Sa'och language
| Sa'och | |
|---|---|
| Chung | |
| Pronunciation | IPA: [t͡ɕʰṳˀŋ] |
| Native to | Cambodia, Thailand |
| Region | Sihanoukville, Kanchanaburi |
| Ethnicity | 450 (2009) |
|
Native speakers
|
10 (2009) |
|
Austroasiatic
|
|
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | saoc1239 |
Sa'och (Khmer pronunciation: [sa ʔoc], also, "Sauch") is an endangered, nearly extinct Pearic language of Cambodia and Thailand spoken only occasionally by a decreasing number of older adults. There are two dialects, one spoken in Veal Renh Village, Prey Nob District, Sihanoukville Province (formerly known as Kampong Som Province), Cambodia and the other in Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand. "Sa'och" is the Khmer exonym for the people and the language. The Sa'och, however, consider this label, which means "scarlet fever" or "pimply" in Khmer, pejorative and use the autonym "Chung" (Sa'och: [t͡ɕʰṳˀŋ]) to refer to themselves and their language.
Sa'och is an Austroasiatic language. Within the Austroasiatic family, Sa'och is a member of the Pearic languages, a subgroup consisting of a handful of dying languages, including Suoy, Pear, Chong and Samre, spoken by small numbers of ethnic minorities living mostly in far western Cambodia and adjacent areas of Thailand. In traditional classifications, the Pearic languages are most closely related to Khmer dialects, but more conservative schemes place the Pearic subfamily on a level equally distant from all the branches of Austroasiatic.
After the breakup of the Khmer Empire, the Cambodian central government was weak and neighboring Thailand and Vietnam vied for Cambodian territory. During this time, the Sa'och maintained a semi-autonomous territory centered on Veal Renh in Kampong Saom (modern-day Sihanoukville). According to Sa'och oral history, they prospered along the coast protected by their fortified settlement of Banteay Prey. However, in the 1830s, during the Siamese-Vietnamese War for Cambodia, the Thai army defeated the Sa'och and took many prisoners of war back to Thailand where they were forced to resettle in Kanchanaburi Province along the Thai-Burmese border. This resulted in two disparate communities of Sa'och speakers separated by some 800 km.
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Wikipedia