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PRAYER OF PRAISE
[...] I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at a turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch [...]
Read more of this essay on why we praise...
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Holy Week Jesus Anointed, Triumphal Entry (sermon: A Resolute Journey) Washes Disciples Feet, Last Supper Matthew 26 * Mark 14 * Luke 19, 22 * John 12, 13
The PASSION OF THE CHRIST (Hollywood blockbuster, directed by Mel Gibson)
Palm Sunday (sermon: The Great Reversal)
(March 24, Palm Sunday starts Holy Week)
Maundy Thursday (sermon: Denial;
sermon: The Father's Will;
sermon: Behold the Man)
(meaning of Maundy Thursday; March 28)
Good Friday (sermon: Crucifixion)
(Sermon: Guiltless -- the sham trial)
(Sermon: Abandonment)
(March 29) Sermon: The Resurrection -- God's Promise Sermon: Resurrection and Life Sermon: Easter -- Death Could Not Hold Him! (March 31) <
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Beauty is necessary for Cambodia flourishing.
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Old vs. New books ("Spiritual Reading" by C. S. Lewis)
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The Country that Stopped Reading
New York Times/ IHT (6 March 2013)
[replace "Mexico" for "Cambodia"] And it’s not about pedagogical theories and new techniques that look for shortcuts. The educational machine does not need fine-tuning; it needs a complete change of direction. It needs to make students read, read and read. But perhaps the Mexican government is not ready for its people to be truly educated. We know that books give people ambitions, expectations, a sense of dignity. If tomorrow we were to wake up as educated as the Finnish people, the streets would be filled with indignant citizens and our frightened government would be asking itself where these people got more than a dishwasher’s training.
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Education through Imagination:
A Closed Mind is a Beautiful Thing to Lose
Theary C. Seng, June 2007
Read. Read. Read. A critical component of the development of the imagination is reading. We Khmers need to read, read, read and read some more. When we read, we prepare ourselves for any and all opportunities which otherwise would pass us by. The Chinese have it right it defining 'success' by combining the character for preparation (internal individually determined) with the character for opportunity (externally determined). The majority of Khmer live in a harsh reality of abject poverty, crimes and abuse. More than ever we need to keep in mind that reality can be 'beaten with enough imagination'. Imagination, then, is the gateway to wisdom and change, and ultimately to personal and social development.
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Losing our mother tongue The Phnom Penh Post, Feb. 9, 2013 Some young people seemingly pretend to be unable to speak their mother tongue... But when writing in Khmer, which is their native tongue, no one seems to care about accuracy. Even if the dictionary of Patriarch Chuon Nat is installed on their computer, they never bother to open it... "Khmer citizens must know the national language clearly, in both oral and written form, to ensure it survives."
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Rare reading materials in the Khmer language that have been edited for clarity and easy comprehension! With the scarcity of available reading materials in the Khmer language in electronic form where I can edit to raise my larger point of the NEED FOR USE OF PUNCTUATIONS, I am glad I can illustrate using the Khmer Bible.
If you ONLY know English, and this is how you have been habituated to read English, how far would you go in your education?
For the KHMER reader, click here and read this chapter from the book of JOSHUA. (The verse numbers are acting as a punctuation, but without them, the chaos would be UTTER CHAOS.) For the ENGLISH reader, click here and read this chapter, but imagine there are no proper nouns (no capitalized words) and no punctuations except for the full stop. The vocabulary (translation) is very good -- as it done by a committee with checks and rechecks, unlike most of the other translations being produced in the whole of society. But without commas and other punctuation, is the Khmer chapter clear and understandable?
This is how Cambodians read the Cambodian language. For Cambodians with means or an opportunity to rely on another language, after they're stuck with the Cambodian language (which is very early on), they rely on their 2nd language for knowledge.
But for the MAJORITY of Cambodians who do not know a 2nd language, they have to fight the printed page and mangled language (of misspelling, of "creative" texting-style punctuation, or just run-on phrases) to get even a scant piece of knowledge.
