Thai L1 interference with removal of pronoun?

[Happy Grumpy]

If I write:

 

Have a good night.

Have a good day.

Have a good year.

Have a good time.

 

 

It seems like they read it as me saying that I am having a good whatever, as opposed to wishing them a good whatever.

 

So for them to understand it properly, I would have to write 'I hope you have a good ......'

 

I presume this is down to Thai L1 Interference as they translate it.

 

Sound correct?  

[surfdog]

depending on their level yes. Easy way to test your students is giving them assigned essays (individual essays otherwise they cheat) and looking for subject deletion. Try to teach about SVO and how each sentence MUST have a subject otherwise it is incomplete. Trying to teach students what you wrote above is fruitless but it is great indicator that your beg-intermediate students glossed over SVO or have forgotten about it.

Remember there are no 'complete' sentences in Thai, and our over assertion of subjects into Thai is a roadblock to native fluency. Thai is more forgiving though in our case as inserting unnecessary subjects into conversation does not cause confusion.


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[Happy Grumpy]

3 hours ago, surfdog said:

depending on their level yes. Easy way to test your students

????

 

Thanks.

 

This is when chatting with women. I'm not a teacher lol. 

 

Thanks though

[surfdog]

oh sorry, L1 intereference is a bit of academic concept, so assumed you were a teacher. Also way too many beers last night...

In this case perhaps it is not the grammar for Thai messing it up, it is just the things you are saying and when you are saying them. The biggest cause of miscommunication.

For "have a good night" Thais say "sleep well" you can borrow a "krup" for "sleep well krup"

นอนดีๆนะครับ - nown dee dee nah cup

I doubt Thai people would mistake that.





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[DavidHouston]

For those of us who are not language mavens, what is "L1 Interference"?

 

[Denim]

I always find it amusing when they say :

 

' I am boring ' 

 

when what they meant to say is

 

' I am bored '

 

Although for the most part they are right the first time.

[surfdog]

For those of us who are not language mavens, what is "L1 Interference"?
 

l1 = first language

the intereference is the different rules of grammar which cause us to trip up when learning another language.

It is an academic term, that is why in my drunken ramble last night I assumed the op was a teacher. :)


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[Happy Grumpy]

7 hours ago, surfdog said:

For "have a good night" Thais say "sleep well" you can borrow a "krup" for "sleep well krup"

นอนดีๆนะครับ - nown dee dee nah cup

It's not used when going to bed.

 

It's said if they're going out for the night, they're staying in, you're going out, or whatever. Said as the end of a conversation around 8pm or whatever. 

[surfdog]

Easy example is how for us French is easier, and likewise Laos is easier for Thai, less interference from L1.

 

 

[surfdog]

It's not used when going to bed.
 
It's said if they're going out for the night, they're staying in, you're going out, or whatever. Said as the end of a conversation around 8pm or whatever. 

I would have to wonder does "Have a good night" mean anything more than "good bye," besides just being said at nighttime?

If so what else does it mean?

[surfdog]

It's not used when going to bed.
 
It's said if they're going out for the night, they're staying in, you're going out, or whatever. Said as the end of a conversation around 8pm or whatever. 

other farewells are appropriate depending on context, such as "Drive Safely" ขับรถดีๆนะครับ" or "Take Care of Yourself" ดูแลตัวเองนะครับ ( although my experience suggests you may not see each other for awhile )

I suggested the "Sleep Well" because, well beyond you I guess the romantic connotation,
e.g. "think of me when you get home in bed, and hope those thoughts find you well"

But hey don't worry, I can guarantee another member of this board will come back with an exact translation of "Have a good night" from Oxford's 17th edition of phrasology

[Happy Grumpy]

3 hours ago, surfdog said:

I would have to wonder does "Have a good night" mean anything more than "good bye," besides just being said at nighttime?

If so what else does it mean?

The same as 'Have a good day'.

 

'I'm just going to work.

Have a good day. 

 

 

I'm going to Central.

Have a good time. 

 

I'm going out with some friends.

Have a good night. 

[surfdog]

a lot of these farewell like phrases start off in Thai with "ขอให้"

literally "wish give" but in meaning is "wish you" as in wish you luck, wish you safety, wish you wealth, wish you have fun...

I can't imagine a way this gets translated with "have" except having "wish you" preceding it.

wish you have a good night...
even then good night is so vague and creepy to say I think.


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[surfdog]

advice, just stick to 'see you soon' or 'see you -at a specified time or place'

เจอกันไหม่นะครับ - jer gun hmai na cup

See you again, open ended without connotation of short or long duration

hard to butcher, polite, and applicable to any farewell, have a wife in no time at all.

Whether there is a 1:1 exchange on this english saying I do not know, but I do know that you got to let loose and stop trying to create language but mimic the language around you.


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[Happy Grumpy]

Oh well, never mind.

 

Will chat to my Thai teacher about it. ????

 

[surfdog]

figured it out, "have a good day" is a saying, thus not held to grammar rules.

