Folk Categorizations of Western Champa in Cambodia A Cognitive Linguistics Study

Abstract

Western Champa people are Cambodian citizens who moved to Cambodia due to pressure from the Vietnamese who began to build their strength and suppress them to the neighborhood country. Although their kingdom was originally in Vietnam and some of Champa people/Eastern Champa still live and thrive there, some of them were recorded to speak Austronesian language. Therefore, their language is slightly similar to Bahasa Indonesia and both languages are categorized as Malayo-Chamic. Two similarities of these languages that will be further discussed in this research are the words boh [bɔh] and talai [təlaɪ] for buah [buwah] and tali [tɅli] that means “fruit” and “rope” respectively. Although the sound appears to be the same in bahasa Indonesia, the categorizations using these words are uniquely different. The word chim [tʃɪm] is also the object of discussion because of its unique use for categorizing birds and insects. This research is aimed to explore the uniqueness of bahasa Cham in categorizing animal, vegetables and fruits, as well as objects and to discover the reason behind those categorizations, which are triggered mostly by metonymy. The method of this research is participant observation and interview while teaching Bahasa Indonesia for four months in Cambodia for BIPA program.