Khmer language may be hard to learn for many expatriates living and working in Cambodia. This also goes to how to pronounce some names of places or destinations.
For instance, even English language newspaper like the Phnom Penh Post is trying to play with the name ‘Phnom Penh’. Rather than putting it in its official name, the local paper opts to alienate some of its readers by introducing ‘the Penh’ for ‘Phnom Penh’ or ‘in the Penh’ for ‘in Phnom Penh’.
The trend hasn’t stopped. Probably it’s a lazy way to mention Cambodia’s city and province. Lately, Battambang is a new target of this laziness. On the Internet, it’s quite easy to spot this; Battambang province now becomes ‘Bang’ or ‘Bong’. An introduction of no importance.