Have a good day actually means: I hope you have a good day.

"I hope you" has been deleted to shorten it, evolving the saying.

So the Thai equivilent for a literal translation is:

"ขอให้มีวันดี"

1:1 translation, you must add the verb hope but subject and pronoun can be deleted because Thai grammar allows that in converstion.

However, I may have heard this before, but really scratching my brain.

Whatever your Thai friends are telling you when saying farewell, is the most appropriate, copy that with the same accent.

For example Hello, How are you Thai people understand, but Hi, How is your day is lost on them.

So likely Thai people say Good Bye to you, so you say Good-Bye, not Bye, not Have a good day, etc.

This is what I meant by mimicing Thai, that will bring about Thai fluency for you much faster than trying to translate YOUR English daily lexicon to your Thailand life


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[Beowulf]

On 1/3/2019 at 2:36 PM, surfdog said:

figured it out, "have a good day" is a saying, thus not held to grammar rules.

 

Not sure about that - some sayings are so old that the grammar rules don't really fit today's English - but this one is just fine IMO. It's a use of the imperative to express a wish or invitation. If it was really a saying / fixed expression it wouldn't generalize, but you can say 'have a nice life', 'have a fun night', 'have a fantastic trip', 'show em how it's done' etc. etc. If the grammar rules couldn't accommodate that, there would be something wrong.

 

 

Not counting cases where the pronoun is in a question and is just not repeated in the answer (What are you going to do now? Have a nap), English only lets you drop it in the imperative, and in the imperative the subject is always 'you'. So if I say 'have another coffee' or 'don't go in there', you instinctively know I mean 'you', and if I say 'have a great time tonight' you know I am not coming with. If I want to include myself, I have to use another construction like 'let's have another coffee'. As English speakers we do this without thinking, but really it's quite complicated. If you grow up speaking a language like Thai, one that lets you drop the pronoun all the time, it's quite a leap to even notice that it has been dropped, let alone realize that that means a) it's an imperative so must be a command, wish or invitation and b) the subject has to be 'you'.

 

On 1/3/2019 at 2:36 PM, surfdog said:

"ขอให้...

1:1 translation, you must add the verb hope but subject and pronoun can be deleted because Thai grammar allows that in converstion.

In English, if you drop the pronoun you have already signaled that it is an imperative - which can only be a wish in this context - but in Thai you can drop the pronoun any old time, so the fact that it's missing doesn't tell you anything, and you need ขอให้.

[surfdog]

that is a great explanation!


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[jak2002003]

On ‎1‎/‎2‎/‎2019 at 12:37 AM, surfdog said:

oh sorry, L1 intereference is a bit of academic concept, so assumed you were a teacher. Also way too many beers last night...

In this case perhaps it is not the grammar for Thai messing it up, it is just the things you are saying and when you are saying them. The biggest cause of miscommunication.

For "have a good night" Thais say "sleep well" you can borrow a "krup" for "sleep well krup"

นอนดีๆนะครับ - nown dee dee nah cup

I doubt Thai people would mistake that.





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I don't hear people saying that though.  Usually they say 'rah dtree sawad'

[surfdog]

ราตรีสวัสดิ์ - is good night, I learned this from books but never fell into any social circles that used it. It is I believe the most formal way of saying good night (excluding royal language)

If I was said farewell to with ราตรีสวัสดิ์, I would greet in reply. นอนดีๆ is more intimate, a phrase for the opposite sex, or family, or could even be flirtacious depending on how said.


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[surfdog]

In English, if you drop the pronoun you have already signaled that it is an imperative - which can only be a wish in this context - but in Thai you can drop the pronoun any old time, so the fact that it's missing doesn't tell you anything, and you need ขอให้.

so in English we imperative use implies a command to the listener, however in Thai it would be almost always contextual and dependent on the things we hear and say everday?

So for example my original example นอนดีๆนะครับ would never be construed as "I am sleeping so good" but always as "I hope you sleep well."? Beccause this meaning is attached to this phrase?

But then "นอนดีครับ" can be a reply to a question. Just wondering about reduplication (doubling of ดี) or the particle นะ, if these signal the imperative, e.g. listener knows it is imperative because that is what "people usually say"

Which brings to op's original question:

มีวันดีครับ - in trying to say the English phrase "(I hope you) Have a good day

Could it be changed to

มีวันดีๆนะครับ - and listener then understands it is the imperative? Although foreign sounding and outside normal registar.

And finally has anybody actually heard a Thai native speaker wish another "ขอให้มีวันดีครับ" just because I havn't doesn't mean it isn't a thing somewhere, and would solve the op's dillema of wishing other people a good day just like he would back home.

[surfdog]

In English, if you drop the pronoun you have already signaled that it is an imperative - which can only be a wish in this context - but in Thai you can drop the pronoun any old time, so the fact that it's missing doesn't tell you anything, and you need ขอให้.

Except for ไป, ขอให้ definitely not needed to use ไป as imperative but still definitely contextual. Go wash the car, go away, go to school, etc.


