Languagle #43: Khmer
តក់ៗពេញបំពង់
tak tak penh bampong
"Drop by drop, the bamboo tube fills."
What it means
Small efforts add up. Drop by drop, a bamboo water tube fills. A saying often used to encourage saving money or steady work, like 'many a little makes a mickle'.
What kind of saying it is
Oral tradition. In Khmer, a សុភាសិត. Passed down by word of mouth. Sayings like this have no single author.
About the Khmer language
Khmer is an Austroasiatic language and the official language of Cambodia, spoken by around 17 million people there and in parts of Thailand and Vietnam. Unlike Thai and Vietnamese, it is not tonal. The Khmer script, descended from the southern Indian Pallava script, has one of the largest alphabets in the world, and it was the model for the Thai and Lao scripts. Inscriptions in Khmer go back to the 7th century.