A Comparative Study of Sound Characteristics of Northern Khmer and Standard Cambodian Khmer Vocabulary

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to compare the sound characteristics of Northern Khmer and Standard Cambodian Khmer vocabulary used in Ban Tung Poe, Krabok Tia Sub-district, Nernkharm District, Chainat Province. The findings of this comparative study can be divided into three characteristics: 1) using the same vocabulary (48.89%); the vocabulary of this group had similar consonant and vowel pronunciation or the similar number of syllable, 2) pronouncing similarly (40.74%); the vocabulary of this group had similar consonant and vowel sounds, the similar number of syllable, and similar or same meanings which can be categorized into three features (i.e., adding sound units, reducing sound units, and changing sound units), and 3) using different vocabulary (10.37%); the vocabulary of this group had different consonant and vowel pronunciation or the different number of syllable, but they had the same meanings. These three characteristics proved that these two languages used to be the same language since there were a number of words used and pronounced similarly more than those which were used differently. For the words that are used differently, they resulted from external factors, such as terrain and living environment. These caused the creation of new words by borrowing words from other languages around and mixing new words that had not been used before. It, therefore, resulted in different vocabulary of both languages.