Khon Baan Nok

Does one use "?????" for financially independent?

Edit:And now I see my Thai script comes out in ? marks. Any advice...I wrote the "isara" in Thai....

and ps: I believe there's a keyboard shortcut to switch from Thai to English (I'm on MAC)....what is it please anyone?

Apologies, this is off topic, but thank you, Sleepy, for the visual reminder. Just fired up Trout Mask Replica to provide background music for this surf session.

I've tried to find an answer to this question by searching, but haven't turned one up.

I note that in general members of this forum are encouraging people not to import anything. That said, if one were to import a used Harley Davidson, what would be the duty percentage, and to what number would it be applied? Meaning, let's say I bought one for $10K, which would have been $20K new, how is the tax base rate determined?

Tks in advance.

Thanks to all for your replies, I'm the original poster. My conclusion at this time is that it's more trouble than it is worth (I know, better late, though, than never.)

I've checked out the dealers/shops at RCA in Bangkok, where are the other places to look for an HD in Thailand, in particular those with web access?

S.

I've tried to find an answer to this question by searching, but haven't turned one up.

I note that in general members of this forum are encouraging people not to import anything. That said, if one were to import a used Harley Davidson, what would be the duty percentage, and to what number would it be applied? Meaning, let's say I bought one for $10K, which would have been $20K new, how is the tax base rate determined?

Tks in advance.

"อมพระมาพูดก็ไม่เชื่อ" is from the song,"อมพระมาพูด" by Bird and Sek. The person who translated the song says it means, " No matter what you say I wouldn't believe you". Is this correct?

I've learned some nuances about that phrase from some of the other responses, but my understanding has been that the translation given to you corresponds to the intent.

I've been told that this phrase can be followed with another even stronger one, an "upping of the ante", which is:

อมว้ดมาพูดก็ไม่เชื่อ

Roughly translated in intent, if not literally, as:

"...in fact I won't believe you even if you have the entire temple in your mouth..."

thx for that KBN I think you have got it about right.

For the Khon/Franag Baan Nork tag there must be more negative conotations than one would expect.

Not really, just use it to describe yourself, not someone else...

Well, considering that my moniker in this group is "Khon Baan Nok", I feel well qualified to comment on the topic of self-deprecating humor. In fact my car has a sticker on the back window that says, in Thai, exactly that, even using the now obsolete character. (Wave if you see a silver CRV....)

I normally get two reactions. First, Thai people find it highly amusing that a farang will refer to himself as "khon baan nok" because it does translate, as Meadish has observed, as "country bumpkin". In general Thai people seem more uncomfortable with that imagery than North Americans (like me). Therefore the second reaction, from the same people, is that it does in fact diminish my perceived prestige in their eyes. Kind of like, well, if you choose to make fun of yourself, then perhaps you deserve to be made fun of.

I find (experience limited to 1.5 years) that Thai people have great senses of humor, and love word play, though they are generally not inclined to use themselves as the butt of their own humor. I am the opposite, and am comfortable enough with myself and my place in life to "pay the price" for the use of a modality of humor that doesn't quite work the same here as it does where I come from.

Therefore, from my experience, if you are prepared to deal with the shrinkage of the pedestal you stand on...it is innocuous, and would probably not be offensive to any Thai (though they would not for the life of themselves understand why the hel_l anyone would refer to themselves that way....)

This is not the most egregious example of pronunciation difficulties. Consider the word for university, มหาวิทยาลัย [ma-haa-wi-ta-yaa-lai] which is pronounced by many students today as "มะ-หา-ลัย" [ma-hal-lai]. There are many others. Any suggestions?

Off track, but the Thai word มหา วิทยา ลัย is the exact equivalent of the Sanskrit word from which it is derived, and which means great+learning+place.

I use my girlfriend's name when referring to her and ผม when talking about myself. As a learner I've never really felt comfortable using ฉัน or เธอ as I don't feel that I am Thai enough to qualify. If that makes sense.

When Thais use certain words to refer to close friends don't forget that this runs quite deep and that they are probably of the same generation and grew up in the same country. Just because you are now their friend doesn't mean that it looks right when you use the same personal pronouns.

It makes plenty of sense to me, and I stay away from ฉัน and เธอ for exactly the same reason. Under the influence of what I hear in pop songs, I started using those words in conversations with my GF in a relationship that spans 7 years. She advised me then, and has not changed her mind since, that my use of those terms connotes an intimacy with Thai culture, basically, that would not be acknowledged by a Thai person. I never use either word unless I'm quoting something.

If you think about it in the context of your own culture and language, it is always kind of jarring when you hear someone who grew up another place, and who probably looks different, throwing around slang terms that only ring true when used by a "native" from that period of time.

