Talk:Phnom Penh

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Province

I'd like to remove the province listing for Phnom Penh, as Phnom Penh isn't a province, nor is it in a province called Phnom Penh. It is a municipality as listed elsewhere in the article and special administrative unit. Although it is sometimes considered a "de facto province" it is not an actual province (see http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Provinces_of_Cambodia). Listing it as such is causing problems with other sites, such as Facebook, that lift their geographic information from Wikipedia. Any objections? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.37.238.236 (talk) 06:44, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Grammar

The English grammar in parts of this page needs revision. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.6.49.151 (talk) 03:39, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Pronounce

How do you pronounce it ? 24.65.22.111 00:25, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Interesting question - ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) News anchors and journalists have always pronounced in "P-nom Pen", with the "o" as in orange. redcountess 19:44, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

The normal pronunciation on the U.S. East Coast is a bit different. The first sound is difficult to describe, but I'll give a rough estimate.

The lips are pursed as to pronounce a P, but it's never carried out: the lips build up noticeable tension behind them, but the air isn't expelled. Instead, the mouth is kept closed; make an N sound without moving the tongue, then finish the syllable (the O is pronounced as a broad A, typical of broadcasters). "Penh" is like "pen" with a short, tight finish.

The closest approximation I can give to "Pnomh" is "mnam", but the first sound isn't quite right. I have no idea how Phnom Penh should actually be pronounced, but the "mnaam-PEN" is universal to the East Coast.

Pronounciation varies, but its pronounced like Ph'nom Ping by most Khmers (the 'o' sounds like the 'o' in gnome, but shorter). In IPA, I would guess it's as /pʰnom piɳ/. The romanization of Phnom Penh isn't based on its Khmer pronounciation, but its written form. --Dara 03:24, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

I prefer to think of it as something more along the lines of Puh-Nom Peng (which will probably make most linguists turn in their graves). The P is definitely pronounced (except by those tourists who insist upon sticking to what they heard back home).

Myself and my parents are Cambodian, to pronounce it, "pnn-nom" - or you could practice by saying "pin-nom" really fast, then try dropping the 'i' - and the Penh part, yeah it's just like "peng" 60.226.73.18 02:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

In English, North American English, during the Vietnam War and Khmer Rouge era, when the city was constantly in TV news reports -- when reporters always seemed to be interviewing Sihanouk -- it was pronounced /ˈnɒm ˈpɛn/ 9 times out of 10, with a silent 'p' just like ptarmigan or pterodactyl. That is how I learned to say it in the 1960s, and that is how I say it today.

Varlaam (talk) 20:46, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

"tension ... but the air isn't expelled"

To me, that sounds like my notion of how final consonants, -k, -t, -p, work in Cantonese.

But that could be completely wrong. Varlaam (talk) 20:51, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Pictures

Just removed a bunch of pictures added by Ahazan. There's already a Royal palace picture, already a Wat Phnom picture. The pic of the river is uninteresting, and there's no real good place in the article for the train station or central market pix. In any case, someone could add them to the commons if they really wanted them around, but it was an overload on the article to put them there. --Easter Monkey 05:15, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Chinese Name

Would it be useful to list the Chinese name for the city? 金边 has been used in the Chinese community as the name for that city for centuries. Even now, when flying to the city on a Chinese airline, the electronic sign boards at the check in counter flash back and forth between Phnom Penh and 金边. The translation means "Golden Edge." --202.79.62.12, 08:42, 17 February 2006

I don't think it makes sense to add the Chinese name. There is a Chinese name for every place in the world, so what? Some are boring recent phonetic transcriptions, and some others have a bit of history behind them.

To add Jīnbiān 金邊 to the English article on Phnom Penh makes as much or as little sense as adding Wànxiàng 萬象 ("ten thousand elephants") to Vientiane or Jiùjīnshān 舊金山 ("old gold mountain") to San Francisco - and those names have been used by Chinese communities for centuries as well, and Chinese airlines use those names, too - so what? —Babelfisch 03:30, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes -- the addition of that information would be interesting and useful in that the Chinese community has been a major player in the history of the city and remains a significant force there. The Chinese community within the city is in control of much of the wealth and power - in the past and in the 21st Century. Yes, there is a Chinese name for every place in the world...but every place in the world has not been so significantly impacted by China and her people. Despite the glaring lack of mention here, Phnom Penh is, in many ways, driven to the beat of a Chinese drum. Discounting the influence Chinese people and their culture, and thus the significance of the name they gave the city, displays a mono-ethnic arrogance that is very un-encyclopedic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.95.241.179 (talk) 20:19, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

But that's the point...Wikipedia is very un-encyclopedic. If you want an encyclopedia go to Britanica. Wikipedia puts forward a lot of information but it does not do so as an encyclopedia -- it's more of an unsubstantiated graffiti wall.

