We’ve had ‘Extreme’ sports, ‘Extreme’ wrestling, even ‘Extreme’ potato chips. Now get ready for -
Khmer language teacher Frank Smith, take the microphone:
Greetings–
And now for something totally different: what’s possibly the first video
podcast ever in Khmer!!
“Extreme Khmer” (khmae kray leeng) will present a new episode every
month (from September to May), and feature our crack team of wacky
reporters traipsing the highways and byways of Southeast Asia bringing
the crazy world of Khmer language and culture into your living room. Or
something like that. Note that the podcast is totally in Khmer, and is
intended for Khmer students who have at least completed Beginning
level. If you don’t speak Khmer, aw, c’mon, watch it anyway…you can
still appreciate some of the sheer silliness of it.
The first episode was taped right here in rainy Bangkok, and it’s about
Surin Khmers (and Surin Khmer dialect/language) in Thailand. Next
month’s episode will feature guest host nek kruu Sokhary and focus on
Wat Phnom and the history of Phnom Penh.
Unfortunately, I haven’t quite figured out the whole RSS thing yet so
it’s not a “proper podcast” (that is, you can’t subscribe to it on
iTunes just yet), but you can access it in two ways:
1. Watch the widescreen, high-res version here…warning, the file is
really big (around 300 Mb), so only attempt this from a fast connection,
or you may hurt yourself:
http://www.studykhmer.com
Just use the controls to play the video after it finishes loading. And
yes, I know, the control bar at the bottom of the video gets cut off in
Mozilla Firefox (though it displays fine in Explorer), I’m working on
solving that problem. But it is usable right now.
2. or, if you have a video iPod and want to download the iPod-sized
version, go here:
http://www.studykhmer.com/podcast
…and right-click on the “Podcast” icon to download the file. That
file is much smaller than the high-res version (about 32 Mb).
The show is about 6 minutes long. Let me know what you think! Later
this week I’ll try to put up some supplementary material to go with the
episode (for all you lifelong Khmer students out there), including video
of an interview that didn’t make the final cut.
Enjoy!
Frank
ps Nothing else on the website studykhmer.com exists just yet, but I
hope to have the textbook section set up by the end of this month or
so…so just keep checking back. In the “assorted goodies” section,
I’ll be putting up various videos and other documents about Khmer language.
Tags: Cambodia,khmer
