Thai Language thread

[BigHewer]

31 minutes ago, Bluesofa said:

การเมือง (gan-muang) politics    comes from การ (gan) action/work/task. Usually a prefix.  เมือง (muang) city/capital/country

These compound nouns are really interesting when you break them down. Great thread, Bluesofa

[Bluesofa]

2 hours ago, BigHewer said:

These compound nouns are really interesting when you break them down. Great thread, Bluesofa

Thanks BigHewer.

The way these words are built up helps me to understand Thai better. I hope it perhaps helps others too, maybe as well as some entertainment value.

It's not quite etymology, as that tends to look at the root of the word from other languages.

Having said that, recently we've seen some of the days of the week have a Sanskrit origin.
Not forgetting that newcomer from 1940 is 'sawasdee' also from Sanskrit, having exactly the same root as 'swastika' used by the Nazis at exactly the same time.

Back to the make up of Thai words. I noticed this recently:

— Flat (no tone)  High tone (straight up)  Low tone (straight down)
^ Falling tone (up, then down) ˅ Rising tone (down, then up)

 ˅                                                                           ˅                                   
ผิวปาก (peew*-bak) to whistle   comes from ผิว (peew*) skin ปาก (bak) mouth

                                                                                                        
นกหวีด (nok-weet) a police whistle   comes from นก (nok) bird หวีด (weet) to scream [or whistle]

[*like peel, but with a 'w' ending, rather than an 'l']

[DwizzleyMatthews]

6 hours ago, Bluesofa said:

Do the (Engrish) tone signs above the Thai script line up directly above the words?
I don't know if different devices/browsers will display the same. Please let me know. If it's not lining up, I may need a re-think.

They are a bit off on my iPhone ( Safari ) but am still able to follow .

Here’s a screenshot: ( or 2 )

 

 

 

Maybe put the tone mark in brackets after its relevant word ?

[Bluesofa]

Thanks for the feedback about the tones Dwizzley, and your suggestion about moving the tone mark.

The thing is, the V and ^ are just letter 'v' and digit 6 'caps shifted' on the keyboard. The high and low tones are (IIRC) Wingdings fonts, so I realise now not all devices can display them correctly, or even in the correct position.

Years ago I produced some pdfs with a very similar format, apart from where I put tone indicators. That was for some others who asked about learning Thai.

Perhaps I should write some of these posts as a document, take a screenshot and post the image?
The only drawback with that is you can't highlight and quote the text. Perhaps it's the way to go.
I'm talking as If I'm going to be doing it for years to come! I'm quite happy to, as long as there's some feedback, along with questions!
From what I can see so far, there seems yourself and Marble-eye reacting to the Thai script.

I was hoping someone was going to ask questions about the use of อ as a 'tone changer' in Thai script. I used it in some examples last week here: https://thethaiger.com/talk/topic/4428-thai-language-thread/?do=findComment&comment=235804 plus a few words in there with the same tone, but different meaning.
I've mentioned ห, as Marble-eye asked specifically about that one.
Maybe I'll bring up อ soon, as I have a few examples lined up.

Thanks again for your comments.

[Marble-eye]

OK, spoke to wife's friend about mispronouncing the "two row" word and she said I was saying นมสองเต้า without the first two Thai letters. 

Does that make sense BS?

[Bluesofa]

46 minutes ago, Marble-eye said:

OK, spoke to wife's friend about mispronouncing the "two row" word and she said I was saying นมสองเต้า without the first two Thai letters. 

Does that make sense BS?

 

I take it you said ‘without the first two Thai letters’ meaning you added them just now by way of explanation?

As I didn’t know the word I had to look up เต้า (dow - like the sailing boat)  [falling tone (up, then down)]
My all-singing-all-dancing Thai dictionary reckons it means: water bottle, water goblet, woman’s breast, udder peanuts, peas, beans.

