Thai Language thread

[Marble-eye]

4 minutes ago, Bluesofa said:

It's the first time I've seen any of the BananaThai videos, the girl's English is very good.

The way the tones are described in the video are different to how my Thai teacher explained it to me.
Hundreds of years ago I was taught that a rising tone went 'down then up', and a falling tone went 'up then down'. That’s why my Pat.Pending symbols use v and ^

For all I know it could just be the way different Thais describe the tones when teaching ferangs?

For example, หมา (ma) dog with a rising tone. When I say it, I make it go down, then up. In the BananaThai video, the girl seems to say it just going up.

Or ม้า (ma) horse with a high tone. When I say it, I make it go upwards. In the BananaThai video, the girl says it using a high tone for the entire word.

Perhaps Thais hear both versions as the same? Or am I reading to much into it?

No one has ever queried if I’m talking about a horse or a dog. Or even if I’m riding a horse (ขี่ม้า) – kee ma or talking about dog poo (ขี้หมา) – kee ma.

Something else that caught my attention in the video was the word grandma (maa), described as having a high tone (as there’s no Thai script). A word I'd not heard before.
My wife listened to it, she had never heard the word before either. She only knows ยาย (yai) and ย่า (yar). My dictionary has only those same two words for grandma.

I googled ‘thai rising falling tones’. This is the first result I found:  https://slice-of-thai.com/tones/#falling  They all have audio clips to click on:
บ้าน [bâan] to me, that definitely goes up then down.

A little further down the page under Rising Tone:  ขา [kǎa] again, to me, that one goes down then up.

There’s also this on the same page:  https://slice-of-thai.com/tones/#thai5  
Listening to and looking at the spectrogram, the falling and rising tones do seem to follow the pattern as it was explained to me. Neither of those two go ‘straight down’, or just ‘straight up’.

Perhaps I’m trying to justify how I was taught – what’s your opinion of it?
 

Thanks for the reply BS, I don't really have enough knowledge at this time to make an accurate assessment of what she is saying is good training or not. But what and how she explains the tones and especially the pitch, which I've never really taken into account before makes it easier to understand, but with not knowing whether what she is saying is accurate or not is not within my scope of  what I have taught myself to date.

She has some short 'easy' stories like a podcast you can listen to, so my aim is to see if I can de-cypher what has been spoken, if need be doing it at one word at a time. 

Just ordered a new battery for my 10 year old laptop and I'll see if I can use that to help in the learn process, but being old and having bad hearing does not help this process one iota . But hey-ho, onwards and upwards.

Sawadi krap.

 

 

 

[Bluesofa]

I just had a look at one of the 'podcasts' on youtube.
After me writing about the difference in explaining rising and falling tones, guess what:

In the podcast video below the teacher uses my Pat.Pending symbols v and ^  to explain the tones. That's 'white' and 'rice'. Ha ha!

Also 'news' and 'knee' have my low tone 'down arrow' as well.  Is that copyright infringement?
Joking aside, I hope it helps you to improve speaking Thai.

I see also it explains about  เ-า  having a short vowel sound (which I list as ! short syllable)

 

 

[Bluesofa]

On 9/7/2022 at 8:05 PM, Marble-eye said:

Just noticed this word on F/B and I just had to look it up, in theory it starts with 5 vowels, have you ever come across this before BS. The word is เอาออกหรือ which means 'take out or', that is the sentence. The ออก means out as can be seen in petrol stations etc, which I suppose that the first word is 3 vowels followed by the start of another word with two vowels.

Who said Thai was complicated.

 

I’ve just realised that I never got around to replying to your question before, I’m sorry for that.

You think the first word เอา appears to be three vowels. อ is really a consonant, but is often used as a 'filler' when, say for example, the composite vowel เ-า (ow as in cow) is used, as you can't write it with a dash in the middle of the word.
So อ in this case is just silent. Like you say: 'who said Thai was complicated'

I’m a bit confused by the phrase, as (to me) it doesn’t seem to make much sense on it’s own. Yes, ‘take out or’, maybe ‘want to take out or’?

Was it perhaps a heading for something, with further text below?

 

 

 

[Marble-eye]

12 hours ago, Bluesofa said:

I’ve just realised that I never got around to replying to your question before, I’m sorry for that.

