ขาดแหล่มิขาดแหล่

[aanon]

reading my december ฅ.คน i've come across this sentence [context: talking about the skills of a hired driver in Cambodia (and the hardiness of his car) in coping with flooded roads]:

ผ่านทุกช่วงที่ถนนจะขาดแหล่มิขาดแหล่มาได้เรียบร้อย

i get the gist that the author is saying the driver/car managed to negotiate all the (sometimes flooded and therefore seemingly cut-off) sections of roads.

but to look at it more closely, is the author saying they were able to pass all sections, whether cut off or not? is the แหล่ only working as an intensifier for ขาด? or is this whole phrase ขาดแหล่มิขาดแหล่ working as an intensifier, something like ขาดจนไม่รู้จะขาดอย่างไรอีกแล้ว?

is this "[adjective]แหล่มิ[adjective]แหล่"่ a fixed construction? can i write พังแหล่มิพังแหล่?

a dictionary didn't help me much here. i even tried to see if แหล่ had come up followed by มิ in the Concordance engine (http://www.arts.chula.ac.th/~ling/ThaiConc/) but got zero results.

on a related issue, does anyone know of a good online resource to look up and learn about fixed literary constructions in Thai?

for example you might see written:

ใช่ว่า..........หากแต่.............

meaning "it is not the case that..............but rather that.........."

this is what i mean by a fixed literary construction.

i guess these are quite advanced issues in studying thai, but from what i've seen there are many quite dedicated/experienced students of the thai language posting here. thanks for any advice you can offer on this one.

[aanon]

reading my december ฅ.คน i've come across this sentence [context: talking about the skills of a hired driver in Cambodia (and the hardiness of his car) in coping with flooded roads]:

ผ่านทุกช่วงที่ถนนจะขาดแหล่มิขาดแหล่มาได้เรียบร้อย

i get the gist that the author is saying the driver/car managed to negotiate all the (sometimes flooded and therefore seemingly cut-off) sections of roads.

but to look at it more closely, is the author saying they were able to pass all sections, whether cut off or not? is the แหล่ only working as an intensifier for ขาด? or is this whole phrase ขาดแหล่มิขาดแหล่ working as an intensifier, something like ขาดจนไม่รู้จะขาดอย่างไรอีกแล้ว?

is this "[adjective]แหล่มิ[adjective]แหล่"่ a fixed construction? can i write พังแหล่มิพังแหล่?

a dictionary didn't help me much here. i even tried to see if แหล่ had come up followed by มิ in the Concordance engine (http://www.arts.chula.ac.th/~ling/ThaiConc/) but got zero results.

on a related issue, does anyone know of a good online resource to look up and learn about fixed literary constructions in Thai?

for example you might see written:

ใช่ว่า..........หากแต่.............

meaning "it is not the case that..............but rather that.........."

this is what i mean by a fixed literary construction.

i guess these are quite advanced issues in studying thai, but from what i've seen there are many quite dedicated/experienced students of the thai language posting here. thanks for any advice you can offer on this one.

as i had a chance to ask a thai friend i now have an answer to my first question.

ขาดแหล่มิขาดแหล่ means that on the verge of being impassable.

it's a strong emphasis on being on the verge, maybe "teetering on the edge of.....".

apparently it can be used with a range of non-desirable scenarios, for example "teetering on the edge of life and death" or "teetering on the edge of destruction", falling, etc. as an example, you can say:

ตายแหล่มิตายแหล่

i'm not sure whether it works with verbs, adjectives or both.

my question remains about some way i can look up and discover the meaning of fixed constructions like this when i come across them. any ideas? so far i've found the "walking dict" to be my best bet .

Edited January 20, 2007 by aanon

[Rikker]

I'd love to have a paper dictionary in which I could look up แหล่ and find __แหล่ มิ__แหล่, but with the state of such dictionaries, anything electronic is your best bet, because it can search its full contents. The best online dictionary in this regard is probably thai.sealang.net, which as it turns out has this exact construction:

จะ (...) มิ (...) แหล่

ja⁐ (...) mí⁐ (...) ˈlɛ̀ɛ

1 be on the verge, on the point of.

I love a good paper dictionary, but they vary so much, I just try to keep a bunch of them around because some phrases are in one but not another, etc.

Nearly all Thai-produced dictionaries are bind themselves with left-to-right lineality. That is, if you look up ใจ, you'll only find compounds that begin with ใจ, not all those that contain ใจ. If you want to find เสียใจ you have to look under เสีย. Perhaps this is meant to cut down on redundancy, but it makes them both incomplete and not as helpful as they could be. So Sethaputra is an exception to this general rule, but this is why electronic is probably best.

[aanon]

I'd love to have a paper dictionary in which I could look up แหล่ and find __แหล่ มิ__แหล่, but with the state of such dictionaries, anything electronic is your best bet, because it can search its full contents. The best online dictionary in this regard is probably thai.sealang.net, which as it turns out has this exact construction:

จะ (...) มิ (...) แหล่

ja⁐ (...) mí⁐ (...) ˈlɛ̀ɛ

1 be on the verge, on the point of.

I love a good paper dictionary, but they vary so much, I just try to keep a bunch of them around because some phrases are in one but not another, etc.

