Creator
David Smyth
British scholar of Thai and Cambodian who wrote the Routledge Colloquial Cambodian course.
David Smyth is a British scholar of Thai studies who taught Thai and Cambodian at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.[1] He wrote Colloquial Cambodian: A Complete Language Course, published by Routledge in 1995, and co-wrote the Tuttle Practical Cambodian Dictionary with Tran Kien the same year.[1][2][3] His other language books include Linguaphone Thai Course, Teach Yourself Thai and Thai: An Essential Grammar, and he also works as a translator.[1]
Career
David Smyth first studied Thai at SOAS as part of an undergraduate degree in Southeast Asian studies; one of his tutors was E. H. S. Simmonds. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s he taught English at Thammasat University and then at Srinakharinwirot University in Thailand.[1] He earned his PhD at SOAS in 1988 with a thesis on the major fiction of the Thai writer Kulap Saipradit, who wrote as Sriburapha. He then lectured in Thai and Cambodian at SOAS for a number of years, and he has also been listed as a lecturer in Thai and Cambodian at the University of London.[1][4]
Cambodian language books
Colloquial Cambodian is a step-by-step course in written and spoken Cambodian for learners with no prior knowledge. It has exercises, short grammar notes, vocabulary, a pronunciation guide and a reference section, and it covers spoken Khmer, conversation and phrase-book use. The 1995 Routledge edition, published in London and New York, runs to 241 pages with an index.[2][3][5] The course has also been published as Colloquial Cambodian: The Complete Course for Beginners, which covers speaking, listening, reading and writing, with dialogues, an answer key, a grammar summary and glossaries in both languages.[5][6]
The Tuttle Practical Cambodian Dictionary, part of the Tuttle Language Library, has Cambodian-English and English-Cambodian sections for learners with little or no experience of the language. Its 232 pages hold about 5,500 entries, each in romanized form and in Cambodian script, with definitions, sample phrases and appendixes.[4]
Editions of Colloquial Cambodian:[5]
- 1995, Routledge, paperback (ISBN 9780415100069)
- 2007, Routledge audio edition, book with two compact discs (ISBN 9780415453028)
- 2008, edition with two CDs and illustrations, 241 pages
Thai studies
His other books are Linguaphone Thai Course (1984, with Manas Chitakasem), Teach Yourself Thai (1995), Thai: An Essential Grammar (2002; second edition 2014) and Kulap Saipradit ('Sriburapha'): Journalist and Writer in Early 20th Century Siam (2019).[1] In 1984 he presented the paper "Sībūraphā and Some Ups and Downs in a Literary Career" at the International Conference on Thai Studies in Bangkok, and in 2001 he wrote "Farangs and Siamese: A Brief History of Learning Thai" for Essays in Tai Linguistics.[1]
His translations from Thai include:[1]
- Kulap Saipradit, Behind the Painting and Other Stories (1990)
- K. Surangkhanang, The Prostitute (1994)
- Kulap Saipradit and others, The Sergeant's Garland and Other Stories (1998, with Manas Chitakasem)
- Chart Korbjitti, No Way Out (2003)
- M. R. Nimitmongkol Navarat, The Dreams of an Idealist (2009)
Works
- Colloquial Cambodian (Learning resource)
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Wikipedia: David A. Smyth
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Internet Archive record
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Open Library work record
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 target.com, Tuttle Practical Cambodian Dictionary - (Tuttle Language Library) by David Smyth & Tran Kien (Paperback)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 AbeBooks, Colloquial Cambodian by David Smyth
- ↑ Routledge, Colloquial Cambodian: The Complete Course for Beginners (preview PDF)