A few years ago, Dane was chatting in Khmer Sor with a friend at her home in Battambang province. [dans le nord-ouest du Cambodge]when his mother came with a weird look and said: “You use this language to hide your secret from people, but you can’t hide it from me. I understand her.”

This language, Khmer Sor, or Khmer Blanc, is a version of Khmer with particular consonant and vowel sequences widely used by the LGBTQI community. For linguists, it is a slang: a language spoken by a group of people who share common points.

Until then, Dane had not known that his mother spoke Khmer Blanc; and his mother didn’t know that Dane knew him too. The two women did not learn of it for the same reason.

Dane, who is transgender, learned the idiom from gay friends when she began to live openly as a woman, around the age of 20. Her mother, who is cisgender, heterosexual and in her sixties, spoke it during the Khmer Rouge regime to communicate with other civilians interned in the same camp as her and thus escape the surveillance of the leaders.

Khmer white, khmer blue, polari or gay malaysian

The origins of this language remain a mystery even to those who speak it fluently. What is certain is that it has existed for at least fifty years. It is one of the few languages ​​in the world used by LGBTQI and other marginalized groups to bond, joke and show solidarity in a hostile environment.

In Cambodia, particularly in the northern provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap, Sor Khmer and a related language, Khmer Khiev, or Khmer Blue, persist in circles like Dane and queer environments, and in some living rooms. hairdressing and wedding parties.

On the other side of the world, in England, at the beginning of the XX^e century, some sailors, sex workers and patrons of brothels, sexual minorities