Can you tell the difference between the Thai and Cambodian language?
To someone who is Thai, does Khmer sound similar to the Thai language?
To someone who is Cambodian, does Thai sound similar to the Khmer language?
To someone who is neither, can you tell the difference between these two languages?
Please share your thoughts, and what you noticed about similarities and differences. Thank you.
So what language do you find more intriguing?
Tagged as: khmer language · languages · similarities and differences · thai language
hi
i am cambodian.in my opinion,cambodian and thai is only 20-30%similar to each other.
here is the similarities,if u look at pronounciations,cambodian and thai sometimes speak the same words.
for example:the word "star".
in thai,people say "dara" for "star" and in cambodian people also say the same.
but there are a lot difference such as ;
in cambodian there are 36 consonants but in thai there are more and all the thai alphabets look different from cambodian
cambodian’s voice is not long like thai.(for example:cambodian say"sameki" but thai usually say "sameeekii")
that’s all i can find.i bet some people’s answer are better than me.
Hey!
I actually find them quite different. My boss is Cambodian and she speaks Cambodian to her mum on the phone a bit, and it’s very different sounding from the Thai language. All i can say is that their writing is VERY similar. I can’t differentiate between their writing, but i can differentiate between their speaking.
Beau
I am Thai and can say that Khmer and Thai sound totally different. If you compare Japanese and Chinese, it’s kind of easy to tell they are different. But to someone who doesn’t speak Thai or Khmer they might sound similar because they are both tonal languages. I think that Thai sounds a bit smoother and softer compared to Khmer.
No similarities at all. They even have their own alphabet systems where the letters are totally different.
I am neither a Thai nor Cambodian.
I can speak, read and write Thai (although not very fluent). But I don’t understand Cambodian language at all. I’ve visited Cambodia several times in the past, and I had to speak to locals in English everytime.
To the western ears, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, and Burmese languages appear to sound the same, but in fact they’re totally different.