Nearly all Thai-produced dictionaries are bind themselves with left-to-right lineality. That is, if you look up ใจ, you'll only find compounds that begin with ใจ, not all those that contain ใจ. If you want to find เสียใจ you have to look under เสีย. Perhaps this is meant to cut down on redundancy, but it makes them both incomplete and not as helpful as they could be. So Sethaputra is an exception to this general rule, but this is why electronic is probably best.

thanks rikker, that's a good resource you've pointed me too. i hadn't seen it before, and that's the first time i've seen any dictionary with constructions layed out like that, along with many other search options.

funny you should mention So Sethaputra and listings, i was looking up พระบาด (royalspeak: feet) and ended up wading through about 2 pages of mostly royal and buddhist terminology under the heading of พระ to find it. of course, that can be the charm of a paper dictionary: the bonus exposure you get to words other than the one you're looking for.

i have a couple of weeks in bkk coming up - does anyone know a good source for picking up couple of thai-thai dictionaries, perhaps secondhand? is there a book stall you know of which is likely to have this kind of stuff? i'm after something very comprehensive and most likely big! are they pricey new?

[Rikker]

Yes, that's what I find charming about the paper dictionaries, the ability to go looking for one word and just lose yourself in the sea of words surrounding it. Weird people like me find that fun.

As for getting dictionaries and how much, relatively speaking, they're not too pricey.

If you don't have them, the best (or most important) Thai-Thai dictionaries out there are:

*The Royal Institute Dictionary (known to Thais as พจนานุกรม ฉบับราชบัณฑิตยสถาน), which is a whopper mostly because it's paper is too thick. This is the official dictionary of that mythical creature, "standard Thai." It costs 600 baht. The most recent version is blue and red on the cover and is ฉบับ พ.ศ.๒๕๔๒ (1999 edition, though it was actually first published in 2003). The online RID dictionary available through their website (royin.go.th) is the earlier 1982 version, which was digitized in 1996 and hasn't been updated since. While 1982 and 1999 don't differ terribly, enough things have changed that I like having the most recent version.

*The Matichon Dictionary of the Thai language (in Thai: พจนานุกรม ฉบับมติชน). This is a commercially produced dictionary from Matichon publishing company. It is a descriptive dictionary of Thai, reflecting how the language is used, rather than the prescriptive style of RID. That means its claim to fame is tons of slang and colloquialisms that RID doesn't see fit to include. Its cover price is 780 baht, but nowadays it goes for under 700, probably to compete with RID. It's got beautiful thin paper, so while the page counts are comparable, Matichon is only 1/3 as thick as RID.

Both of these will be available in most large bookstores, but you might be able to find good deals at Chatuchak Market on the weekend, where there are number of bookstalls, selling both new and used books. Directly across the street from the south side of Chatuchak (I think it's ถนนกำแพงเพชร) there are also several used book sellers.

Other than those, there are some older (and slightly smaller--around 6x9 inches) ones that aren't bad. These are the ones by มานิต มานิตเจริญ and เธียรชัย เอี่ยมวรเมธ. I know เธียรชัย also has Eng-Thai and Thai-Eng, so you might have to look around at a store for those. These aren't usually very comprehensive.

Then there are countless ones that are just too limited in their scope to be very useful. These vary widely in size and coverage.

Edited January 21, 2007 by Rikker

[In the Rai!]

reading my december ฅ.คน i've come across this sentence [context: talking about the skills of a hired driver in Cambodia (and the hardiness of his car) in coping with flooded roads]:

ผ่านทุกช่วงที่ถนนจะขาดแหล่มิขาดแหล่มาได้เรียบร้อย

i get the gist that the author is saying the driver/car managed to negotiate all the (sometimes flooded and therefore seemingly cut-off) sections of roads.

but to look at it more closely, is the author saying they were able to pass all sections, whether cut off or not? is the แหล่ only working as an intensifier for ขาด? or is this whole phrase ขาดแหล่มิขาดแหล่ working as an intensifier, something like ขาดจนไม่รู้จะขาดอย่างไรอีกแล้ว?

is this "[adjective]แหล่มิ[adjective]แหล่"่ a fixed construction? can i write พังแหล่มิพังแหล่?

Aanon,

yes I have heard this before (not often though) but to be honest I have never had the opportunity myself to use it.

It basically means what you said "to be on the verge of" or in Thai most of the time this saying is replaced with เกือบ close to / on the verge of/ almost can be used for this depending on circumstances.

I think you can only use it with verbs though (no adjectives) but not 100%

You can replace ขาดแหล่มิขาดแหล่ with ตกแหล่มิตกแหล่ (I was on the verge of falling or I almost fell) or another one I have heard is ตายแหล่มิตายแหล่ ( I almost died or I was on the verge of dying)

There are more I am sure but have never heard them.

Here is an example sentence for ขาดแหล่มิขาดแหล่

ผมบาดนิ้วมือ จนจะขาดแหล่มิขาดแหล่ (I cut my finger that bad that it almost fell off / I cut my finger that badly that it was on the verge of falling off)

by the way that is good one aanon.

Cheers ITR

Edited January 22, 2007 by In the Rai!