Cambodian for Beginners [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

Richard Gilbert (Author), Sovandy Hang (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2004

This set contains three CDs which follow the book "Cambodian for Beginners". It can help you to rapidly improve your speaking and listening skills in Cambodian. They are approximately three hours long in total. The tracks for the CDs include a Guide to Pronunciation, Vocabulary, Conversations and Sentences for Lessons One through Ten, Consonants, Vowels, Tones and Useful Words and Phrases.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Richard Kent Gilbert is a Cambodian language linguist ever since he served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He graduated from Brigham Young University with a B.A. in International Politics. He still keeps in close contact with the Cambodian community in both Cambodia and the United States. Mr. Gilbert currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and works as a freelance Cambodian language translator and interpreter. Most of his work is as a registered Cambodian language court interpreter for the State of California.

Sovandy Hang was born in Phnom Penh, the Capital of Cambodia. He arrived in the United States of America as a refugee in 1982. He is actively involved in the Cambodian community and has extensive experience translating school newsletters, brochures, flyers and official documents. Now Sovandy works as a child welfare social worker and provides on-going translation and interpretation services to his fellow Cambodians in the San Jose and Oakland area. He also serves as a substitute teacher for the Cambodian School of San Jose, California.

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Publisher (July 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1887521445
• ISBN-13: 978-1887521444
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,797,293 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good starting point, May 5, 2006

By 

reader (NZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cambodian for Beginners (Paperback)

The good points: clearly written in general, font easy to read, very useful vocabulary and well paced for easy learning. Covers written as well as spoken Khmer and this is carefully and well explained - absolutely essential yet sometimes overlooked by introductory texts. Key piece of advice in the introduction is to get the CDs that accompany the book or get hold of a native speaker. One of the best books for this very basic level for a reasonable price. Only small downside is the occasional mistranslation (such as translating koon bpov as youngest sibling rather than youngest child) which is unfortunate since unlearning is always harder than learning. In one or two cases there are differences from the commonest usages but these may be just dialectal differences and aren't significant. All in all, to be highly recommended for the absolute beginner or as a rapid refresher for those who have done a bit of Khmer and just want to brush up. But do buy the CDs with the book as the intro recommends because you cannot learn Khmer pronuncation from a book.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superior, February 24, 2005

By 

Frank Lindahl (N. Highlands, Ca. USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cambodian for Beginners (Paperback)

I found this product superior to other self study material; well organized and reasonably paced. Recommend using it on a PC so you can go over sentances/words repeatedly, but that applies to any CD material. Minor quibble, mans voice is a bit strong in English compared with the woman's voice in Cambodian, but all in all a product I would describe as superior.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent introduction, February 27, 2006

By 

Mark P. Jacobson (Minneapolis) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cambodian for Beginners (Paperback)

I have read a few different books on learning cambodian, and this has been the most helpful for me.

The book has a grammar section, vocab section, and you get introduced to reading/wrtiting cambodian script in each lesson. (also some practice areas) The grammar section is especially helpful, it explains clearly some useful concepts/words. For example, some other books I have read just start throwing sentences at you that you could memorize, but this book gives you some of the underlying principles behind the cambodian language. Such as the different ways to say "I know", or how to answer questions, or the fact that camobodian generally does not use words like "is, at, the, etc".

**The only reason I do not give it a five is the absence of a cd or some other way to hear cambodians speak the language. To me, pronunciation is one of the hardest parts of learning Kmai. I am lucky that my wife is Cambodian-American so she can help me.
This a great companion book if you have other cd/audio materials.
VERY HELPFUL!