For that reason there are a number of terms and phrases that I hear, and understand, but don't use because it seems presumptuous. Not only that, but unless you can pronounce and use the terms perfectly, they sound ridiculous. For example, if you've ever heard a person of Indian origin mimicking a southern (US) drawl, it is jarring, and rarely funny in the way the person intended it...

3. Thai pronunciation (at least current spoken Thai) retains the correlation with the original characters, but not with the sounds. For example, as best I can tell there are no aspirated consonants remaining in spoken Thai,

Wrong. Varga positions 2, 3 and 4 (of 5) are all unvoiced aspirated consonants in Siamese. (I'm not counting the fricatives that you might assign to positions '2a' and '3a'.)

Could you possibly put all that in layman's terms Richard.

Thanx,

Soundman.

Not correct, sir. The aspirated consononants for all vargas are in positions 2 and 4, not 3. Position 5 is nasal, while positions 1 and 3 are unaspirated. I have no idea what you are referring to with positions "2a" and "3a". If you'll give the Devanagiri characters to which you refer, it'll help.

And in any case it is academic because, as I said, though the Thai characters correspond to the CHARACTERS, they do NOT use the the original SOUND.

For example, the second character in the Thai alphabet, ข (kaw khai) corresponds to the DevanagirI ख, which is a heavily aspirated "k" sound. There are no consonant sounds in spoken Thai, notwithstanding their mapping to an aspirated Devanagiri counterpart, that SOUND aspirated. Which was my original point.

I absolutely concede the direct character-to-character mapping - I have the maps, as I indicated earlier. The mappings don't mean much, however, as Thai does not aspirate consonants so there's not real pronunciation value in having, for example, all of the "t" characters. The only one that sounds different from the rest is ต, which ironically sounds closest to an aspirated "th" consonant but maps to an unaspirated one (position 1).

Khun Meadish's point about voiced/unvoiced holds true, though this arcane conversation is addressing the issue of aspiration/non-aspiration.

Hopefully all this hair-splitting just illustrates to those of you who have read this far, and are shaking your heads in disgust or dismay, that the Thai language is incredibly interesting on just about any level you'd want to study it...

Thanks for the poem. That was fun. It makes me count my blessings for being a native English speaker and feel sorry for all those struggling to try to learn it. So many people do though (many in this forum). I have to respect them.

I am glad you liked it, but I want to make it clear that I did not write it.

Here is another poem that makes the point even better. While Thai certainly has its inconsistencies, I think one would be hard put to come up with anything even close to this for Thai:

The Joy of English Pronunciation

by George Nolst Trenité (1870–1946)

Dearest creature in creation

Studying English pronunciation,

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

[snip]

Hiccough has the sound of sup.

My advice is: GIVE IT UP!

It would indeed be difficult to produce evidence in ANY language that could match the illogic so beautifully demonstrated in this poem - thank you, it is a "keeper". I have to agree with CSS: it's lucky for me that English was my mother tongue because I'm not sure if I'd have mastered it otherwise.

One point of pedantic hair-splitting - in your post preceding this one, you said:

"Thank you for...confirming that there is indeed a correspondence between Thai characters and the location where the sounds are produced, although not a perfect one."

If I gave that impression, then I was unclear in what I said. Let me give it another shot:

1. The Sanskrit/Devanagiri system does have a logic between the alphabetic order and the location where the sounds are produced, beginning from the throat and ending with the lips.

2. Thai can be "mapped" to Devanagiri on an almost character-to-character basis...but

3. Thai pronunciation (at least current spoken Thai) retains the correlation with the original characters, but not with the sounds. For example, as best I can tell there are no aspirated consonants remaining in spoken Thai, and the entire "row" of retroflex consonants in Devanagiri is missing in spoken Thai, though the characters remain in words of Sanskritic origin. (These are the "d" and "t" consonants that give Indian languages (and "Indian English") its unique sound).

4. The most direct connection between modern Thai and Sanskrit/Devanagiri actually comes from the consonant classes with, for example, all of the mid-tone class consonants coming from a group of unaspirated/unvoiced consonants in Devanagiri. I'll stop there as it becomes progressively more arcane and uninteresting...

But the reason you have to spell something in Thai by saying the character and its associated "image" (g/gai, k/kai, etc.) is because the Thai characters have lost their connection with the original sounds. This is most evident in the "t", "k", "p" and "s" sounds.

That probably makes the waters even muddier than my original posting...my apologies if that's the case.

This is all a digression from the original point, which was that, for me, despite being one of those individuals to whom language acquisition comes relatively easy, I work harder for less progress in Thai than in any language I've acquired before (5, including my mother tongue...). The impression I get from this thread is that this is true for many, but by no means all, people with multiple languages at their command. I envy those of you to whom Thai has come easily.

