Sitting in a cyber cafe this late afternoon before going to French Cultural Center, I heard a cafe owner talked to a foreign customer when he was about to leave: “Thank you, and be careful!” Without hesitation, the foreign man asked: “What does it mean?” The cafe owner replied “Nothing, just be careful.” Finally, the foreigner tried to find out a better term and say “take care.”
As a foreigner living in Cambodia, he was curious when a local people tells him to be watched out. The two terms, in translation, for a non-native English speaker, it is not very difference. We can say Bra-yat Bray-yeng in Khmer. But, for a native speaker, this might be about a weight of the word.
Neither I am a teacher of English nor a language expert. I thought it is often necessary to try to look at small thing, so that I can get a bigger picture of it. One Cambodian old-saying goes that “before you can run a big job, you have to start from small one.” Needless to say, learning from mistake costs no money.