The rural Battambang area, the areas of Northeast Thailand adjacent to Cambodia such as Surin province , the Cardamom Mountains , and southern Vietnam. The dialects form a continuum running roughly north to south. Standard Cambodian Khmer is mutually intelligible with the others but a Khmer Krom speaker from Vietnam, for instance, may have great difficulty communicating with a Khmer native of Sisaket Province in Thailand. The following
8100-416: The same time, the Sangkum was designed to democraticise the country and to exert political control. Rather than subscribing to a certain ideology, Sangkum was defined by its leader Prince Sihanouk and his personal popularity. In power, the Sangkum functioned according to principles of ' Buddhist socialism ', a rather vague construct that while claiming to seek progressive goals and the end of social injustice,
8200-486: The same title , featuring the Castle of Coca, Segovia as Camelot. An Arthurian television series Camelot was also named after the castle, as were some other works including the video game Camelot and the comic book series Camelot 3000 . French television series Kaamelott presents a humorous alternative version of the Arthurian legend; Camelot Theme Park is a now-abandoned Arthurian theme park resort located in
8300-417: The start of a syllable are /str/, /skr/ , and (with aspirated consonants analyzed as two-consonant sequences) /sth/, /lkh/ . There are 85 possible two-consonant clusters (including [pʰ] etc. analyzed as /ph/ etc.). All the clusters are shown in the following table, phonetically, i.e. superscript ʰ can mark either contrastive or non-contrastive aspiration (see above ). Slight vowel epenthesis occurs in
8400-628: The stress patterns of the constituent words. Thus សំបុកចាប , the name of a kind of cookie (literally 'bird's nest'), is pronounced [sɑmˌbok ˈcaːp] , with secondary stress on the second rather than the first syllable, because it is composed of the words [sɑmˈbok] ('nest') and [caːp] ('bird'). Khmer once had a phonation distinction in its vowels, but this now survives only in the most archaic dialect ( Western Khmer ). The distinction arose historically when vowels after Old Khmer voiced consonants became breathy voiced and diphthongized; for example *kaa, *ɡaa became *kaa, *ɡe̤a . When consonant voicing
8500-589: The tombs of many kings and knights. In a mighty castle stands the Round Table , created by Merlin and Uther Pendragon ; it is here that Galahad conquers the Siege Perilous , and where the knights see a vision of the Holy Grail and swear to find it. Jousts are often held in a meadow outside the city. Its imprecise geography serves the romances well, as Camelot becomes less a literal place than
8600-471: The use of contemporary colloquial Khmer for neologisms, and Ieu Koeus , who favored borrowing from Thai, were also influential. Koeus later joined the Cultural Committee and supported Nath. Nath's views and prolific work won out and he is credited with cultivating modern Khmer-language identity and culture, overseeing the translation of the entire Pali Buddhist canon into Khmer. He also created
8700-420: The villages of Queen Camel and West Camel , and remained popular enough to help inspire a large-scale archaeological dig in the 20th century. These excavations, led by archaeologist Leslie Alcock from 1966 to 1970, were titled "Cadbury-Camelot" and won much media attention. The dig revealed that the site seems to have been occupied as early as the 4th millennium BC and to have been refortified and occupied by
8800-470: The vowels that can exist without a preceding or trailing consonant. The independent vowels may be used as monosyllabic words, or as the initial syllables in longer words. Khmer words never begin with regular vowels; they can, however, begin with independent vowels. Example: ឰដ៏, ឧទាហរណ៍, ឧត្តម, ឱកាស...។ A Khmer syllable begins with a single consonant, or else with a cluster of two, or rarely three, consonants. The only possible clusters of three consonants at
8900-536: The vultures". The shockingly brutal tactics adopted by the Sangkum regime against not only leftists from outside the Cambodian borders, but also increasingly against the Khmer left, especially after a possibly CPK-backed rebellion in rural Battambang Province beginning in early 1967, presaged the similarly brutal conduct of the subsequent Cambodian Civil War . Reports stated that captured communists were summarily killed, in some cases being disembowelled or thrown from cliffs. The three remaining public representatives of
9000-405: The words they modify). Some grammatical processes are still not fully understood by western scholars. For example, it is not clear if certain features of Khmer grammar, such as actor nominalization , should be treated as a morphological process or a purely syntactic device, and some derivational morphology seems "purely decorative" and performs no known syntactic work. Camelot Camelot
