Foreword

Foreword to the 2012 Bunong-Khmer Bilingual Dictionary

The Bunong language is a language of an indigenous minority group located in the north-east of Cambodia in Mondulkiri province. According to MOEYS Instruction #2696 dated 25 August 2003, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MOEYS) approves the use of the Khmer script for writing and recording the Bunong indigenous minority language. This trilingual Bunong-Khmer-English dictionary is the result of the combined efforts of national staff and expatriate partners and reflects the decisions of the orthography committee of the MOEYS, the Bunong literature committee, and ongoing use in the Bunong community.

The dictionary organizing committee and advisors of International Cooperation Cambodia (ICC) have endeavored to carefully examine and improve on the Bunong-English-Khmer Glossary published in August 2005. At the time of the 2012 printing this dictionary had 3842 headwords and 1665 minor entries. The objectives in creating this dictionary are fourfold: 1) to support bilingual Bunong-Khmer education, 2) to demonstrate a clear and consistent spelling system for Bunong use, 3) to document and research the Bunong language, and 4) to preserve the Bunong language for perpetuity.

‎‎There are five dialects of the Bunong language used in different areas of Mondulkiri province: Bunor, Biat, Preh, Ra'ong, and Stieng. Bunor is the main dialect that is spoken by the most people and is important for communication in the region. Unless otherwise specified, the entries in this dictionary reflect the Bunor dialect.

We apologize for any mistakes in the dictionary and welcome constructive feedback.

Foreword to the 2005 Bunong-English-Khmer Glossary

This is the first glossary to be published in the Khmer script of the Bunong language as spoken in the province of Mondulkiri in Cambodia. The Bunong language is also known as (Central) Mnong in Vietnam. This glossary is still lacking in many ways, but it seemed more important to us to publish this glossary now to put it to use to help promote literacy rather than to wait much longer until the deficiencies are taken care of. Among the deficiencies is the lack of a phonetic transcription. This glossary is identical to the glossary published as part of the third volume of the adult literacy primers in the Bunong language and contains all vocabulary that appear in that primer series.

This glossary has approximately 1500 main entries. The compilation of this Bunong glossary is an ongoing process and we expect that the next edition, planned for 2006, will be far more extensive.

There are currently about 50 publications available in this script covering categories such as Beginning Readers, basic health issues, animal health and indigenous stories.

This is not the first glossary/dictionary in the Bunong language in general. But, it is probably the first one available to the speakers of this language. The first Bunong dictionary [Biat-French] was compiled by Ernest-Thimotée Hoeffel (1937) in a Latin script. A.M. Maurice based his work largely on Hoeffel’s. Richard L Phillips published a dictionary [Mnong Bunor-Raday-English] in 1962 and a thesaurus in 1966. Together the latter two encompass approximately 4500 entries using a Latin script which is still in use in Vietnam today. All of the above works included vocabulary and/or glosses in other languages.

Of the many people that have helped to develop this glossary we want to especially mention Mr. TIM Songvat, the Director of the Provincial Department of Education, who proofread the Khmer part of it.