This book is an outgrowth of three years of study of the Cambodian language at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, in Southeast Asia, and at Cornell University, and of two years of teaching Cambodian at Yale University. It was brought to completion under a contract between the U.S. Office of Education and Yale University, which is gratefully acknowledged. Gratitude is also due the Department of East and South Asian Languages and Literatures of Yale University, which kindly granted me sufficient time from teaching duties to complete the work.
It would be impossible to mention all those who have assisted in bringing this work to completion. Thanks are especially due to Professor Fang-kuei Li of the University of Washington, who first suggested the Cambodian language as a field of study; Mrs. Judith M. Jacob of the London School of Oriental and African Studies, who gave me the first practical introduction to Cambodian; Professor Robert B. Jones of Cornell University, for his help and guidance during the preparation of a dissertation on Cambodian grammar, as well as for reading and criticizing an early draft of this book; Mrs. Chhom-Rak Thong Lambert, who wrote and adapted all of the selections in the Reader; Mr. Im Proum, for his painstaking work in writing all of the Cambodian script in two final drafts of the book; and the Yale University Press, which dealt patiently with the many problems of adapting a manuscript involving multiple writing systems to the printed page.
New Haven
September 1969
