What percent of Thai vocab do you know?

[BananaBandit]

20 hours ago, tgeezer said:

I was interested in คิดแนวใด I have never heard it but it is very good I think. I say คิดอย่างไร I don't know if it is Thaigrit or not, both are understandable to me. Since ไหน means อะไร คิดไหน should be understandable too; Common usage is what determines the meanings of words, poets can do what I do and have it accepted. I know that I am not a poet but it doesn't stop me because Thais or the forum will put me straight when I get it wrong, 

 

I am confident that   คิดอย่างไร  is legit Thai and not just Thaigrit. 

 

Perhaps  คิดแนวใด  is not used in Central Thai dialect. But it is used in Isan/Laos, as I doublechecked with  นักทำอาหารส่วนตัวของผม  a   บ้านนอก อิสาน   native.

 

If you really wanted to เว้าลาว old-school, you could say  คึด  instead of  คิด         

 

เจ้าคึดแนวใด    (equal to คุฌคิดอย่างไร)    

 

More commonly, people in Isan/Laos would say คิด จังใด    ( จังใด  =  อย่างไร )

 

Other acceptable, though less-common Isan/Lao variants, include:

 

คิด ปานใด        

 

คิด แบบใด       (equivalent to  คิดแบบไหน) 

i was actually unfamiliar with คิดไหน.  Perhaps they say it in Isan, and my ears just haven't identified it yet (i still don't hear the language well. maybe i never will.).

 

I'm about 80 percent confident you could get by with saying  คิด อย่างใด

 

I might have read   ดิด(คึด) เส็นใด  in an old pre-Communist Lao document.  But my personal chef was unacquainted with this version.  If it ever existed at all, it likely has gone out of style. 

 

Could also use ดิด(คึด)เຊ่นใด   ((the funny-looking character  ຊ  (saw sahng)  is the Lao
equivalent to ช))   which would equal central Thai ดิดเช่นไร 

[hotchilli]

On 10/4/2020 at 10:36 AM, ChipButty said:

This is to serious for a Sunday morning

What day is it today, does it really matter & Thai script is still a mystery to me.?

[TKDfella]

33 minutes ago, BananaBandit said:

 

I am confident that   คิดอย่างไร  is legit Thai and not just Thaigrit. 

 

Perhaps  คิดแนวใด  is not used in Central Thai dialect. But it is used in Isan/Laos, as I doublechecked with  นักทำอาหารส่วนตัวของผม  a   บ้านนอก อิสาน   native.

 

If you really wanted to เว้าลาว old-school, you could say  คึด  instead of  คิด         

 

เจ้าคึดแนวใด    (equal to คุฌคิดอย่างไร)    

 

More commonly, people in Isan/Laos would say คิด จังใด    ( จังใด  =  อย่างไร )

 

Other acceptable, though less-common Isan/Lao variants, include:

 

คิด ปานใด        

 

คิด แบบใด       (equivalent to  คิดแบบไหน) 

i was actually unfamiliar with คิดไหน.  Perhaps they say it in Isan, and my ears just haven't identified it yet (i still don't hear the language well. maybe i never will.).

 

I'm about 80 percent confident you could get by with saying  คิด อย่างใด

 

I might have read   ดิด(คึด) เส็นใด  in an old pre-Communist Lao document.  But my personal chef was unacquainted with this version.  If it ever existed at all, it likely has gone out of style. 

 

Could also use ดิด(คึด)เຊ่นใด   ((the funny-looking character  ຊ  (saw sahng)  is the Lao
equivalent to ช))   which would equal central Thai ดิดเช่นไร 

While I would agree that the Isaan/Lao dialect does use ใด does use this, it is basically because Lao does not have an 'r' (ร) consonant. While ผู้ใด is the Lao term for ใคร,  ผู้ใด is also the 'elegant' form of ใคร in standard Thai according to a Students Thai-English Dictionary. It is also in dictionaries that cover technical entries. 

[Keesters]

Enough to understand about 50% of what my 4yo grandson says. About the same as his parents, uncles, aunts and grandmother. 

[Geordieabroad]

On 10/4/2020 at 12:36 PM, EricTh said:

@BananaBandit

 

Thai is actually not a single language but a merger of Thai, Sanskrit, Khmer and even Chinese. That's why the vocabulary is huge.

 

Most of the words come from two languages ie. Thai and Sanskrit with a sprinkle from Khmer and Chinese.

