Angkêt de mots,” when Phnom Penh celebrates the meeting of two languages
- Editorial team
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
The SOSORO Museum inaugurated on Sunday morning a temporary exhibition as unusual as it is captivating, dedicated to the borrowings of Khmer from French. A major cultural event, just months before the Francophonie Summit.
The word “cyclo” does not come from Khmer. Everyone knows it, yet no one thinks about it. That is more or less the subject of the exhibition inaugurated this Sunday at the SOSORO Museum in Phnom Penh—those French words that have slipped quietly into the speech of Cambodians over the decades, becoming as natural as the evening air on the Tonlé Sap.
In the courtyard of the former branch of the Banque de l’Indochine, now restored and integrated into the museum complex, guests gathered under the frangipani trees: ambassadors, ministers, researchers, and a few curious onlookers lost among the officials. There was something slightly unexpected about this highly formal assembly brought together to discuss linguistics—and the peculiar way in which two languages, when in contact long enough, begin to resemble one another.
A year of Francophonie, an exhibition project
The initiative comes from afar—or rather, from above. It was Her Excellency Madame Chea Serey, Governor of the National Bank of Cambodia, who commissioned the SOSORO team more than a year ago to design this exhibition, in preparation for the Francophonie Summit scheduled in Phnom Penh this coming November. “It seemed natural to us that the SOSORO Museum, already largely francophone in its content and publications, should support this dynamic through its cultural programming,” she stated during her speech.
A dynamic that the National Bank itself embodies: just weeks before the inauguration, it hosted the conference of central bank governors from francophone countries across Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe. The thread running through 2026, on the Cambodian side, is clearly woven in blue and white—the colors of the International Organization of La Francophonie.
The story of an encounter, word by word
What Angkêt de mots tells is both an ordinary and fascinating story: that of two languages that have interacted—first under the constraints of the 90 years of French Protectorate, and later by choice, across generations. Khmer has borrowed, adapted, and absorbed dozens of French words—and sometimes, as Governor Chea Serey humorously noted, resisted overly complex official neologisms. “In everyday life we all use the word ‘cyclo,’ while ត្រីចក្រយាន្ត remains in the dictionaries,” she said, to the audience’s laughter.
The exhibition’s scientific curator, Professor Jean-Michel Filippi—introduced by SOSORO co-director Blaise Kilian as speaking “12 languages besides Khmer”—brought his expertise to the project with evident passion. He structured the exhibition’s historical and linguistic journey, from the first encounters between European navigators and Khmer kingdoms to the contemporary use of French in Cambodian society.
A lively, playful, and participatory design
But Angkêt de mots does not simply line up explanatory panels. From the entrance, the scenography by Melon Rouge Agency stands out for its graphic coherence and sense of contrast: electric blue, bright orange, and a bicultural typography blending Khmer characters with Latin letters. Display cases feature postal envelopes stamped in Phnom Penh in 1928, old works such as the famous Chasse en Indochine by M. Defosse, and black-and-white photographs of colonial Phnom Penh—that “Little Paris” of Southeast Asia that now exists only in memory.
Further on, visitors discover a reconstruction of a 1960s interior—a retro living room with orange velvet, tube television, and a cherry-red record player on a teak cabinet—inviting immersion into a time when Norodom Sihanouk, a fluent francophone, made French a political and cultural vehicle for Cambodia’s influence. An entire section is dedicated to him, supported by photographic archives and period vinyl records. Nearby, a record bin offers 45 rpm discs by Christophe—the French singer, not your journalist—reminding visitors how music served as one of the first popular bridges between the two cultures.
The exhibition also incorporates humor and modernity. A fully equipped karaoke room invites visitors to sing in French to Khmer melodies, a nod to the genre’s popularity in Southeast Asia. Videos of contemporary Cambodian influencers engaging with the French language punctuate the exhibition, creating a dialogue between past and present.
Among the most remarkable pieces are traditional Khmer leather puppets—sbek touch—reinterpreted here to portray explorers, colonial officers, and female travelers: a dialogue between Khmer folk art and figures of the colonial era, handled with a subtlety that avoids any simplistic narrative.
SOSORO in full expansion
“Angkêt de mots is also, in a way, a special exhibition,” Blaise Kilian acknowledged in his opening remarks, emphasizing its event-driven nature. Yet it also fits into the museum’s broader trajectory, which in recent years has continued to assert its role as a cultural reference in Phnom Penh. Conferences, publications, and the KHMERICA database—recently relaunched with an enhanced search engine—demonstrate SOSORO’s ongoing efforts to make Cambodia’s economic and cultural history accessible.
The next announced step is theatrical in the literal sense: a troupe from the Acting Art Academy will soon use the exhibition itself as a stage, performing among the display cases and installations—a way of inhabiting words, quite literally.
“Cyclo,” “taem,” “angkêt”
This last word deserves attention. Angkêt—the Khmer phonetic transcription of the French word “enquête” (investigation)—gives the exhibition its title. It is indeed an investigation: tracing these linguistic shifts, these words that have crossed seas and centuries to settle into Cambodian speech, to the point where no one today considers their origin.
Taem, visible on one of the exhibition panels, is the transcription of the French word “timbre”—the most ordinary thing in the world, something you stick on an envelope. In the neighboring display case lies precisely such an envelope from 1928, sent from the Phnom Penh of “Little Paris” to Cholet, in Maine-et-Loire. It runs through the exhibition like a metaphor: a letter written in one language, bearing the marks of another, traveling between two worlds discovering each other.
That, ultimately, is what every living language does.
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