What is or how it is.

[tgeezer]

ยกหางเสือขึ้น means Take the tiller. ยก หางเสือ ขึ้น 

I spent time looking for เสือขึ้น as the noun and when I discovered my mistake, thought that I had made a great discovery! It was with some disappointment that I discovered that I was making things difficult for myself. 

 

I wonder if there are any learners who, like me, resist rote learning and are not satisfied with knowing what but want to know how as well.    

eg. I wondered for a long time why กำลัง (ก. แรงj has become necessary to show present tense and think that it must be the influence of English, with the result that I resist using กำลัง to show present tense except where action is involved.

Should the nature of the verb make a difference? ...กำลังนอนหลับ or ...นอนหลับอยู่ ? or even more verbose, ...กำลังนอนหลับอยู่! 

 

 

 

[digbeth]

กำลัง in the context to indicate the verb being used in a present tense is mostly redundant, you can remove it without affecting the meaning of a sentence.

 

only case where it seem to give more meaning is when answering 'being presently word on' กำลังปฎิบัติงานอยู่ กำลังทำอยู่ 

[Percy Penguin]

The SEALang Thai corpus is useful for seeing how words are used in context and testing out ideas like that.

[tgeezer]

23 hours ago, digbeth said:

กำลัง in the context to indicate the verb being used in a present tense is mostly redundant, you can remove it without affecting the meaning of a sentence.

 

only case where it seem to give more meaning is when answering 'being presently word on' กำลังปฎิบัติงานอยู่ กำลังทำอยู่ 

Redundant! I assumed it to be a relatively modern use because as I said, it is not defined as a grammatical word in the RID.  Even the latest edition still hasn’t accepted it in spite of it occurring in school textbooks. 

eg. เรากำลังจะไปกันเดี๋ยวนี้ Since this is an example of the use of a กาลวิเศษณ์, in this case เดี๋ยวนี้, does กำลัง say anything? 

 

The closest example in my old RID is กำลังกิน ว. เหมาะที่จะกิน and we can make up our mind as to whether that means what it says or that กำลัง can be put before any verb you like to convey the meaning เหมาะที่จะ ... 

 

The reason I post these seemingly random topics is to show that Thai can seem mysterious but we need not take it to be prescriptive, as Thai people say, it is “up to you” in many cases.