 

Thai teachers usually teach ONLY the formal words which nobody use except for news reporters and government officials. That's why I don't go to Thai language school anymore.

 

http://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.com/2017/08/origin-of-thai-language.html

 

I find your comment that the Thai vocabulary is huge very strange.  Depending on what website you look at there are approximately 22,000 words in the Thai language.  Compare that to English where there are an estimated 1,022,000 words (including medical, technical etc) and according to the Oxford concise dictionary there are 171,476 words in everyday use.

[Timofe]

If you want to make a serious attempt to learn to read Thai, you should obtain, “A Programmed Course in Reading Thai Syllables.”  If you use some effort and perseverance, you will succeed with this excellent book. The US Peace Corps gave it to me for free in 1974, but now it appears to be out of print. Last time I bought a copy it was $80 USD. 
 

I agree about royal vocabulary, Buddhist vocabulary and abbreviations. These all make reading Thai more difficult. To this list of impediments I would add words taken from other languages (mostly English), slang and the common use of nicknames for politicians etc.

[LawrenceN]

On 10/7/2020 at 10:41 AM, BananaBandit said:

I think I recall having read a few professional-caliber English articles with Thai names on the byline. 

 

Were these particular journalists just exceptionally gifted?

 

Or were they ลูกครึ่ง  who were raised สองภาษา (or perhaps English ภาษาแรก) ?

 

Or are such articles typically polished-up by a native English speaker before hitting print?

 

คุณคิดแนวใด

Stop by any of the dozens of topnotch international schools in Bangkok and you'll think you're in California. The kids switch effortlessly between Thai and English. Then there are the ones who went to school abroad, or the repatriated half Thai young people (like my own daughter), and you can see why there is a pool of native fluency English speakers and writers. 

[tgeezer]

I don't translate individual words because I don't want to be referring to the English dictionary. I don't have it with me in UK but I find an English -Thai dictionary to be more interesting than a Thai-English dictionary.  Longdo gives so many equivalent words that I have to work at it too much. 

 I think it a good thing if I can guess the meanings. I guessed that เล้าลาว was speak Laotian and was able to confirm it from the RID. 
 I have never heard คึด and would not have guessed it. 

At this point I looked up ใด in Longdo to confirm what I said and came across ห้ามแตะต้องสิ่งของใดในห้องนี้ so satisfied that I knew ใด, but couldn't guess แตะต้อง so looked it up and decided that it meant to interfere with. 
Now from a Facetime chat discussing the definition of แตะต้อง ก. ถูกต้องแต่บาว ๆ หรือเพียงนิดหน่อย, (gently or a little bit) โดยบริยายหมายความว่า ยุ่งเกี่ยว, เกียวข้อง I was told that it means simply to touch. I was confused by ถูก which I think of only as โดน but now see means แตะต้อง ! and สัมผัส the last being 'touch' with which I am familiar. 
อย่าถูกตัวผม Don't touch me. Makes sense to my interlocutor. 
As you may see. ถูกแต่บาว ๆ and (ถูก) เพียงนิดหน่อย takes me to ถูก where I found สัมผัส ก. การถูกต้องที่ให้เกิดความรู้สึก การกระทบกัน and so I continue without English which would be even more confusing. 
So this is a problem for me and for anyone who read all this I should think!  
Does anybody have a Thai site similar to this where Thais learn English? 

 

[TKDfella]

52 minutes ago, tgeezer said:

I don't translate individual words because I don't want to be referring to the English dictionary. I don't have it with me in UK but I find an English -Thai dictionary to be more interesting than a Thai-English dictionary.  Longdo gives so many equivalent words that I have to work at it too much. 

 I think it a good thing if I can guess the meanings. I guessed that เล้าลาว was speak Laotian and was able to confirm it from the RID. 
 I have never heard คึด and would not have guessed it. 