You think the first word เอา appears to be three vowels. อ is really a consonant, but is often used as a 'filler' when, say for example, the composite vowel เ-า (ow as in cow) is used, as you can't write it with a dash in the middle of the word.
So อ in this case is just silent. Like you say: 'who said Thai was complicated'

I’m a bit confused by the phrase, as (to me) it doesn’t seem to make much sense on it’s own. Yes, ‘take out or’, maybe ‘want to take out or’?

Was it perhaps a heading for something, with further text below?

Thanks for the reply BH.

I had always thought with words like ทางออก the gor gai at the end of a word is pronounced as a letter 'K'. That is how I always say it anyway..Tanghawk but I have just put ทางออก in Google Translate and it sounds like it is being said like..Tangorr, bear in mind my hearing is not 100%.

But on the plus side I think I have solved the mystery of the missing 'ta' as in Pat..ta..ya. My wife went to the hospital in BangLamung to get her 6 monthly inspection of her eyes and we drove past Pattaya, everytime we pass the sign for Pattaya I always say, "that doesn't say Pattaya, it says Patya" to which she replied "no it says Pattaya" and I replied but there isn't Ta, and she said "yes there is, it's automatic". So problem solved and I'm sure this method will work for Sathip too.

[Bluesofa]

35 minutes ago, Marble-eye said:

Thanks for the reply BH.

I had always thought with words like ทางออก the gor gai at the end of a word is pronounced as a letter 'K'. That is how I always say it anyway..Tanghawk but I have just put ทางออก in Google Translate and it sounds like it is being said like..Tangorr, bear in mind my hearing is not 100%.

But on the plus side I think I have solved the mystery of the missing 'ta' as in Pat..ta..ya. My wife went to the hospital in BangLamung to get her 6 monthly inspection of her eyes and we drove past Pattaya, everytime we pass the sign for Pattaya I always say, "that doesn't say Pattaya, it says Patya" to which she replied "no it says Pattaya" and I replied but there isn't Ta, and she said "yes there is, it's automatic". So problem solved and I'm sure this method will work for Sathip too.

Marble-eye, don't be too keen to blame the word 'exit' on your hearing.

Not all, but quite a few Thai words have the endings 'swallowed' - i.e. not pronounced the way we as ferangs imagine they would be - with a 'hard' final sound.

Without getting too involved in this, there are 'dead' and 'live' consonant endings, which can affect how the ending sounds.
When you're Thai it comes naturally, but learning Thai as a second language sometimes makes it as easy as pushing string uphill. 

Another example is your wife's explanation of 'it's automatic' regarding 'Patya' and 'Pattaya'

It comes back to my Thai teacher's quote, "We just do it to make it difficult for ferangs to learn Thai"

[BigHewer]

An anecdote for the Thai experts out there and something that I’ve never gotten to the bottom of. 

In 2004, I stayed a few days in Udon Thani at a guest house. I was trying to learn basic Thai at the time and befriended some of the hotel staff. The housekeeping crew invited me to eat with them and during lunch, sitting around on the ground out back a memorable mistake took place. At one point, I interjected to say “excuse me” kor thot… to ask a question and much laughter ensued. Apparently, I’d asked:

May I fart?

My 18 year question is: Are these phrases really so similar?

[Bluesofa]

29 minutes ago, BigHewer said:

An anecdote for the Thai experts out there and something that I’ve never gotten to the bottom of. 

In 2004, I stayed a few days in Udon Thani at a guest house. I was trying to learn basic Thai at the time and befriended some of the hotel staff. The housekeeping crew invited me to eat with them and during lunch, sitting around on the ground out back a memorable mistake took place. At one point, I interjected to say “excuse me” kor thot… to ask a question and much laughter ensued. Apparently, I’d asked:

May I fart?

My 18 year question is: Are these phrases really so similar?

Here you go. Press the speaker icon on the left.

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

ask to fart: https://translate.google.com/?sl=th&tl=en&text=ขอตด&op=translate 

Similar-ish.  I'm not going anywhere with you, you're an embarrassment!  

 

[BigHewer]

5 minutes ago, Bluesofa said:

Here you go. Press the speaker icon on the left.

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

ask to fart: https://translate.google.com/?sl=th&tl=en&text=ขอตด&op=translate 

Similar-ish.  I'm not going anywhere with you, you're an embarrassment!  

