This is my earliest recorded language mistake, after a month on location, now immortalised. I was trying to say ‘I like to ride a bike’. I ended up saying the equivalent of ‘they like wide-ing bic-eze’.

One movie my family loves is The Terminal.Tom Hanks plays a guy stranded in an airport without any English. As he learns English he is able to interact with a love interest (Katherine Zeta-Jones). In a hilarious moment, his hours of practicing asking her out with the phrase, ‘Would you like a bite to eat?’, comes out ‘Eat to bite’. Learning a second language is hard. But our own languages are hard too. And Khmer is hard for Cambodians too.

I was trying to use a Khmer word in class. I had written it up on the board so that it wasn’t just my pronunciation that they were stumbling over. My Khmer students didn’t understand. The word had been translated by another lecturer, so I wasn’t 100% sure why this word had been used. I knew another word that conveyed the meaning of my English word, so I used that instead.

There were a few things happening in this situation. The first is that this shows where I am starting to get up to in my Khmer language (following on from my recent language update). As I teach, we are wrestling together (the students and myself and other lecturers) about the best Khmer words to use. There is a normal and not-normal aspect to this situation. Because Khmer is their language not mine, my immediate reaction is to question whether I’ve got it right. This is a good reaction, but not a normal reaction. If I was working in English, I wouldn’t have that same questioning (though maybe I should). So the first thing that happens is I question whether the word I’ve used is right or not.

Second, this situation illustrates an important part of the Christian journey for every Christian regardless of language. In English and Khmer, growing in our faith means growing in our Christian vocabulary, understanding new words that help us learn about God and ourselves. So becoming and growing as a Christian has a learning-a-new-language component to it too. Just like if we were a doctor we would need to learn all the technical terms for sickness and such. In my head I wonder whether this situation is one of these moments, a chance for the students to learn some new vocab for their faith.

Third, this situation also illustrates an aspect of the Khmer language. There are two language modes, royal language and street language. Royal language are terms that you would use in relation to the king or divinity or a monk, but you wouldn’t use them in relation to an average person. They tend to be more academic and used seldomly in regular life. The second mode is general language used more in common conversation and even academic situations outside of those specific examples above. The particular wrestle is when to use royal language for Jesus and when not to. It can help to highlight his divinity. But it can also distance his humanity from ours when different words are used to describe him and for us. This is an interesting discussion that I have with my students. At present I just go for the both/and approach. Both terms have their importance. So sometimes when my students don’t understand it’s because the language is tricky and unfamiliar, even for them.