สองแถว (song-taew) Baht bus [both words are rising tone (down, then up)]

I'm glad you replied M-e, thanks. Who says that Thai isn't entertaining!
I've learned a new word, not that I know what 'udder peanuts' are.

 

[Bluesofa]

Now ‘don’t’ and ‘divorce’ have exactly the same low tone. ‘Paternal grandmother’ and ‘grass’ both have a falling tone.
This means that each of those two pairs of words sound exactly the same. So how can you tell the difference? If a Thai heard the words on their own, they wouldn’t be able to.

The only way would be either:
a) hearing the words in context to know which one was being used, or
b) seeing them written down on their own, they could tell by the different spelling.

[Marble-eye]

1 hour ago, Bluesofa said:

As I didn’t know the word I had to look up เต้า (dow - like the sailing boat)  [falling tone (up, then down)]
My all-singing-all-dancing Thai dictionary reckons it means: water bottle, water goblet, woman’s breast, udder peanuts, peas, beans.

The only dow I knew was ดาว, as in kai Dow song fong, ไข่ดาวสองฟอง, (two fried eggs) again one of the first words I learnt, and never to forget.

 

[DwizzleyMatthews]

48 minutes ago, Bluesofa said:

Now ‘don’t’ and ‘divorce’ have exactly the same low tone. ‘Paternal grandmother’ and ‘grass’ both have a falling tone.
This means that each of those two pairs of words sound exactly the same. So how can you tell the difference? If a Thai heard the words on their own, they wouldn’t be able to.

The only way would be either:
a) hearing the words in context to know which one was being used, or
b) seeing them written down on their own, they could tell by the different spelling.

The tone markers are spot on now BS, each one above its relative word.

[Bluesofa]

4 minutes ago, Marble-eye said:

The only dow I knew was ดาว, as in kai Dow song fong, ไข่ดาวสองฟอง, (two fried eggs) again one of the first words I learnt, and never to forget.

This is good, as we can now start on other things!

Firstly, ไข่ดาว (fried egg) can break down to: ไข่ (egg)   ดาว (star)  But who knows why?

Secondly you've introduced the subject of 'classifiers'. When Thai quantifies a number of items, they need to use a word to specify the quantity.

Sometimes in English we do it - a pair of glasses or five loaves of bread. So here the 'classifiers are 'pair' and 'loaves'.
In Thai it's needed each time to make the sentence grammatically correct.
สองฟอง (song-fong) two 'fong' - 'fong' is the classifier for eggs

Vehicles are  'kan'  รถคันนี้ (rot kan nee) this vehicle

Animals are 'dua'  นกสามตัว (nok sam dua) - three birds

Don't worry about what all the classifiers are right now. I've got a list of three hundred different ones. Most Thais don't know them unless there's a good reason, they tend to use a lot of general ones.

[Bluesofa]

13 minutes ago, DwizzleyMatthews said:

The tone markers are spot on now BS, each one above its relative word.

Thanks Dwizzley, This time I posted the section with the tones as an image.

[Bluesofa]

This word has อ in front purely to change the tone. It’s a low tone (straight down). Without อ it would be a falling tone (up, then down)

As well as being ‘just a consonant’, there are other uses for อ too.
Sometimes it’s needed as a ‘filler’, for want of a better expression. It’s usually when a word starts with a vowel which can’t be written first on it’s own.

We’re not allowed to write it just as าน as it doesn’t follow the grammar rules. So we need อ in front. By luck the tone sign above อ changes it to become a low tone.

I need to use Google translate, as how you pronounce ‘un’ depends on where you live in the UK, whereas the Thai is very specific: https://translate.google.com/?sl=th&tl=en&text=อุ่น &op=translate 

 

[Bluesofa]

These three words use the vowel เ-า (ow [as in ‘ouch’]).   More interesting are the consonants are in the middle.

The first word is straightforward, as there’s only one consonant.