“Please fart” sounds very similar to “excuse me”. No wonder some Thai learners get a bad rep

[DwizzleyMatthews]

2 hours ago, BigHewer said:

An anecdote for the Thai experts out there and something that I’ve never gotten to the bottom of. 

In 2004, I stayed a few days in Udon Thani at a guest house. I was trying to learn basic Thai at the time and befriended some of the hotel staff. The housekeeping crew invited me to eat with them and during lunch, sitting around on the ground out back a memorable mistake took place. At one point, I interjected to say “excuse me” kor thot… to ask a question and much laughter ensued. Apparently, I’d asked:

May I fart?

My 18 year question is: Are these phrases really so similar?

Now we have sunk to “ toilet humour “ level ( my favourite of all the levels ) I can inject one of my own khrap anecdotes.

When I lived in Brazil my two young nephews occasionally would ask me how I would say “ dia de pagamento “ ( literally: payment day ) in English. I would reply with “ payday “ and they would giggle and waft their hand under their noses ….. “ peidei “ means “ I farted “ .

I was delighted when I discovered the Payday chocolate/nut bar on a trip to the US .

Presented the nephews with one each on my return and as they were tucking in i asked them what they were eating, the older one attempted the name on the wrapper while I giggled and wafted my hand under my nose .

Oh, to be 10 years old again ……

 

Okay , off topic toilet humour done for today, as you were.

[Bluesofa]

12 minutes ago, DwizzleyMatthews said:

Now we have sunk to “ toilet humour “ level ( my favourite of all the levels ) I can inject one of my own khrap anecdotes.

When I lived in Brazil my two young nephews occasionally would ask me how I would say “ dia de pagamento “ ( literally: payment day ) in English. I would reply with “ payday “ and they would giggle and waft their hand under their noses ….. “ peidei “ means “ I farted “ .

I was delighted when I discovered the Payday chocolate/nut bar on a trip to the US .

Presented the nephews with one each on my return and as they were tucking in i asked them what they were eating, the older one attempted the name on the wrapper while I giggled and wafted my hand under my nose .

Oh, to be 10 years old again ……

Okay , off topic toilet humour done for today, as you were.

Right,  more toilet humour - Volkswagen Sirocco.
Years ago in the UK someone said that in Italian sirocco means warm wind. That kept us amused for a long time imagining someone farting every time we saw a VW go past.

[Marble-eye]

Just watched an interesting YouTube video about the missing TAHs and LAHs, I understand it but if I came across the words in real life I probably wouldn't recognise them. What does the team think?

 

[Bluesofa]

3 hours ago, Marble-eye said:

Just watched an interesting YouTube video about the missing TAHs and LAHs, I understand it but if I came across the words in real life I probably wouldn't recognise them. What does the team think?

It’s really hard to know how to pronounce some of these words.

As theBananaThai teacher says regarding, 'how do you know': “The only way that you will know is when you learn the words.”

An example following on from the video is this word: พลวัต My stepson’s first name. Pronounced pol-a-wat.
The amphur wrote his name on his ID card in English as “Phonwat” which makes no sense at all to any ferang reading the Latin script.
Going abroad, his name is pronounced incorrectly. I said it should be spelt “Polawat”.

My wife got the to amphur to change the Latin script spelling on his ID card to “Polawat”. It’s of no consequence to the amphur, they’re only interested in the spelling in Thai script.

Now at least his latest passport has mirrored the better spelling of his ID card.

[DwizzleyMatthews]

There has to be plenty of confusion surrounding what we hear and what is actually being said.

My gf’s niece’s son , who is around 10 years old now, I always assumed was called “ Otto “ ( after our toaster ) but I recently found out it’s “ Auto “ ( after Alfred Horner Munro’s 1921 invention or possibly Carl Benz’s 1886 miracle  ??, I’m afraid to ask !) when I saw some of his school books with Auto written on.

But they all definitely pronounce it like Otto and to be honest he does act more like a kitchen appliance than a game changing invention !!

[Bluesofa]

1 hour ago, DwizzleyMatthews said:

There has to be plenty of confusion surrounding what we hear and what is actually being said.

