Gillian vs. Words

I think there's a lot I could tell you.

Shoot, I know there is. Every day is filled with thousands of words and a million more in explanation and reflection. You know there's a lot going on, I know there's a lot going on.

But I don't know how to write about it.

Well, of course I could, I know what words I might use.

Ahhhh. Just trying to explain this and I'm stumbling. I want to tell you a lot. I am trying to figure out how. I am trying to figure out how much.

Let's talk about words for a second. I am learning Khmer -- I don't know if I ever actually talked about the language on this blog. I think I have thought about doing so multiple times and never have, but if I have and I'm repeating myself -- well, who cares, it's my blog and I'll keep it that way.

Before you even get to the words, there are 33 consonants in the alphabet. 33, but that's not really all, because some of them have "hidden" pairs, and most of them have a subscript form. Half of these are "soft" and half are "hard." Then, there are 22 vowels -- technically. Though, each has two sounds, one for the soft consonants and one for the hard. So technically there are 44, plus one "hidden" one, and an indeterminate amount of independent vowels (which I haven't learned, already being somewhat frightened off by the amount of plain ones.)

I wanted to learn the alphabet for the sounds, which is incredibly useful as otherwise everything sounds the same. I can occasionally sound out the Khmer script, if I remember the characters (rarely), though I never have any idea what it means.

The first week, I spent a great deal of time staring blankly at my tutor, who, bless his heart, talks to me very often in Khmer. However, after two weeks off and time to practice, I was able to understand much, much more during lessons this week. I am not conversational by any means, but if he talks slowly and uses words I know -- not a ton, but a fair amount -- then I can make it out.

I can answer, sometimes, very very slowly. When trying to talk to my partner for the fusion dance project, most of the time I get blank looks, but occasionally I manage to sort things out into a decent phrase.

On Tuesday, we learned about comparisons - highly useful, but I admit that by the end of class, just an hour, my brain felt ready to explode. In fact it often feels like that after class, because everything is so new. And there is so much to learn. I am always scribbling words and phrases in the quickly diminishing free spaces of my notebook. Yes, I want to know how to say that, how to say that. I'm missing so many words, that all my phrases have holes in them, filled in by my default, French.

I don't remember just learning French, so this is the first time I am caught at the very beginnings of language. I would like to think I am progressing well, but of course I don't think, not even in five months, I will be even basically conversational. I would like to be, and try to practice outside of class, but it's difficult.

The days are packed. My assistant job has picked up speed, I meet my partner for the fusion dance project twice a week, soon enough I'm going to have to schedule in some time to rehearse with the kids for the public performance, I'm choreographing a piece for a dance and film project, and then I have a part time job on top of that. Everything is so interesting and so fun, and I have some cool trips coming up -- the Pchum Ben vacations are coming up and I'm heading to Battambang to see the circus, for one.

More on Pchum Ben -- ancestor's day -- to come, as I'm going to Oudong mountain on Sunday with CLA to bring offerings to the monks in honor of the celebration...