Recently came across an expression used in spoken Thai - ช่างมัน

I'm wanting to use it in conversation to mean "forget it" - Any comments, other translations, or usage notes?

I've also come across - ลืมเสียเถิด - which is in my dictionary as "Forget it!", "Forget about it!"

Confused, what's your experience?

Edited March 4, 200719 yr by expat_4_life

Recently came across an expression used in spoken Thai - ช่างมัน

I'm wanting to use it in conversation to mean "forget it" - Any comments, other translations, or usage notes?

I've also come across - ลืมเสียเถิด - which is in my dictionary as "Forget it!", "Forget about it!"

Confused, what's your experience?

I may be mistaken but when I use ช่างมัน it is more to the tune of ... "Forget them" - or 'Screw them"......I would never use it to say 'forget it' ....any others have comments?

ลืมเสียเถิด on the other hand works well for 'forget it' when telling someone to forget about something... like - "I was ripped off by the Tuk Tuk driver:.... ลืมเสียเถิด you will never get it back'"

I am trying to think about the situations that you can use ช่างมัน, but I came up with only one common use of this word. I think it seems like "Never mind" in English if I do not misunderstand the meaning of this english word. The example of the situation is like this. You are saying something to someone and it seems like that he/she does not listen to you at all and then he/she asks you to say that again, and you feel like that it is not important thing. So, you say "never mind". (Am I right?). In thai, you can say ช่างมันเถอะ or ช่างมัน in short in this situation.

ps: เถิด in the ลืมเสียเถิด actually comes from the word เถอะ. เถิด is the longer sound of เถอะ and Thai use เถอะ more than เถิด. In thai, not every single word has a meaning. For example, there is no meaning for เถอะ or เถิด. You have to put it with the other word/words. Sometimes, it's hard to see how many words there are in a sentence in Thai because there is no space between two words. You have to remember them. For example, the word, แม่น้ำ which means river but only แม means mother and น้ำ means water. But if you see แม่น้ำ, it means "river" only. However, For some words, when you separate them. It could be meaningless.

Sorry, I just saw the other example of ช่างมัน above me ..That's is another situation that you can use ช่างมันเถอะ or ลืม (forget)เสียเถอะ . It can means "forget it" or "forget them" as well. I am not sure, in some sence, this word for these two situation could mean the same.

ช่างมัน is not considered very polite so I would advise using it only with close friends or the like.

Edited March 4, 200719 yr by qualtrough