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[Beowulf]

11 hours ago, surfdog said:

 

so in English we imperative use implies a command to the listener, however in Thai it would be almost always contextual and dependent on the things we hear and say everday?

So for example my original example นอนดีๆนะครับ would never be construed as "I am sleeping so good" but always as "I hope you sleep well."? Beccause this meaning is attached to this phrase?

But then "นอนดีครับ" can be a reply to a question. Just wondering about reduplication (doubling of ดี) or the particle นะ, if these signal the imperative, e.g. listener knows it is imperative because that is what "people usually say"

Which brings to op's original question:

มีวันดีครับ - in trying to say the English phrase "(I hope you) Have a good day

Could it be changed to

มีวันดีๆนะครับ - and listener then understands it is the imperative? Although foreign sounding and outside normal registar.

And finally has anybody actually heard a Thai native speaker wish another "ขอให้มีวันดีครับ" just because I havn't doesn't mean it isn't a thing somewhere, and would solve the op's dillema of wishing other people a good day just like he would back home.

I'm not sure we can say that Thai has an imperative mood. You can say that in English the imperative is formed by dropping the subject/pronoun and using the bare infinitive, and that its basic use is for giving commands but it can also be used for expressing wishes or making invitations. What is there that is like that in Thai? Nothing, I would say. We can tell that sleep well is an imperative because the pronoun is missing and we can't use it with a subject other than you. In other words, we can contrast it with the indicative form, where - leaving aside a few special cases - the pronoun has to be stated and can be anything that makes sense with the particular verb. The Thai equivalent of sleep well that I hear is ฝันดี, but can you really contrast that with the indicative form, and if not, what is the point of saying that one is imperative and one is indicative?

 

The one thing that makes me doubt this is that อย่า and ห้าม look like negative imperatives. I had a teacher tell me that the subject of อย่า could be we, but with respect to her I am not sure.

 

Anyway, whether or not you want to call ฝันดี an imperative, the question is why you don't need a formula like ขอให้ in that case, when you do in the case we discussed before (it's always hard to be 100% sure what you have and haven't heard, but I can see I have had ขอให้มีวันที่ดีสำหรับคุณ on WhatsApp).

 

I think the answer is to do with stative and dynamic verbs. If the verb you need is stative in Thai, like มี, then what you are wishing for is seen as a state - something that happens to the person, rather than something they do themselves. On the other hand, if the verb is dynamic, like ฝัน, it is seen as their own action. That is so even if the action is one you can't really control, like dreaming - it's more of a grammatical thing than a practical one. Logically enough, if whatever you are wishing for is not viewed as something that the person would do themselves, Thai doesn't let you tell them to do it, so you can't use the ฝันดี construction. Where you can use it, although you are literally telling them to do something, we understand it as a wish because we know it is something they would want for themselves.

 

If what you are wishing for is expressed with a noun, like happiness or love, you will again need the ขอให้ because these are states and are not expressed using a dynamic verb.

11 hours ago, surfdog said:

Except for ไป, ขอให้ definitely not needed to use ไป as imperative but still definitely contextual. Go wash the car, go away, go to school, etc.

Yes, it's not that ขอให้ makes something an imperative or corresponds to the imperative in English - it's a formula for expressing a wish so wouldn't be used in commands like go wash the car etc.

[surfdog]

what you point out is spot in I believe, the problem is that มี is stative, thus Thai usage attributes to speaker by default when no pronoun is used. So in answer to op, no you can not say "have a good day" มีวันดี without adding the verb wish. "wish you a good day" would be most appropriate and op
should have no probem using all these English sayings "have a good night, good day, etc" by just adding wish. Thai listeners will hear wish, translate to Thai in their own minds, and automatically understand that the OP is not referring to themself. Hopefully op is still reading as most of these threads expand what posters believe are easy questions, and then disappear when the answers become too complex or are contrary to what they expect the answer to be. The amount of discussion to take place for Beowolf to come and post the most grammatically correct answer is enough to give up on the internet.

As far as dynamic verbs, I believe there is no preference, they can go both ways, and is highly dependent on context, AND what is the norms for the language usage, e.g. ฝันดี refers to listener because that is the expected usage if not in answer to a question like เมือคืนนอนดีไหม?- ไช่ครับ ฝันดีครับ

Besides ไป and มี would be interested to see if other dynamic verbs favor the subject as the speaker or listener, and if particles come into play to tip the scales in one way or another.

[tgeezer]

What is L1?

ขอให้คุณมี... would be my translation of ‘Have a good... ‘

I prefer ขออวยพรครับ which means I wish for you all you wish for yourself, I think.

I hate change ‘Good day’ > ‘Have a good day’ ‘How are you’ >How are you today’ Thai is suffering in the same way.

สวัสดีวันจันทร์ ! สวัสดีตอนเช้า !

 

 

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Sorry I didn’t realise that this has been discussed at some length already, it didn’t show until after I posted.