[EDLING:2218] Khmer Classes Preserve Language for the Young

[Francis M. Hult]

North Gate News Online

Khmer Classes Preserve Language for the Young

By Susa Lim, January 4, 2007 10:08 PM 

OAKLAND - Jasmine Nhep, 10, her tongue sticking out of the right edge of her 
mouth in concentration, composes letters of the Khmer alphabet in pencil.

The series of 33 consonants, 24 vowels and 33 endings looked like an illegible 
string of curls and swoops to her two months ago. But now the Oakland resident 
can recite and scribe 20 consonants confidently. She even got up in front of 
class on a recent Tuesday night, teaching stick in hand, to recite her newfound 
understanding. 

Jasmine is one of a dozen Cambodian-American youth who take weekly Khmer 
language and writing classes at Oak Park, an affordable housing complex in the 
lower San Antonio district where the majority of residents are immigrants from 
the Southeast Asian country. Like many of her classmates, she enrolled at the 
constant coaxing of her mother. 

Full story
http://journalism.berkeley.edu/ngno/stories/029250.html