My gf’s niece’s son , who is around 10 years old now, I always assumed was called “ Otto “ ( after our toaster ) but I recently found out it’s “ Auto “ ( after Alfred Horner Munro’s 1921 invention or possibly Carl Benz’s 1886 miracle  ??, I’m afraid to ask !) when I saw some of his school books with Auto written on.

But they all definitely pronounce it like Otto and to be honest he does act more like a kitchen appliance than a game changing invention !!

 

Maybe he thinks you're Turkish - Ottoman's Empire.
Which only goes to prove, you can't have your cake and heat it.

 

[Marble-eye]

So as an experiment, and we have touched on this before, I thought I'd like to split the words apart in a sentence just to see if it's possible to learn words and then juggling them together to see if they make sense and true to form, they don't.

The sentence that I chose was ยินดีที่ได้รู้จัก  yindee teedai rhuu jan (pleased to meet) but when each word is separated it comes out as:-

 

ยิน             ดี           ที่      ได้            รู้           จัก      

Hear     Good         At    Can     Know          Will.

And now my curiosity has been satisfied I'm not sure why I bothered.

 

 

 

[Bluesofa]

I know what you mean Marble-eye regarding breaking down the words. It doesn't always seem to work out how you might expect.

Just the beginning of your phrase: ยินดี (yin-dee) meaning 'pleased'. As you say, break those two syllables  down further and it becomes 'hear' and 'good'.
Using ferang logic doesn't always work, but at least you know 'to hear' now and I remember you know 'good' anyway.
Don't despair, at least you're getting the hang of breaking the words down and understanding that it's sometime senseless!
Also don't forget Thai grammar seems to bear very little resemblance to English grammar.

Earlier I was thinking about this one:

อาหาร (a-han) food, then ตามสั่ง (darm-sang) made to order.
However breaking the last 'word' down further, it becomes ตาม (darm) 'follow', สั่ง (sang) 'order', which in this case does (to me) have some logic behind it.

 

[Bluesofa]

 

Have you ever wondered why so many place names start with the word ‘Nong’?
Now this is specifically when it’s a rising tone:

 

Perhaps 'swamp' and 'pus' could be considered fairly similar things.

 

[Marble-eye]

7 minutes ago, Bluesofa said:

Have you ever wondered why so many place names start with the word ‘Nong’?
Now this is specifically when it’s a rising tone:

Perhaps 'swamp' and 'pus' could be considered fairly similar things.

I have heard my wife use a similar word at a restaurant to attract the waiters attention, the word is nong (น้อง) my wife told me it meant 'brother' but having just looked it up, it comes back as 'sibling'.

Presumably different pronunciation to your nong?

 

[Bluesofa]

1 minute ago, Marble-eye said:

I have heard my wife use a similar word at a restaurant to attract the waiters attention, the word is nong (น้อง) my wife told me it meant 'brother' but having just looked it up, it comes back as 'sibling'.

Presumably different pronunciation to your nong?

Yes, it's the tone again screwing it all up!

[BigHewer]

2 hours ago, Bluesofa said:

Yes, it's the tone again screwing it all up!

Kind of makes sense to me since falling tone sounds more reverent. 

Maybe I’m flawed in my reasoning but whatever works as a memory aid, right?

[Bluesofa]

11 hours ago, BigHewer said:

Kind of makes sense to me since falling tone sounds more reverent. 

Maybe I’m flawed in my reasoning but whatever works as a memory aid, right?

Yes, like you say, whatever works as a memory aid. Why does a falling tone makes more sense though?

It's the reason why Thais will ask someone's age, if they are both of similar ages. Then they know who's nong and who's pee for the dialogue.

[GMoney2312]

On 10/13/2021 at 7:23 PM, Bluesofa said:

Some more on words and how they are constructed.

This is really helpful!

[Dedinbed]

On 9/27/2022 at 12:56 PM, Bluesofa said:

Maybe he thinks you're Turkish - Ottoman's Empire.
Which only goes to prove, you can't have your cake and heat it.

delightful comment there about the Turkish Mr Sofa .. 

[Bluesofa]

52 minutes ago, Dedinbed said:

delightful comment there about the Turkish Mr Sofa .. 

Was it a ghost who wrote this?
You've been missing in action (or 'inaction') for a while. Welcome back!

[Dedinbed]

27 minutes ago, Bluesofa said:

Was it a ghost who wrote this?

yea dead funny weren't it .. I'll try and get back in the spirit of things ..