Good point. If that is the case, then why not ignore the anti-Chinese opinion and simply add that useful information? Let them cling to ignorance, but allow us to freely exchange information. The Chinese name needs to be on the page.219.76.92.165 (talk) 03:11, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed -- The Chinese name should be included. I came here looking for it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.51.195.244 (talk) 14:11, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I too agree. Include the Chinese name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.71.68.99 (talk) 03:58, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Add the name in Chinese, please. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.73.108.217 (talk) 02:40, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

History section

I reverted the history section that covers this period. I think its a significant period in the cities history and should rate more than a line.

I agree with your restoration of this section. However, you write: "During the Vietnam War, Cambodia, including Phnom Penh, was used as a base by the North Vietnamese Army and the NLF". This suggests that the NVA and the VC actually stationed troops in Phnom Penh, which I'm fairly certain was not the case. You should either provide a source for this or rephrase it. Adam 12:46, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

"...one half to two-thirds died....": I've read most of the sources and cannot recall anyone making a claim that 2/3 of the population died during the Pol Pot years. It is certainly not an accepted figure generally. The one-half number also does not reflect a low end estimate, which is probably Michael Vickery's estimate of 700,000.

New York and Phnom Penh

These are the section/subsection headings from the New York City article:

1 History

2 Geography

2.1 Climate

2.2 Environment

3 Cityscape

3.1 Architecture

3.2 Boroughs

4 Culture

4.1 Tourism

4.2 Media

4.3 Sports

5 Economy

6 Demographics

7 Government

7.1 Crime

8 Education

9 Transportation

10 Sister cities

11 Notes

12 References

13 Further reading

14 External link

'Twould be nice to use this as a model for the PP article (doesn't need to be follwoed slavishly - just to fill in gaps). PiCo 14:29, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

That was an extremely useful thing to add - thank you! Paxse 09:10, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia PiCo. Don't dictate -- participate! get in there and start doing the work yourself! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.76.92.165 (talk) 03:08, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Depopulation

I'd like some rough graph of population from the Colonial times to the present,, to gauge the impact of the refugees, the depopulation and the vegetative growth. How many people were there during the Khmer Rouge depopulation? Were there embassies? How were the deserted buildings allotted after the KR retreat? Were they squatted or did the previous owners get their homes back? --84.20.17.84 14:56, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Lots of questions - I'll try to answer. Civil war, regime change etc meant that there was a gap in census' in Cambodia from 1960 to 1998 - this prevents truly accurate population graphing. Because the number killed during/under/by the DK regime has been (and still is) the source of great historical debate - numbers are disputed and commonly recognized figures are hard to come by. That said the article Demographics of Cambodia has some interesting numbers. I've read reports that claimed there 2 million refugees (in addition to the normal city population) from the war in Phnom Penh when the city fell in 1975. Considering the city population has only just the 1 million mark this year - 32 years later - it gives you some idea of the scale of refugees at the time. There were government ministries, factories, etc in the capitol after the fall including embassies from various former Soviet bloc countries - Yugoslavia etc. The capitol wasn't ever deserted, but the civilian population was forcibly evacuated. deserted building were looted and claimed on a first come first served basis. The post DK government gave out favors to it's supporters and took what properties they wanted. In nearly all cases, previous owners were dispossessed. The government even passed a land law law invalidating previous land claims prior to 1975.Paxse (talk) 16:42, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

As a corollary to that the Bodies in Formation web exhibition on communist/nationalist gymnastic displays [1] gives a picture of Phnom Penh stadium being used for some kind of mass games in 1977 - at the height of the Khmer Rouge system. Surely the city was fully evacuated and the stadium used for executions rather than spartakiads? Any clues? Lstanley1979 (talk) 18:11, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Those are fascinating photographs, thank you. The city was never fully evacuated as I said above, just the civilian population was removed. Ieng Sary and his charming wife Ieng Thirith for example claimed a lovely villa near the riverfront, which is still 'theirs' today. Until very recently they lived comfortably there with occasional jaunts to Bangkok. For example, the infamous S-21 or Tuol Sleng prison is near the middle of Phnom Penh (a kilometre or two from where I'm sitting now). You can't imprison, torture and execute thousands of people without staff, kitchens and houses to keep them in - therefore people lived in the city. All major party meetings were held in Phnom Penh and the senior leadership all lived here from 1975 to 1979.Paxse (talk) 16:42, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Misspelled name?

