Trigonometry

[RickBradford]

I was interested to see how Thai translated this word.

 

The English word is obviously of Greek origin τρία (3) γωνία (corner) μέτρο (measurement).

 

In Thai, it is rendered as ตรีโกณมิติ , and the estimable thai-language.com describes it as a loan word. But if you deconstruct the Thai word, it seems to be perfectly good Thai.

 

ตรี - 3 , as in ปริญญาตรี - Bachelor's degree

โกณ - an uncommon word, which RID suggests is similar to มุม, เหลี่ยม, i.e. corner

มิติ - measurement, dimension

 

No big question here, I am just fascinated by how many Thai words, of Sanskrit/Pali origin, can have such similar analogues in European languages.

[jackdd]

Because Sanskrit and Latin both belong to the Indo-European language family

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages

[tgeezer]

Rick, I must say that I like browsing the dictionary, preferably the hard copy, where the relationship between words can be seen more easily.  

I think that by saying that it is a loan word from English, as the RID does too, they are robbing Sanskrit and Pali of the credit. Is it possible that Thai was ignorant of geometry until the Brits came along?  ตรีโกณมิติ (ตรีโกนะ-) is the combination triangle-measure in Sanskrit Pali.   

 

[gk10002000]

4 hours ago, tgeezer said:

Rick, I must say that I like browsing the dictionary, preferably the hard copy, where the relationship between words can be seen more easily.  

I think that by saying that it is a loan word from English, as the RID does too, they are robbing Sanskrit and Pali of the credit. Is it possible that Thai was ignorant of geometry until the Brits came along?  ตรีโกณมิติ (ตรีโกนะ-) is the combination triangle-measure in Sanskrit Pali.   

 

I am of greek ancestry.  I did go to greek school as a kid here in the USA.  My parents were all born in the USA, but my grandparents did come from Greece.  So I knew some languages.  We used to have a huge massive dictionary that I would read!  And it had the origins of the words next to it, Lat, Grk, etc.  Yes I was a bit of a geek and am an engineer.  Luckily my parents had books around, encyclopedias, nature books, and stuff so as a kid growing up in those cold northeast USA winters we found things to do inside.  Never got into the drinking and drug habits that so many kids did.  Lucky there I guess that the parents of the kids near my neighborhood were all good influences on their kids.

[tgeezer]

In my opinion the best to learn a language is by study of the dictionary but I can imagine that most people would not agree with me, certainly the dictionary doesn't guarantee that it will help one in speaking.   Today,  in what has become my daily discussion on some aspect of Thai with a ‘man of letters’, he said that ตรีโกณมิติ is pronounced as ตรี โกณ มิติ and not as directed by the RID. I say directed because in theory there is no choice but we know that that only applies to the time when the edition was published and to whom we are speaking!  Also, as with English without the ability to read it is possible to deduce wrongly a meaning from context in Thai and this occasionally can lead to a change of meaning over time.  

The scheme of the government to give qualifying citizens Bt 1000 to spend in the provinces, described in the confirmation email as ....มาตรการฯ “ชิม ซ้อป ใช้ (taste, shop, use), prompted me to ask what ฯ replaced.  I didn’t get a satisfactory answer so researched and found ส่งเสริมการท่องเที่ยว.  Luckily in imparting my findings this morning, it was discovered that I had correctly deduced a meaning  for ส่งเสริม but had confused it with the word in เพลง’สรรเสริญ’พระบารมี because I could as easily apply it there! 

Researching ส่งเสริม I notice that it is a popular word to use with มาตรการ.  

To borrow from Nick Bradford “No big question here”. just fuel for thought.