Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Up with Geography: Cambodia

Country:
Cambodia

Capital:
Phnom Penh

Continent:
Asia

Maps:

Asian continent. Cambodia outlined in dark ink
and shaded.

A close-up of Cambodia & its neighbors.

Neighbors:
Thailand, Laos, Vietnam

Water Borders:
Gulf of Thailand

Total Area:
69,898 square miles

Five Largest Cities:
Phnom Penh, Battambang, Siem Reap, Sihanoukville, Prey Veng

Famous Geographical Point:
Mekong River

Famous Person:
Pisith Pilika, very prolific actress & ballet dancer

Book Set In/About:
To Cambodia with Love edited by Andy Brouwer

A collection of essays from 60 different people opining on the various things they love about Cambodia.

Movie Set In/About:
"The Killing Fields" (1984), directed by Roland Joffe

A view of the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror over Cambodia, as seen through the eyes of an American journalist.

Headline of the Day:
"Cambodia's Political Facebook War Heads to Court" in BBC News.

This is literally an argument about how many likes the Cambodian prime minister's Facebook has. The opposition has accused him of intimidating employees in order to get those likes, and also of spending money to get likes from fake accounts.

3 comments:

Patricia said...

Phnom Penh is one of those names I enjoy saying.

balyien said...

It's a good name, but I have no idea if how I pronounce it is the way it's supposed to be pronounced.

Patricia said...

I say it pa-NOM-pen, which I think I got from NPR news coverage. But I have no idea how to say it.

Oh! I've just remembered there is a site that tells you how to pronounce things. Let's see if I can find it by googling.

I can! It's called Forvo and here's the link to the pronunciation. Sadly, the three pronunciations are from the US, Poland and France. They are still looking for someone to pronounce it in Khmer. So if you know anyone...

http://forvo.com/word/phnom_penh/#fr

My interpretation of what I heard was that I should be saying NOM-pen, with the NOM being higher pitched than the pen.

Anyway, I love that they have native speakers pronounce words. It's very helpful for names of people. Right now there is a link on the main page to Footballers...