The second word has ห immediately preceding the consonant - it’s not not actually a ‘consonant cluster’.
In this case ห is not pronounced, but used to change the tone of the word, from ‘flat’ to ‘rising’, and therefore also the meaning.

Regarding the last word, it’s not the composite vowel เ-า (ow [as in ‘ouch’]), I lied!
The two vowels are completely isolated.
They are เ (ay [as in ‘hay’]) and า (ar [as in ‘far’]).
As เ is written before the consonant (in this case ว), and า is written after the consonant (in the case ล) producing the two syllable word เวลา (way-lar) ‘time’.

How do you know how to work this out?
Practice, and reading about the language and Thai tone rules.
Remember, as I was told, “Thais just do it to make it difficult for ferangs to learn Thai.”

 

 

[Bluesofa]

Just to keep the pressure up, see that I’ve added another bit to the signs above:
“! short syllable”, meaning you need to make it more 'abrupt', and not 'drag it out'

The length of the words/syllables is also important when pronouncing them. I’ll start by using it here:

*Thai uses two meanings of the word - temperature and rotation (45°), but not for an education degree.

 

An English word sometimes used in Thai:


I mentioned before that one of the sounds not present in Thai is ‘th’ – as in: this, that, there, etc. The closest that naturally occurs is ต (‘dt’ a ‘hard d’ sound) or ท (‘t’ sound)

This is the ‘hard dt’ sound: https://translate.google.com/?sl=th&tl=en&text=เตา &op=translate

This is (one of the) ‘t’ sounds: https://translate.google.com/?sl=th&tl=en&text=โทรศัพท์ &op=translate

 

What's the reason behind all this? So I can ask if anyone recognises something that started in the 1960s:

Who might be the first to work it out? Your answers please!
You can't paste it directly into google translate, as it's an image - ha ha! 

 

[Marble-eye]

8 minutes ago, Bluesofa said:

Just to keep the pressure up, see that I’ve added another bit to the signs above:
“! short syllable”, meaning you need to make it more 'abrupt', and not 'drag it out'

The length of the words/syllables is also important when pronouncing them. I’ll start by using it here:

*Thai uses two meanings of the word - temperature and rotation (45°), but not for an education degree.

An English word sometimes used in Thai:


I mentioned before that one of the sounds not present in Thai is ‘th’ – as in: this, that, there, etc. The closest that naturally occurs is ต (‘dt’ a ‘hard d’ sound) or ท (‘t’ sound)

This is the ‘hard dt’ sound: https://translate.google.com/?sl=th&tl=en&text=เตา &op=translate

This is (one of the) ‘t’ sounds: https://translate.google.com/?sl=th&tl=en&text=โทรศัพท์ &op=translate

What's the reason behind all this? So I can ask if anyone recognises something that started in the 1960s:

Who might be the first to work it out? Your answers please!
You can't paste it directly into google translate, as it's an image - ha ha! 

The Three Degrees?

[Bluesofa]

6 minutes ago, Marble-eye said:

The Three Degrees?

Spot on! You win...absolutely nothing, but well done!

[Marble-eye]

3 hours ago, Bluesofa said:

Just to keep the pressure up, see that I’ve added another bit to the signs above:
“! short syllable”, meaning you need to make it more 'abrupt', and not 'drag it out'

The length of the words/syllables is also important when pronouncing them. I’ll start by using it here:

*Thai uses two meanings of the word - temperature and rotation (45°), but not for an education degree.

An English word sometimes used in Thai:


I mentioned before that one of the sounds not present in Thai is ‘th’ – as in: this, that, there, etc. The closest that naturally occurs is ต (‘dt’ a ‘hard d’ sound) or ท (‘t’ sound)

This is the ‘hard dt’ sound: https://translate.google.com/?sl=th&tl=en&text=เตา &op=translate

This is (one of the) ‘t’ sounds: https://translate.google.com/?sl=th&tl=en&text=โทรศัพท์ &op=translate

What's the reason behind all this? So I can ask if anyone recognises something that started in the 1960s:

Who might be the first to work it out? Your answers please!
You can't paste it directly into google translate, as it's an image - ha ha! 