At this point I looked up ใด in Longdo to confirm what I said and came across ห้ามแตะต้องสิ่งของใดในห้องนี้ so satisfied that I knew ใด, but couldn't guess แตะต้อง so looked it up and decided that it meant to interfere with. 
Now from a Facetime chat discussing the definition of แตะต้อง ก. ถูกต้องแต่บาว ๆ หรือเพียงนิดหน่อย, (gently or a little bit) โดยบริยายหมายความว่า ยุ่งเกี่ยว, เกียวข้อง I was told that it means simply to touch. I was confused by ถูก which I think of only as โดน but now see means แตะต้อง ! and สัมผัส the last being 'touch' with which I am familiar. 
อย่าถูกตัวผม Don't touch me. Makes sense to my interlocutor. 
As you may see. ถูกแต่บาว ๆ and (ถูก) เพียงนิดหน่อย takes me to ถูก where I found สัมผัส ก. การถูกต้องที่ให้เกิดความรู้สึก การกระทบกัน and so I continue without English which would be even more confusing. 
So this is a problem for me and for anyone who read all this I should think!  
Does anybody have a Thai site similar to this where Thais learn English? 

 

'ถูก' is also used as a 'passive agent' as when talking about delicate matters. 'His wife dumped him' = เขาถูกเมียที้ง, to have points deducted (from a score) = ถูกหักคะแนน

[mbeau]

Some languages are easier than others to achieve survival skills, but they are all very difficult to master, in their own way. I found that with Thai, the first daunting element was needing to learn the alphabet. Without that, forget it. Fortunately it can be accomplished by a bit of rote effort. Then there are the tones - but after a while these become second nature. Next is the huge array of personal pronouns. And finally there is the sheer number of words you need to know if you want to be comfortable at all levels. It's a life of hard work, unless you start as a child or are a particularly gifted linguist (which I ain't). In my opinion though, it is not as tough as Vietnamese - with which I really tried hard for several years but failed to break through the basic level. Possibly because I didn't start as young. In more recent years I have had occasion to spend a fair bit of time in Georgia, and wow! I'm not even going to try!

[GinBoy2]

2 hours ago, Geordieabroad said:

I find your comment that the Thai vocabulary is huge very strange.  Depending on what website you look at there are approximately 22,000 words in the Thai language.  Compare that to English where there are an estimated 1,022,000 words (including medical, technical etc) and according to the Oxford concise dictionary there are 171,476 words in everyday use.

I would agree with you here.

I'm fluent in Thai and Lao, and my whole family is pretty used to switching between all of them.

 

My son works for NBC as a developer, and we can talk happily in either Thai or Lao, but when it gets to technical stuff, we always switch to English, mainly because the words just don't exist in Thai

[TKDfella]

11 minutes ago, mbeau said:

Some languages are easier than others to achieve survival skills, but they are all very difficult to master, in their own way. I found that with Thai, the first daunting element was needing to learn the alphabet. Without that, forget it. Fortunately it can be accomplished by a bit of rote effort. Then there are the tones - but after a while these become second nature. Next is the huge array of personal pronouns. And finally there is the sheer number of words you need to know if you want to be comfortable at all levels. It's a life of hard work, unless you start as a child or are a particularly gifted linguist (which I ain't). In my opinion though, it is not as tough as Vietnamese - with which I really tried hard for several years but failed to break through the basic level. Possibly because I didn't start as young. In more recent years I have had occasion to spend a fair bit of time in Georgia, and wow! I'm not even going to try!

True. I always look for a number link in new things I experience, that's my 'trigger' and with Thai I learned the numbers first...well at least some numbers. Take for example 1-5 in Thai, learn those and you've encountered three of the tones straight away; low, rising, rising, low and falling and from there on to 99 it's pretty much the same. พัน 1000 is medium tone. I tend to think that we all have own individual 'trigger'

[johnnysunshine]

I started to learn by looking at the nouns and verbs I use most and found the Thai equivalent to English.   

Afterwards. I found some tutors who I demanded that we work together, not just using there way of teaching.

Next, I studied at CMU for basic Thai and the course was good but I wasn't using enough.  I was not hanging with Thai folks a lot.

Now, I speaking Thai okay with help from whomever I am talking with.  

Important to commit to using what you know even if half of it is English and half Thai...(Tinglish).

I don't require knowing all of the foods and flowers and time of the day, etc. as these are not common to all conversations.

 

[BananaBandit]

8 hours ago, TKDfella said:

While ผู้ใด is the Lao term for ใคร,  ผู้ใด is also the 'elegant' form of ใคร in standard Thai according to a Students Thai-English Dictionary. It is also in dictionaries that cover technical entries. 

ผู้ใด is often shortened to ไผ in Isan/Lao

 

ไผเว้าลาวได้    ( Who can speak Lao? )

[BananaBandit]

3 hours ago, mbeau said:

In my opinion though, it is not as tough as Vietnamese - with which I really tried hard for several years but failed to break through the basic level.

