For Khmer-Krom people, language is much more than a way to communicate. It carries the voices of our ancestors, memories of our homeland, and the prayers of our Buddhist monks. It is how mothers teach their children who they are, and how we connect our past to our future. When a Khmer-Krom child can speak Khmer but cannot read or write it, something important is being lost. If a child grows up on Khmer land but learns only the history and identity of others, they are slowly separated from their roots. Losing a language is not just about losing words. It means losing the ability to truly understand our own history, religion, culture, and place in the world. This is the quiet crisis the Khmer-Krom face today.
The Khmer-Krom are Indigenous to the Mekong Delta, which we call Kampuchea-Krom. Long before modern borders, our people lived here, built villages, grew rice, practiced Theravada Buddhism, and created a culture rooted in the Khmer language. Our temples were more than places of worship. They served as schools, libraries, community centers, and safe spaces where we learned about morality, history, literature, and identity. For generations, our language and faith kept us from disappearing. Even when political power changed, our language reminded us of who we were. Now, that protection is seriously threatened.
After 1975, most Khmer-Krom children could not learn their mother tongue in public schools freely. Vietnamese became the main language for education, government, and daily life. Khmer-language textbooks disappeared, and Khmer history was no longer taught. Children had to succeed in a system that left little room for their language or Indigenous identity. This has had a deep and lasting effect. Many Khmer-Krom children still speak Khmer at home, but cannot read or write it well. Some understand their grandparents' language but cannot write a simple letter in Khmer. Others become more comfortable with Vietnamese, not because they want to give up their identity, but because the education system gives them no real choice.
This is how assimilation happens. It does not always come with violence. Sometimes it comes quietly, through school schedules, textbooks, official documents, and policies that make one language necessary for survival and make another seem unnecessary or invisible. For Indigenous peoples, losing a language is especially dangerous because language holds much more than words. It carries our worldview, spiritual meaning, and family memories. It holds the names of our places, rivers, rice fields, temples, ceremonies, and ancestors. When a language weakens, our connection to land and history weakens too.
For the Khmer-Krom, this loss is not by chance. It is part of a bigger struggle for recognition. Vietnam calls us an ethnic minority, but we see ourselves as Indigenous Peoples of the Mekong Delta, and this difference is important. International law says Indigenous Peoples have the right to self-identify, to keep and strengthen their cultural institutions, and to run schools in their own languages. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) says we have the right to revive, use, develop, and pass on our languages, and to build schools that teach in our own languages and respect our culture. For the Khmer-Krom, these rights are still far from reality.
In many of our communities, Buddhist temples are now the last defense against losing our language. When public schools do not offer enough Khmer-language teaching, our monks step in. When children cannot learn Khmer history at school, the temple becomes the place where they hear their own people's stories. When parents worry their children will forget who they are, they bring them to the temple to learn the Khmer alphabet, old prayers, songs, and the values that keep our community strong. Inside these temples, you can hear children practicing Khmer letters, young monks writing on chalkboards, and elders helping with pronunciation as children repeat words passed down for centuries. These lessons may seem small, but each one is an act of cultural survival. When a monk teaches a child the Khmer alphabet, he is not just teaching language. He is protecting our people from being erased. This is why Khmer-Krom monks are often targeted when they defend religious freedom, cultural rights, and language education. They are at the heart of our identity, and if temples are controlled, monks silenced, and Khmer-language education restricted, our community loses one of its strongest defenses against assimilation.