9100-616: Was a corruption of the site of Arthur's final battle, the Battle of Camlann , in Welsh tradition. Roger Sherman Loomis believed it was derived from Cavalon , a place name that he suggested was a corruption of Avalon (under the influence of the Breton place name Cavallon ). He further suggested that Cavalon became Arthur's capital due to confusion with Arthur's other traditional court at Caerleon ( Caer Lleon in Welsh). Others have suggested
9200-438: Was a political organisation set up on 22 March 1955 by Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia . Though it described itself as a 'movement' rather than a political party (members had to abjure membership of any political group), the Sangkum retained control of the government of Cambodia throughout the first administration of Sihanouk , from 1955 to 1970 . Central to the Sangkum ideology were nationalism , conservatism , preserving
9300-493: Was adopted. During the period of Sihanouk's rule, the Sangkum managed to absorb many of the rightist and centrist elements of Cambodian politics, as well as pro-Sihanouk elements of the left and moderate communists: only the more hardline secret elements of the Communist Party of Kampuchea avoided collaborating with Sihanouk's regime. Several prominent communists, such as Hu Nim and Khieu Samphan , accepted posts with
9400-522: Was again the Khmer Serei, who were dealt with harshly: Preap In , a Khmer Serei activist who attempted to negotiate with Sihanouk in 1963, was arrested and his subsequent execution shown in cinemas across the country. The same treatment was given to another group of alleged Khmer Serei leaders, Chau Bory (previously implicated in the Bangkok Plot ), Chau Mathura, and Sau Ngoy, in 1967. Sihanouk
9500-565: Was based around the conservative religious and social traditions of Cambodia. Rather than doing away with private property, 'Buddhist socialism' encouraged the wealthy to give to the poor in order to gain merit. Public figures were also instructed to be fully accountable to the populace, transparent in their dealings, and were encouraged to take regular breaks to perform ordinary agricultural-related work (Sihanouk often had himself photographed performing such labour during his visits to development projects). In practice, economic management developed as
9600-438: Was emerging from the transitional period represented by Middle Khmer, Cambodia fell under the influence of French colonialism . Thailand, which had for centuries claimed suzerainty over Cambodia and controlled succession to the Cambodian throne, began losing its influence on the language. In 1887 Cambodia was fully integrated into French Indochina , which brought in a French -speaking aristocracy. This led to French becoming
9700-730: Was in Caerleon in Wales ; this was the king's primary base in Geoffrey of Monmouth 's Historia Regum Britanniae and subsequent literature. Chrétien depicts Arthur, like a typical medieval monarch, holding court at a number of cities and castles. It is not until the 13th-century French prose romances, including the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate cycles, that Camelot began to supersede Caerleon, and even then, many descriptive details applied to Camelot derive from Geoffrey's earlier grand depiction of
9800-521: Was in Wales and that its ruins could still be seen; this is a likely reference to the Roman ruins at Caerwent . In 1542, John Leland reported that the locals around Cadbury Castle (formerly known as Camalet) in Somerset considered it to be the original Camelot. This theory, which was repeated by later antiquaries, is bolstered, or may have derived from, Cadbury's proximity to the River Cam and
9900-407: Was lost, the distinction was maintained by the vowel ( *kaa, *ke̤a ); later the phonation disappeared as well ( [kaː], [kiə] ). These processes explain the origin of what are now called a-series and o-series consonants in the Khmer script . Although most Cambodian dialects are not tonal , the colloquial Phnom Penh dialect has developed a tonal contrast (level versus peaking tone) as a by-product of
10000-421: Was made Head of State for life in 1963. From the mid-1960s, however, fractures began to appear in the regime. The 1966 elections resulted in an overwhelming victory for rightist candidates; Sihanouk responded by creating a left-wing "Counter-Government", including Hu Nim and Khieu Samphan, to act as a check, and prevent the regime splitting completely. Increasingly violent repression of the left, led by Lon Nol and
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