หนังสือ

[tgeezer]

I was talking to myself this morning and said “ต้องอ่านหนังสือ” when I thought, why is that not หนังสื่อ ? So I decided to see what the difference was between สือ and สื่อ and to my surprise could not find สือ in the dictionary!

I think that if the word were หนังสื่อ it would not need defining, can anybody agree with me in that?

 

 

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[eric67]

According to this site สือ means writing or book and originally comes from Chinese:

 

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/สือ

[tgeezer]

Thanks for that eric67 but I am taught that if a syllable of a word has no meaning then the whole word is considered a คำมูล.
You gave me the link so I tried สื่อ and there is no etymology for it yet wouldn’t you agree that หนังสื่อ as a noun means หนังสือ ?
This article appears to give it meaning, (“writing; book” )which means it’s use becomes unrestricted. อ่านสือ เขียนสือ ตัวสือ are all possible but he can only come up with หนังสือ (book)ลายสือ (character) . Now that I have written that I have to ask myself Why not? The answer is of course because สือ does not mean writing or book in Thai.
I wondered if perhaps หนังสื่อ was unacceptable because it uses a verb as modifier but then thought, Why not?
Sorry to ramble on but that is what I do!
Other words like ลูกค้า ผ้าเช็ดตัว don’t suffer modification for being readable.





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[Percy Penguin]

I'm not sure they're the same, because I understand สื่อ to relate to passing on information (in any form), whereas สือ relates specifically to writing. The way compounds are formed is a continual mystery to me. I'm pretty sure I've been told that a compound noun cannot be made up of noun + verb, but if so I heard it from a teacher who told me a lot of things that proved not to be entirely correct...

 

BTW, it doesn't look like there's a huge amount of interest round here for questions like this, and the forum at thai-language.com seems to be defunct. Are there any others?

[tgeezer]

On 5/30/2019 at 4:19 AM, Percy Penguin said:

I'm not sure they're the same, because I understand สื่อ to relate to passing on information (in any form), whereas สือ relates specifically to writing. The way compounds are formed is a continual mystery to me. I'm pretty sure I've been told that a compound noun cannot be made up of noun + verb, but if so I heard it from a teacher who told me a lot of things that proved not to be entirely correct...

 

BTW, it doesn't look like there's a huge amount of interest round here for questions like this, and the forum at thai-language.com seems to be defunct. Are there any others?

Have you found the word สือ somewhere? 

[Percy Penguin]

Only in the link that eric67 posted, but don't see any reason to question that. Seems typically Thai to take a Chinese word, retain the tone (more or less), put it together with a home-grown word that fills out the meaning, and never use it by itself... in which case you won't find the Chinese word in a Thai dictionary, but can still distinguish it from สื่อ. Things might get a bit more complicated if สื่อ turned out to derive from the same Chinese word, but the Wiktionary entries don't suggest it does.

[tgeezer]

I confess that I didn’t look at eric’s link and was surprised to see ลายสือ so looked it up and see that it is defined as ตัวหนังสือ . 

It may well be as you say even if สื่อ also comes from Chinese but why give any etymology at all for สือ ? It seems that wiktionary took a different approach from me. I asked why หนังสื่อ could not be a noun meaning a piece of skin which is used for communication. The definition of หนังสือ is; means of communicating using marks in place of speech, (wiktionary’s definition of สือ)letters which pass to and fro, document, piece of prose. (my translations) . 

 

From Thai grammar point of view หนังสือ is one original word because it can not be broken down. I suggest that if it were หนัง+สื่อ would it need defining? ลาย+สื่อ even more so because the definition would be ตัวหนังสื่อ 

I think that it is quite possible that the tone of the second syllable has changed. The etymology is not mentioned because it is not known or is considered ‘original Thai’ whatever that might mean. 

It is completely invenerial as an old ‘country boy’ once said and I posted only for fun and to make the important point about คำมูล which is that if one syllable is meaningless the word it comes from is considered คำมูล