1. You transfer foreign currency into your Thai baht account - the conversion is done in Thailand at the "TT" rate of exchange (highest). You never allow your foreign bank to convert to baht first and then transfer baht. There may be a place to indicate on your paperwork or you just specify the exchange in your foreign currency. Never say "transfer 800,000 baht".

2. For an extension of stay in Thailand the money must be in a Thai located bank account. For application for an O-A visa in your home country the money can be in your home country account.

3. You can obtain a receipt from bank for any wire transfer which will show the path and changes made. It is not normally required.

4. There is special paperwork for condo purchase money but that is another subject.

Hmm. This still does not completely address the earlier question. Can you have the US dollars transferred into your Thai bank US dollar account, or must it go into a Baht account? Your explanation of how to finesse the transfer the baht account is very clear and helpful, tks.

It's grammar is very fluid, the tones are a big challenge if you are coming from a non-tonal background, and the writing system is as illogical as...say...English. But what a hoot!

I disagree. I think the Thai writing system is very logical, and much more so than English. Perhaps Meadish can address this, but I believe the various letters in the Thai alphabet are grouped by the part of the mouth where the sound is produced, e.g. dental, labial, etc. Spelling is pretty logical too, except for those usually silent endings from Sanskrit origins. There is nothing that I am aware of in Thai that is the equivalent of, say, the 'ough' combination in English.

You may disagree, but you would be wrong.

In fact it is the Sanskrit/Devanagiri letters that are grouped the way you describe. The Sanskrit alphabet begins with the character "ka" which is an unaspirated k sound beginning in the throat. It is paired with an aspirated k sound that comes from the same part of the throat. The alpahabet then moves forward with the tongue moving logically from the back of the mouth (glottals), up to the back of the palate (palatals), then to the roof of the mouth (retroflex), forward to the back of the teeth (dental), up to the lips (labial) and finally to the s sounds, of which Thai has 4 (actually 5) and Devanagiri has three.

The Thai characters can be mapped to Devanagiri on a character basis, but not phonetically. I have such character maps if you are interested (need to know both character sets to make sense of them...).

And if you want an equivalent of "ough" in English, how about:

ทร - pronounced as an "s"

or รร - which is usually silent, but not always

or the use of ห, which can either be a voiced "h" sound or a silent tone changer - same with อ

Bottom line - every character in a Devanagiri-based language has a distinct and unique sound. If you can hear it, you can spell it. If you can read it, you can say it. Perfectly.

You cannot do that in Thai - there is no audible difference between most of the "t" sounds, there is no audible difference between the "s" sounds (except when they are pronounced as "t", see above). And on top of that you have tone marks that behave differently based on the seemingly arbitrary classification of consonants into the three classes. It actually is not arbitrary, though you'd have to know Sanskrit/Devanagiri to see the correlation - which excludes 99% of Thai speakers and learners, including Thais...

Devanagiri and the languages based on it have benefit of the most consistent and precise mapping of character to sound that I've ever encountered. There may be better ones, but Thai is not one of them..

It is my understanding that one of the requirements for being able to get a retirement visa is that an initial amount of foreign currency must be transferred into a Thai bank account.

I have both Baht and US$ accounts, and would like to know the current minimum amount that would need to be transfered in in order to meet this requirement. I have believed that amount to be Baht 800,000 - but I'm not sure if that is correct.

If I am mistaken about that requirement, I'd also appreciate guidance on that too. Thanks all.

Thai is:

1) The most difficult language I've tried to learn... and

2) The most fun.

I am a native English speaker who also speaks Spanish and French, and though they are now quite rusty I have been quite capable in spoken Hindi/Urdu and Oriya. I am very comfortable with the Devanagiri character set and some of its derivatives (Oriya and Bengali, particularly). Once upon a time I could even fumble my way through market Dioula/Bambara from West Africa.

With the Devanagiri background, I jumped right into reading/writing the Thai character set because I thought its relationship with Sanskrit/Pali would help. It probably did, but not much, and mostly on an ex post facto basis, in that I can now see the connections between words like "samut", sea, and the Sanskrit/Hindi "samudra", which means the same thing. "Samut" in Thai is character for character identical to "samudra" in Hindi, it is just pronounced differently.

Coming to Thai with, say. 5.5 previous languages, I feel that in the 1.5 years I've been here I speak capably (meaning correctly and with more or less correct tones) MUCH LESS Thai than any other language after the same time and effort. Some of that is, I suppose, because I'm easing into decrepitude (59), and some of it is because of the tones, but some of it may just be that the language is difficult.

