Scholars and Researchers from various provinces in Thailand presented their papers, articles and other lectures in a seminar held on June 26, 2008 in Mahasarakham University. The topic of the seminar "The diversity of Languages in Thai Society" is on languages in Thailand which are used in this country.
The Formation of Words Related to Rice
in Khmer and Thai Language
CHOM Sonnang
E-mail: snang_inl@yahoo.com
ABSTRACT
Rice is the important thing for most people of the world. Besides serving as food, it has influenced human communication and social life. The purpose of the study is to compare the lexical field of the word related to rice in Khmer and Thai. The article focuses on the use of term relating to the kind of rice, the rice growth, the use for rice, and word for rice production. Additionally, it is also to find out the influences of rice to the living standard, i.e. cultural life in both nations. It found that although Khmer and Thai languages belong to different language families, (Khmer belongs to the Austroasiatic family and the Thai language belongs to the Tai family), they share both similar and dissimilar concepts in using terms related to rice. According to the statistics of word and phrases, with a lexical contrastive analysis and morphological approach, it is found that Thai has one word for many kinds of rice to represent different kinds of rice. In contrast, Khmer has different words for rice: husk rice, cooked rice, much cooked rice (porridge), and so on. Other significant differences concerning rice terms in the two languages are also preserved by their morphological features. Furthermore, the article also deals with loan words which are mutually borrowed and cultural context influenced by rice.
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