For the first fieldwork trip, I spent 8 weeks in July-August 2016, living and working with Kachok villagers in a Kachok village called Kachut in Andoung Meas, Ratanakiri Province, Cambodia.

Follow me!  I document my experience on Instagram: @elongolsen

For information on my 2017 fieldwork trip: Kachok 2017

____________________________________________

A request:

As is typical in these situations, I have asked the Kachok chief if there is anything they need that I can bring for them.  They have requested children’s books and medicine for women.  If you are interested in helping, I (and the Kachok people) will greatly appreciate your small donations of:

• children’s books, especially picture books (new or gently used condition, please)
• coloring books, crayons
• Tylenol or similar
• Midol or similar
• Feminine hygiene products – especially cloth/reusable

If you have these items you’d like to give to the Kachok people, we may be able to arrange for me to pick them up from you, or you may send them to me.  For my address, please email me at emilylongolsen@gmail.com.

If this is inconvenient but you’d still like to help, you might be interested in sending $3-5 via Paypal (under the email address emilydlong@gmail.com), and I will make a final shopping trip the week before I leave.

Thank you!

*     *    *     *    *     *    *     *    *     *    *     *    *     *    *     *    *     *    *     *    *     *    *     *    *

Finally, a list of FAQs:

Q:  Do you speak this language?

A:  No.  In fact, there is no description or recording of this language that linguists (or others) are aware of.  Outside of Kachok-speaking villages, the language is spoken only by members of neighboring groups.  Many Kachok speakers do not speak the national language, Khmer (sometimes called Cambodian), and most Khmer do not even know that this language exists.

 

Q:  How did you get interested in this?

A:  The long answer is that I have always been interested in people who live lifestyles that are very different from mine!  That’s why I studied Anthropology in college.  I became interested in Southeast Asia when I was living overseas and I traveled in the region.  I love the culture, food, beliefs, and attitudes, and I have a lot of respect for the resilience of Southeast Asian people, especially Cambodians, in the face of great tragedy, poverty, and injustice.  Languages indigenous to this region belong to the Austroasiatic language family, and there remain many questions in how these languages are related to each other.  These questions are interesting because answering them will provide information about not only the relationships between these languages, but also the people who speak them.  We can learn about when people groups split off from each other, when they arrived in certain areas, when they had contact with each other and with newly-arrived groups from other areas (like the Austronesian Cham, for example, who arrived in Vietnam by boat from other lands).  I find these questions compelling as a linguist (who finds linguistic discovery so exciting and who loves the idea that language can hold the key to so much important information), as a person who loves history and anthropology (because these were my first loves, academically), and as a person who loves Cambodia and SEA more broadly (which I love and am interested in both academically and non-academically).

 

Q:  But what are you going to DO?

A:  My goal is to make recordings of people speaking this language.  I’ll analyze those recordings with three questions in mind:  What is the phonological inventory of the language (consonants and vowels)?  What is the syllable shape and structure?  What are the laryngeal contrasts?
As far as the how goes:  There are three phases to my research plan:  First, I’ll ask speakers to narrate picture books, and encourage conversations between them in order to collect recordings of somewhat free speech.  Second, I’ll ask a select few speakers to repeat words from a word list – that is, I’ll ask them how to say something, and they’ll repeat it back a bunch of times.  Sometimes the word by itself, sometimes in a sentence.  Third, I’ll have the speakers tell me folk stories, sing songs, play word games, and any other culturally-relevant thing I can find.

 

Q: You’ve been there before, right?

A:  Nope.  I’ve been to Cambodia before, yes.  I traveled in Cambodia for about 3 weeks (with friends – including Ryan) in 2010, but we stayed mostly on the beaten path.  This is a very different path.  I will be charging my electronic devices using a solar panel and sleeping in a hammock with a mosquito net.  I have never lived this way for an extended period before.

 

Q:  Are you scared?

A:  Uh, yes, I’ve basically been hyperventilating for the last 6 weeks.  But I’m going anyway, and that’s what counts, right?  Most of the things that are most worth doing make us a little scared, and we have to just keep going.  This opportunity is a serious game-changer, the place where my career really begins, and a dream I’ve had (in some variation or another) since I was 17.  So for as scared as I am, I am far more humbled and excited.

 

Q:  Is your family coming with you?

A:  No, but this isn’t a crazy question.  Lots of researchers take their families with them when they go into the field.  If Sage was a little older, we’d really have considered it.  When we brought it up to his pediatrician, she gave us a pretty clear red light.  He is too young to receive necessary immunizations and it’s too long of a period.  Besides, it would be both difficult and not that fun for them.  So, instead, it will make for some great father/son bonding time.  If you’re also thinking about asking if I’m going to miss them, or if I’m worried that Sage won’t remember me when I get back, or if I’m concerned that I’m going to miss major milestones like his first steps, or if I am sad that I can’t be with my husband during this stressful, challenging, and life-changing time, please don’t.  I will cry.

 

Q:  What happens after this?

A:  This research is actually happening in two phases.  This summer, 2016, is the first phase.  There is a second trip planned for about six months later.  It’s a big fat “TBD” right now – as it should be.  I estimate that it will be about four weeks in the village, but it will be largely dependent on how things go during the first trip.  After I return, I’ll spend a few months analyzing what I have, and I’ll figure out what I still need to find.  That will help me determine how to design the second trip.
The end goal here is a dissertation, which will be a description of the sound patterns of this language: the phonology and phonetics.  I am not going to provide a timeline for dissertation writing, because I will jinx myself, and because I don’t want you to laugh at me for being unrealistic.

Please submit additional questions to me:  emilylongolsen@gmail.com