And therein lies part of the fun. While there are some fairly consistent grammatical patterns--the placement of "mai dai" before or after the verb, for example--the language and its speakers just LOVE to play with meaning and nuance.

A recent example: I was ordering coffee from some young and sassy women that work at the office coffee shop. They asked if I wanted milk with it, and I replied no, black coffee. Giggling, they said, "ooee, du meun khun S. mai chawb nom, law". Getting the joke, I replied "Phom mai chawb nom nai gafae, khrap...". They howled and the whole place turned around to see what had happened. Very fun.

My point is, however: I don't think Thai is an easy language to learn to speak well. It's grammar is very fluid, the tones are a big challenge if you are coming from a non-tonal background, and the writing system is as illogical as...say...English. But what a hoot!

We have a problem in Bang Na with an add-on kitchen for which the foundation is settling. A sizeable crack has resulted where the add-on is separating from the main house.

An architect friend has done some drawings for us that should stabilize the settling. It involves temporarily hoding up the kitchen while excavating, then backfilling underneath, and pouring a couple of pad footings.

Can anyone make a recommendation of someone who has capably done similar work?

Thanks in advance.

Can you also post the words in thai characters please? I find it easier than learning yet another transliteration system.

Second that request, in fact I would see no problem dispensing with the transliteration altogether. These phrases are ill-suited for use by beginning learners, whose motivation to learn the Thai script may be increased by these tantalizing phrases. Anyone who can actually read Thai will have a better sense of when/where to use these phrases (or not).

That said, thank you for a really great compendium of phrases, good job.

CSS, right you are, it is bai 4 mong. I was up and posting at 4:30 in the morning, and careless.

The clock has it right.

Kaw thot khrap.

Are there examples using a clock that could be posted?

Attached is an MS Word doc file that contains a 24 hour clock representation of Thai time. The original is in Visio.

Each Thai time segment is color coded - above the horizon are the night hours, below are day hours.

The small number(s) outside the circle indicate the number as it is said in Thai in conjunction with the phrase inside the circle of the same color.

The morning hours offer two choices of numbers, though both choices begin with 6.

4PM can be either 4 bai mong or 4 mong yen.

Hope this helps you, it did finally unlock the key for me once I had mapped it out this way.

Thai_Time_Notebook_Size.doc

That was a good call found it later I also left off 6:00 P/M. so back to word LOL

Miltary time everyone seems to ue it even here in Udon.

I was really hoping to find a clock face example to share wiht the class no luck so far.

I have a very nice one that I made, though I just noticed that having recently moved to a new computer there is some problem with the Thai font display. Let me try to correct and I'll put it up...

Does this phonetic similarity have any connection with the depiction of Thaksin as a monitor lizard in the video of Ai Na Liam?

Yes it does.

The original name of the water monitor lizard is "thua hia". In Thai slang "ai hia" means something with insult value on the scale somewhere between "bastard" and "MF". Therefore the visual representation of someone as a water monitor is a way of saying...well, you take it from there.

Interestingly, "thua hia" has another name that has evolved in order to get away from people having to say "hia" at all. The animal is also known as "thua ngeun thua tawng", meaning "animal money animal gold".

Thai people flinch, cringe, titter or smirk when you talk about "thua hia", and quickly suggest that you revert to the money/gold term. I never use "thua hia" unless I'm playing with words, among people that know me.

My girlfriend and I came across a Pattaya bar amusingly named:

"My Friend You"

We continue to ponder the meaning of this, and what underlying Thai phrase it stems from, and how it would be phrased in standard English.

Is it a second person reference pointing to "you", as in:

You are my friend - คุณเป็นเพื่อนผม.

Or is it a third person reference pointing to someone else:

A friend of yours - เพื่อนของคุณ .

A Mongolian friend of ours who seems to be conversant with bar vernacular believes the second example is the correct one. Anybody know for sure?

Tks.

Thanks in advance for any advice regarding the drive from Bangkok to Phuket. How long a drive should I expect it to be under normal conditions?

Cheers,

This is a question about where motorcycles can and cannot be legally driven in Thailand. Specifically:

1. Is it correct that they are not allowed on the expressways (tollways) no matter what the displacement? (I have custody of a Triumph Daytona that is well able to "keep up with" the traffic.) If so, how do you get out of town if you are headed, say, to Pattaya/Jomtien or up to Ayutthaya or out toward Hua Hin/Cha Am?

2. In Bangkok, are motorcycles allowed to go over the flyovers, such as the ones on T. Petchaburi/Phitsanulok? I know that they do it regularly, but I was snagged in a police round-up last week and had to pay a 100B "fine". The explanation of the offense was that I (and dozens of other hapless riders) were not allowed on the flyover...

Tks in advance for the enlightenment...

Khon Baan Nok