The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXIV, Part 1-2, 1976 - Khamkoo

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town, of rural simplicity, in contrast to urban degradation, is apparently
a theme to be found in the Philippines in common with other countries.
If the Philippines presents an extreme case of linguistic chaos,
with eight local languages having more than a million speakers each,
and so compounding the problems facing would-be authors, most of tbe
mainland states present in tl11S respect a picture of blessed simplicity;
the one country, Burma, where, because of the existence of belligerent
minorities, one presumes there to be healthy writing in minority languages
is treated strictly from the point of view of contemporary writing in
Burmese and Mme Bernet glosses over complications (literature provides
'une denonciation vigilante de tous les defauts qui font obstacle au
bonheur') and anything more recent than !960. However, she introduces
a complication of her own, to be repeated by all the writers dealing with
the mainland other than Vietnam, of using a phonetic transcription
so eccentric as to make one wish she had stuck to the Burmese (properly
Mon) script.
Manda' le one can guess, but how does •c;eing Phe Mying'
normally write his name in a western script?
Jacqueline de Fels gets round the transliteration problem by having
the original Thai in footnotes (thank heavens, otherwise one would never
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guess that 'Ron' was 7 fl1.1) but sometimes forgets: 'bao samong' apparently
obtains for IU1!'11J!H, Peltier uses a different transcription for Thai, though
goodness knows which, since it is peppered with numerals e.g. sam kok3
is !'11lJn n.
It looks remarkably like the sys tern used for Lao by Saveng
Phinith which one suspects to be the Ecole Fran