. . . A LANGUAGE IN CRISIS
4-Part Series of Commentary to The Phnom Penh Post Re-posted on KI-Media and Facebook Accounts Sent to 1,500 on Email List-serve
Part I A LANGUAGE IN CRISIS (edited version published in The Phnom Penh Post, 16 Aug. 2011)
Part II A LANGUAGE IN CRISIS The Written Khmer: The Problem (edited version published in The Phnom Penh Post, 17 August 2012)
Part III A LANGUAGE IN CRISIS The Written Khmer: A Few Questions (anecdotes of the problems on the ground posed in list of questions, forthcoming)
Part IV A LANGUAGE IN CRISIS The Written Khmer: A Few Recommendations (a few initial recommendations of the way forward, forthcoming) Background
Venerable Chuon Nath's Dictionary and other Authority (the learned monk of the 20th century is the strongest authority on all things educated, in Khmer)
Language and National Identity by Dr. Stephen Heder (a chapter on Cambodia in a book published by Oxford University Press)
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សេចក្តីប្រកាស ជាសកល ស្តីអំពី សិទ្ធិមនុស្ស Universal Declaration of Human Rights
This version is from a couple of translations published by the UNOHCHR (booklet, webpage) which I have edited mainly with regards to spacing and punctuations for easier comprehension. On occasions, I have corrected translation inaccuracies. – Theary C. Seng, Phnom Penh, 30 Nov. 2012
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The Khmer Bible
Version with Proper Punctuations/Formatting
Edited by Theary C. Seng
As the Khmer Standard Version of the Bible, 2005 is extremely well translated in terms of word choice/vocabulary, and recently made available in electronic form on the internet, and because I am already very well familiar with the stories and books of the Bible (reading, re-reading them since I first became a Christian at the age of 9 years old--32 years ago!), I am editing the KSV 2005 with proper, consistent, and "new" punctuations as well as reformatting it for clarity and easier comprehension.
I am starting with books and portions of the Bible which contain ideas and concepts which are already familiar, even if the non-Christian Khmer reader may be surprised to find the source as the Bible, e.g. the Book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Sermon on the Mount, Gospel of Luke and of John, Letter of James, etc.
Both Christian and non-Christian Cambodian readers will be able to appreciate these edited books of the Bible in Khmer, mainly because they rare reading materials available in the Khmer language that are clear and understandable. For the non-believing Khmer readers, take these edited books of the Bible as good literature, which they are (plus more, for the Khmer believers!).
In all instances, I have changed to the correct spelling of ឲ្យ (from អោយ, which is incorrect).
Samdech Sangh (Venerable) Chuon Nath Dictionary (1967) and another dictionary before 1977 have ឲ្យ. Dictionaries of 2004, 2007 have ឱ្យ. ឱ្យ is an accepted form of ឲ្យ. However, the introduction page of Samdech Sangh Chuon Nath dico (1967-1968) edition - note No. ខ៣, he also indicated that while this form is correct, we should not use: ឱយ or អោយ. Writing អោយ (which is INCORRECT) is akin to texting in English luv . It is common practice to write informally text or email messages "I luv you" but it doesn't make "luv" the correct spelling of "love". The principle also applies to writing Khmer properly. I am also changing the spelling of សម្រាប់ (correct) from សំរាប់ (incorrect).
When the dictionaries are in conflict without a reasonable explanation, go with the strongest authority, Ven. Chuon Nath dictionary of 1967 which has សម្រាប់ as the correct spelling (as well as the Dictionnaire Détaillé des Homonyses et des Paronymes, 2007).
(សំរាប់ is found in 2 later dictionaries published during great political instability when there were no infrastructure: Cambodian-English of 1977, during the Khmer Rouge genocide, American University Press, and Oxford English-Khmer of 2004, only one year after UNTAC left.)
I am currently having my staff at CIVICUS Cambodia typing two basic books on the history of Cambodia, already translated but lacking proper punctuations, so that I may edit them and make them freely available online for the public.
READING MUST BE TRIGGERED with INTERESTING MATERIALS.
READING Must be free of the burdens of having to fight the printed page and mangled language.
READING Is the beginning of effective DIALOGUE, of quality EDUCATION, of RECONCILIATION, of Cambodian FLOURISHING (PEACE with JUSTICE, or SHALOM).
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