Cambodia's Minority Languages Face Bleak Future (fwd link)

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Cambodia's Minority Languages Face Bleak Future
The United Nations' cultural agency UNESCO warns that 19 Cambodian
languages are at risk of extinction

Robert Carmichael | Phnom Penh 21 January 2010

More than 20 languages are spoken in Cambodia, but most are minority
languages and face extinction in the coming decades.

Robert Carmichael has this report from Phnom Penh.

Jean-Michel Filippi is in a race. As the foremost scholar of S'aoch,
the language of one of Cambodia's minority tribes, he has only a few
years to record the language before it may be lost forever. To date he
has recorded 4,000 words in S'aoch. His next step is to write a
grammar book on the language.

Filippi says just 10 people are fluent in S'aoch and none uses the
language in their daily life. That makes S'aoch the most endangered
language in Cambodia. In a decade it will likely be extinct.

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