The very first paragraph reads as follows:

 "Hill of Penh" or more loosely "Pehn's Hill"

Notice that the second name has the letters 'h' and 'n' reversed. If this is correct, as is, then an explanation is warranted. If it is not correct, then it needs to be fixed. Skaizun (talk) 03:27, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Corrected. Thanks for pointing this out. WTucker (talk) 04:09, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Infobox image stability

There seems to be a slow running edit war over the infobox image, though not of the usual kind. It's not so much a revert war but images keep being replaced with others that are missing licensing or copyright information, which then get deleted after being noticed as such on commons: someone puts in a more stable image, only for another soon to be deleted image to be added.

I've replaced the latest such so the file "Phnom Penh Montage.jpg" is used. This seems like a good image as it includes a number of sights, most of the more attractive or striking ones in the city, and such montages are generally preferred for cities where there isn't a single iconic image. I would ask therefore that anyone that wants to change it come here and discuss it first, with reasons for the change, so we can reach some consensus about the lead image and so some stability in this article.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:12, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I just reverted an image change as although the image was acceptable it again lacked proper licensing info and has already been tagged for deletion in a few days. Please make sure that all images added are properly licensed: without it just leads to red image links in the infobox and extra work for everyone.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 20:55, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

And again. The image File:Phnom Penh Montage.png is a very poor image due to its filesize: at 247kb it is far too big, but it has also has been uploaded at far too small a size: if the user clicks on it they don't see it full size but at the same size and cannot see the image any better. The one there now is only 53k inline and has a full size version when clicked through, so works much better in two ways.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 09:14, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Infobox image stability

The infobox image "Phnom Penh Montage.jpg" has good number of sights but it is poorly design and very sloppy. The person who keeps reverting the places where the images are place is making the artical very sloppy and unorgainized —Preceding unsigned comment added by BlackxxArrow (talk • contribs) 16:59, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm one of those persons. That it's "poorly design and very sloppy" is your opinion only: you have today two editors that have undone your changes, and a third you reverted earlier today after they tidied up the article, so there is no consensus for your changes. As I noted above there are two significant problems with the image you keep ading. First the file is too large, at over 200k for such a small image, bigger than the whole of the article. Second the image has been uploaded at too small a size, so when an editor clicks through to see it at a larger size they see the same small and unclear images. If it were recreated and uploaded as a much larger JPEG, much like the image there now, I would not have a problem with it.

Perhaps most important you need to provide the reasons for your changes, in the edit summary and if needed on the talk page. You should always give reasons, especially when reverting another editor's changes, and discuss controversial changes on the talk page when needed. That way other editors understand what you are doing and agreement can usually be reached.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 17:17, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Population problems

Once again the Phnom Penh article has population problems. For some reason there is a steady tendency to increase the city population (and Cambodia's population) drastically over time. Cambodia has had a recent census, the reference date was March 2nd, 2008 and consequently very accurate population figures are available. There is no reason for guesswork and no excuse for using outdated non official web data (like the dreadful CIA World Factbook, which has not been updated since the 2008 census) to reference population numbers. I have a full copy of the 2008 census, including the full census database and I work with these figures everyday. The 2008 census totals are also available on the Cambodian Ministry of Planning website for anyone to check (http://www.nis.gov.kh/). Therefore, I find it somewhat annoying to continually have to revert changes to fully referenced population figures. Often editors just change the population while leaving the reference. I'll leave this note here, in the hope that some would be demographers might read this explanation. The Phnom Penh municipality (prior to the 2008 census) printed a tourist brochure claiming a municipal population of over 2 million persons. This was based on more enthusiasm than science and is not an acceptable reference. On the reference date of March 2nd, Phnom Penh had a population of 1,327,615 persons (of 13,395,682 across Cambodia). This was an increase of only ~330,000 over the last Census in 1998, when the Phnom Penh population was 999,804. Population growth is therefore relatively high, but not high enough to add three quarters of a million people in two or three years. Population growth has slowed dramatically since 1998 due to declines in fertility (this explains the high CIA figures, which are based on old population projections). Cambodia's current annual population growth is only 1.54% (compared to 2.49 in 1998) and the urban population is increasing at 2.21% annually. Anyone with a calculator could therefore work out that the Phnom Penh population projection for March 2nd, 2011 would be 1,417,595 persons out of 14,024,142 nationally. End rant. Now I'm going to correct and update the figures and the references. Drive by unreferenced population increases will be reverted quickly, population increases referenced from sources other than the Ministry of Planning, will be reverted with a note left on this page. Cheers, Paxse (talk) 07:21, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

