My hands are quite full learning Mandarin and Japanese; yet, I still tried learning Korean Hangul a bit and found it really tipped my workload and memory balance. I wanted to at least try out Korean since my sister is now in Korea and my in-laws are Korean; it looks like I'll be learning Korean sooner rather than later.

So I told myself that learning Khmer writing can wait, but it wouldn't hurt to learn more about the Khmer language. According to a Cambodian reference, the Khmer language was first written under Indian influence. The script is derived from a southern Indian alphabet and influenced by Indian Classical languages, Pali and Sanskrit. My hunch was correct in that the language is more similar to Indian or Arabic writing than Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or English (I've seen the Khmer script many times although I could not read it). Looking at the strong and peculiar Buddhist culture in both Cambodia and Thailand, it was evident that Khmer has been strongly influenced by Indian culture.

Like all languages, Khmer evolved over time with influence from Thai, Chinese, and French. The written language has thirty-three consonants and twenty-three vowel sounds. My father had readily written out the consonants and vowels for me in response to the request I made a while ago. The following is the 33 consonants:

Then my father wrote one of the consonants in combination of each of the vowels (I'm counting 24, but I remember he said one of the vowel combination was a bit weird):

I was sorting through my notes and came across an essay I wrote for an applied linguistics course on Second Language Acquisition submitted on October 1st, 2008. Most of the details are still applicable, except now I've found my motivation for learning the Khmer (Cambodian) writing system (more on that on the next blog post).

I've posted the essay here since it's 5 pages in length. It was enjoyable to write and I enjoyed the feedback:

I'm still learning Mandarin and Japanese, but I guess my approach and growing successes are rather unique. Foreign Language learning to me remains a life-long journey.

It's been a while since I last drew something so I sat down last night and drafted a few sketches quickly. I've long since adopted a smeared pencil sketch style which leaves a finished drawing with "dirty" spots, as seen above. I still like this style very much even though I still ask myself when I'll start applying color . LoL~ Too time-consuming so not likely happening . I did notice that my style has changed a bit. Drafting form and the substance under the surface - like the rough "potatoes" makes more sense to me now; I guess it is a worthwhile technique to adopt and practice. I love drawing people and they remain the subject of my sketches . There's absolutely nothing more fascinating to draw. After a completed sketch, I still grin like an idiot because I love my drawings . Normally I spend at least a few hours and up to a few weeks to finish some of my drawings. Although this one was rather quick, I still feel very warm and fuzzy inside reviewing it .