[Webinar] From Orthographic Reform in the Khmer Language to the Modern Teaching System....... 

Abstract:
In Cambodia, the initiative to create a unilingual dictionary came from the colonial administration in 1915. The King himself officially supported its creation with Royal Promulgation no. 67, issued the same year. The dictionary very quickly became the main instrument for asserting national sovereignty, and later became the foundation of the identity of the young nation-state that had just gained its independence (1953). Contemporary intellectuals regard this dictionary as the foundation for developing national ideology; it is recognized as a monument of language and normative writing. It is the guarantor of the memory of the Khmer language and can under no circumstances be subject to debate.
The aim of this research is to shed light on and understand the status of this dictionary as a means of promoting the national ideology of “One State, One People, One Language” (Khmer). There is an investigation on the process of appropriation of this dictionary by the Cambodian elite, which finds it necessary to equip itself with a linguistic instrument in order to form a body.
Bio:
Speaker: Mrs. Many Norng is a CKS Dissertation Fellow in 2023 and currently working in the MANUSASTRA program at RUFA and a PhD candidate in linguistics at INALCO, in Paris. Her research focuses mainly on the unilingual Khmer dictionary of the Buddhist Institute of Phnom Penh - which is both a monument of Khmer lexicography, a standardization tool spanning the 20th century and a valuable testimony to the history of lexicography in Cambodia. It is a work that essentially concerns lexicography, lexicology and dictionary, as well as in terms of the linguistic policies pursued in Cambodia throughout the 20th century and right up to the present day.
Moderator: Ms. Samedy Suong, CKS Deputy Director.
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