Already!

One thing you'll notice about any English-speaking Cambodian people you ever happen to run into is that they will use the word "already" with surprising frequency. That happens because in Khmae, rather than conjugating a verb, you use words in other places in the sentence to denote the tense. So, for past tense sentences, you use a word that kind of sounds like "howie." If you want to say, "I ate," the words you would use sound kinda like "knyom nyam howie," or "I eat already." If you want to say "I went," the words sound like "knyom toe howie," or "I go already." There's no way to say "went" or "ate" or any other past tense word, which is super cool.

So of course, when little Khmae kids are learning English, of course one of the first words they're interesting in translating is "howie" since it's so important in their own language, and they're told that the best translation is "already." Which is more or less accurate. However, they never really get over the habit of using that structure, even when they have all the other structures right. I'll actually hear little kids say, "I ate already," even though "ate" is already past tense, and older kids will say like, "I took the computer from the library, but Mike yelled at me so I put it back already." The other day when I gave the kids in my class a quiz, as each one finished their test they would put their pencil down then look at me and shout, "ALREADY!!!" Even Mike will use the word "already" with alarming frequency when he's talking just to me. I made fun of him for it the other day, and he told me yesterday that he caught himself about to use it needlessly and decided not to say it. But then he told me about it so I made fun of him anyway.

Peace out.