First of all, declaration of interest, Paxse is a relative of mine. Population figures for 2012 were previously based on http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/google_map_Phnom_Penh.htm, this site is a wiki site with no referencing and in this case wildly inaccurate figures (in this case with a greater than 33% variance from an official source, and arguing for a 50% increase in 4 years from the last census, it hasn't happened). Brunswicknic (talk) 13:00, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

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Pearl of Asia

The Pearl of Asia is a name used to refer to numerous places and things – not just Phnom Penh. The same name was used to describe the nation of Burma, the Kingdom of Thailand, The Philippine archipelago, Lake Baikal, Lake Issyk Kul, the City of Osh, the city of Goa, the city of Penang, the city of Saigon, and most famously – Shanghai. Flatly stating that Phnom Penh was "the pearl of Asia" without pointing out that there were lots of other pearls of Asia too is a bit disingenuous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.71.68.99 (talk) 04:00, 6 October 2011 (UTC) this is stupid — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.140.47.19 (talk) 19:03, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I can't find any evidence that Phnom Penh was called the Pearl of Asia (other than Lonely Planet saying so). There are no original sources that say the city was called the Pearl of Asia. If there are no original sources, I think we should remove. Mtcam (talk) 04:25, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Etymology section

IMO, the etymology section answers all questions except the central one: what does "Phnom Penh" literally mean? Not what the term it's based on means, or what the elaborated form means--what does it mean? Terry J. Carter (talk) 14:11, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

The meaning could have been inferred from the first paragraph of the section: "Phnom Penh takes its name from the present Wat Phnom (“Hill Temple”). Legend has it that in 1372, an old nun named Lady Penh...", but, you're right, a literal meaning should be provided. I have done so. This article has many other problems though....--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 17:38, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Phnom means hill, Penh means plenty (as in plenteousness). The lady's name was very unusual ("Lady Plenty" isn't the sort of name you came across every day). PiCo (talk) 08:19, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

HDI

The infobox and article claim that Phnom Penh has a HDI of 0.936 (Very High). This is an astounding claim given that HDI is based off metrics such as education, health and income all of which are terrible in Phnom Penh, it's one of the poorest capitals in Asia. 0.936 would put the city above Germany and just 0.001 below Hong Kong, which seems remarkable. I'd also note that HDI does not seem to be listed for other cities, only countries. Blorg (talk) 10:00, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

I found the source further down:

http://www.ibe.unesco.org/International/ICE/natrap/Cambodia/StrategicAnalysis/chapter2.htm

It does seem to claim this:

>These patterns are confirmed by a provincial analysis of human development indicators. For example, the HDI in Phnom Penh is 0.936 compared to a national average HDI of 0.472. HDI ranges from 0.22 (Mondulkiri) to 0.659 (Kompong Som). Broadly the smaller, less populated and poorer provinces have lower HDI. Amongst the more populated provinces, the lowest HDI occurs in Siem Reap (ranked 19 from 20), Kompong Thom (ranked 18), Preah Vihear (ranked 12) and Takeo (ranked 10).

I honestly think the figure for Phnom Penh is a typo- note that in the next sentence it seems to suggest that Kompong Som (Sihanoukville) has the highest HDI in the country, but the figure given is lower than for Phnom Penh. 0.639 for Phnom Penh would make more sense. I think this should be removed, I mean it just doesn't pass the smell test for anyone who has actually been there, a typical worker is on around $90-100/month and even that is an improvement from the source which states an annual income of $691. You can't have a HDI above Germany on $691/year. Blorg (talk) 10:14, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

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Montage

The montage is an overload of images, most of which are similar architectural styles. The idea is to showcase many different types of architecture, none of the French style buildings are shown. IWI (chat) 22:38, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

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red, orange, and yellow zones

Per this link, will this article be updated? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 23:45, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

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skyscrapers

i want to add a topic in phnom penh its about thai boon roong twin tower world trade center not to be confused with new york twin towers oh and also yes this is real try a quick google search about thai boon roong twin tower world trade center Vojtik2009 (talk) 11:36, 20 August 2023 (UTC)