Does the Thai language have a word for 'the', I asked my wife and she said no. I typed 'the' into Google Translate and it came back as ที่, but when I typed ที่ into GT it came back as 'at'.

[Bluesofa]

3 hours ago, Marble-eye said:

Does the Thai language have a word for 'the', I asked my wife and she said no. I typed 'the' into Google Translate and it came back as ที่, but when I typed ที่ into GT it came back as 'at'.

I'd agree with your wife on that. Thai grammar doesn't really seem to have a use for 'the'.

If you were going to a restaurant it would be ไปร้านอาหาร - go restaurant.

If you were going to eat at a restaurant - ไปกินข้าวที่ร้านอาหาร - go eat food at restaurant.

So yes, that's an example of how ที่ would come into it. No definite article 'the' in Thai.

There's a bit of humour in this as well. My wife sometimes speaks what we'd describe as lazily. It's just informal - colloquial Thai.
Sometimes she'll say ไปกินบ้านแม่ - 'go eat mum's house', missing out ที่ - at.

Of course I can't help but wind her up, asking if she can manage to eat the entire house on her own. I've heard other people say similar things like that too.

[Marble-eye]

13 hours ago, Bluesofa said:

ไปร้านอาหาร

I like breaking down Thai words and ร้าน according to Google Translate means 'store' and อาหาร means 'food', so on our wedding anniversary (if I knew when it was) I will take my wife to the food store.

[Bluesofa]

 

Breaking down more Thai words. These are all vehicle related.

https://translate.google.com/?sl=th&tl=en&text=หัวเทียน &op=translate

https://translate.google.com/?sl=th&tl=en&text=ยางรถยนต์ &op=translate
 

https://translate.google.com/?sl=th&tl=en&text=ยางมอเตอร์ไซค์ &op=translate
 

 

If we’re specifically talking about tyres, the way tyres and inner tubes are differentiated is interesting.

https://translate.google.com/?sl=th&tl=en&text=ยางใน &op=translate
https://translate.google.com/?sl=th&tl=en&text=ยางนอก &op=translate

(The words ‘in’ and ‘out’ can be slightly different, depending on the use)

Since adding the " ! short syllable" symbol, I've notice when listening to the Google translate voice sometimes it drags out the last syllable - car tyre is a good example.
I'm guessing it could be the limitation of auto translate, I don't know.

To be certain I always refer to the Jumbo English-Thai Dictionary by Gordon H. Allison, as it has the tones listed as well. Just in case there's something that might be an exception to the rule!

 

 

 

[Bluesofa]

 

How to refer to grandparents. This is dependent on which of your parents they belong to:

(which when used on it’s own means ‘you’), another reason is to avoid ambiguity, as there could be confusion if you were to say:

This could mean either your eyes or your maternal grandfather has a problem, as the two different words have the same spelling and same tone.

If anyone was eagled-eyed, they would have noticed I spelt the polite prefix as ฅุณ and not คุณ
as they are both the same word, but the first spelling was erroneously dropped due the usual ‘misunderstanding’, this one was back in the 1920s. See the lower part of this post:
https://thethaiger.com/talk/topic/4428-thai-language-thread/?do=findComment&comment=140256

What do all (well, both) the regular commenters think about my ongoing waffle regarding how words are 'pieced together'? Getting bored? Do you to know about something else?

 

 

[Faraday]

 

 

 

 

Your posts are very interesting & I have learnt some things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Faraday]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Could you explain about the word for vending machines - not the Japanese ones though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bluesofa]

 

‘vending machine’ and how the words are pieced together. I’ve managed to find three different words for the same thing:

 

 

[Faraday]

It's yet another good example of how some Thai words  actually describe exactly what it does.

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