This Mother's Child

I was having breakfast this morning, just down the street from where I live in Phnom Penh. As I ate my noodle soup, I noticed for the first time the name of the small family-run restaurant (as most in Cambodia are) across that small street: Restaurant My Kid.

The Khmer version of the name is Ko-in Mah (my phonetization), which is written in Khmer above the English. Had a nice conversation with a man who had sat down next to me about whether there is a better English translation of the Khmer original. I told him that the English, taken by itself, did not seem to do the work needed. In English, "kid" is informal, it lacks any great emotional weight, linked to the neutral 'My' it does not naturally bring to mind anything about the mother-child relationship as I thought the Khmer did (an argument I will try to make below). Moreover at some distance it can bring to mind the idea of a young goat!

'Mah' (or Ma) is a shortened form for mother in Khmai. It is what a small child most likely would call her mother when the child is happy, hungry, worried, or needs attention: the word brings to mind (rises out of) the whole complexity of the reationship between the Khmer morther and her child.

The mother will herself use the word 'Mah' as a pronoun, in reference to herself. Not as a mother might say in English, using some very formal, probably stern third person voice when she speaks to her child: "Your mother is very disappointed in you," but almost always The English version of this usage is rare, but possible. The Khmer mother will not use the colder, more formal "I" (knom), but "Mah" to refer to herself. She will use it like a first-person pronoun. By comparison, the English word "mother" is more distant, almost clinical, a lexical entry. (But we, in English, do this sometimes: "Mother loves you!" his mother told him. But to a child incapacitated by extreme youth, or an older child, by severe illness).

The English "My" implies a simple statement of possession, and though the phrase "My kid" is not as empty of deep emotional connotations as "My book" might be, unless it is clear that you wrote the book or that it changed your life, or you are in an argument over whose it really is. "My kid might find easy competition (for different reasons of course) with the phrases "My dog" or "My car" in attempts to show emotional connection. For example, "That's my kid (dog, car)" often provides more than simple information. It can indicate pride or love though by pointing to the specifity of something done in the moment by the , rather than focusing on the specific. "That's my boy" in English, might be more intense, intensely proud for example, it might more clearly connote real love and connection.

The Khmer noun "Ko-in" is the word used almost exclusively to designate that person who is one's own child (rather than just any kid, or children in general), so again, this word brings to mind (for a Cambodian) all the dependency, loyalty, wonder and pain of the relationship, and, at not a very great distance, the fact that most Cambodian children will say, without hesitation or reservation: "I can never disappoint my mother, she has sacrificed so much for me."

Their conjunction is so very interesting. "Mah" acts as an possessive pronoun, indicates ownership or possession, the centrality of child in the phrase brings into view everything that it means in Cambodia to be the child in a Khmer family. The reason it is translated as "My Kid" instead of "Mother Kid" is because in English we do not use a relational tag (like mother, brother, father, or child) as a personal pronoun, in Khmer it is ubiquitous.

Is there a better translation of this bit of Khmer into English? I tentatively offered: "Mother's Child" or "This Mother's Child", which in English might help to bring to mind the centrality, if not the intensity of the relationship and help us know that it is the mother of that child who is speaking. Not about just any child. Not just about MY child. But the child of a mother who, with the mother of the child, share such a close relationship that the child calls the mother what the mother calls herself: "Mah."

Note: In general I do not want this blog to devolve into a laughing gallery showing Cambodian translations of English that seem silly, even laughable. But there are some translations, unique, non-recurring, that may be illuminating. As I hope that this one is. One's that recur may be even more illuminating.

We do need to talk a lot more about the whole raft of personal pronouns that are used in Khmai. They take the logic of German's Sie and du, or the French's Vous and tu to an extreme.

"Hey little sister what have you done?

Hey little sister who's the only one?
Hey little sister who's your superman?"

Billy Idol