I believe I read that Vietnamese is spoken at a significantly faster rate than Thai. 

 

Is that your experience?

[Acharn]

On 10/4/2020 at 3:01 PM, trucking said:

 

I agree with this. I have friends who know lots of words and the correct tone but when they try to speak they get tongue twisted.

The only way to overcome this is with practice. When I was in the Army I took a crash course in German before being assigned there. The teacher was a professor from Georgetown University, who had been a Wehrmacht soldier made prisoner at the end of the war. He claimed the only way to learn a language is to use it. Hopefully, if you make a mistake the person you are speaking to will correct you. You have to overcome the anxiety that people will have contempt for you if you make a mistake. The thing is, as you grow older, unless you're a beautiful woman few people really want to take time to talk to you. Maybe you can find someone who speaks your language who also wants to learn Thai. Speak Thai with each other. Of course your vocabulary will be limited, and your pronunciation may be wrong. Don't worry about it. A native Thai speaker will figure out what you're trying to say and will probably correct you, so pay attention. When a Thai with no formal language training tries to speak your language to you, you can figure out what they're trying to say, right?

 

I speak only Thai most days, and can talk about day to day subjects, like buying stuff at the 7-11. If I have to get the car repaired I look up words I think I'll need to use and jot them on a piece of paper before going to the mechanic. My vocabulary is much, much smaller than I think is appropriate, considering how long I've lived here, but you only retain new language if you use it when you have a real need to use it.

[BananaBandit]

On 10/7/2020 at 3:17 AM, tgeezer said:

Since ไหน means อะไร คิดไหน should be understandable too

It seems logical to me. 

 

But I feel compelled to relate that my somtam lady insists คิดไหน is not okay.   She says it is actually คิดไง    which is  ภาษาวัยรุ่น  so people might think it's a bit funny for adult farang to use that
expression.  This, of course, means i will use it at the first possible opportunity. 

[BananaBandit]

9 hours ago, BananaBandit said:

Other acceptable, though less-common Isan/Lao variants, include:

 

คิด ปานใด  

I wish to decommission this one.

 

I believe I have read it in an older ลาว book.  But even if my memory serves me correct, it would be a very uncommon (and likely not understood) usage.

[JWRC]

Even when you speak Thai and have actually asked the shopkeeper for the item in Thai, they panic and look around for help or when asking the price in Thai, they grab a calculator and put the amount in so they can show you. I find this totally frustrating, just goes to show they either do not listen, or panic at being spoken to by a foreigner. I never admit to being able to speak Thai when in a social situation and my other half plays along with this, I have spent years sitting on my own at the back of funerals, and always an outer table at weddings and things, simply because I can't be bothered with it all, most people think I don't speak Thai, however it is quite amusing when they run out of chairs and have to sit at our table, because always without exception they have to talk about me, the thing's I hear are amazing.

[Trujillo]

It is said that, in answer to your question, that if you know about 10,000 words in any language, you will have a decent fluency. Not sure how grammar fits in here, but I assume that if you know that much about the language, the rest falls into place. 

[Damrongsak]

I know very little of Thai vocabulary.  I know what little I know and I can use it to express myself in creative ways.  As for really understanding others, that's no-go aside from my wife.  But, I can hem and haw and nod or shake my head in both Thai and Isaan Lao without a problem.  Uhh, Mmm, Hoi, Ai. 

[LawrenceN]

49 minutes ago, Damrongsak said:

I know very little of Thai vocabulary.  I know what little I know and I can use it to express myself in creative ways.  As for really understanding others, that's no-go aside from my wife.  But, I can hem and haw and nod or shake my head in both Thai and Isaan Lao without a problem.  Uhh, Mmm, Hoi, Ai. 

You must have forgotten a lot. When we were in Peace Corps together, I thought you did fine. In fact, I thought you were one of the better Thai speakers among us. No? 

[LawrenceN]

10 hours ago, JWRC said:

Even when you speak Thai and have actually asked the shopkeeper for the item in Thai, they panic and look around for help or when asking the price in Thai, they grab a calculator and put the amount in so they can show you. I find this totally frustrating, just goes to show they either do not listen, or panic at being spoken to by a foreigner.

This is said by people who underestimate the importance of  speaking with correct tones. Thai people simply don't recognize the words you're saying. Tones are an integral part of every syllable, as important as the consonants and vowels. I would bet dollars to donuts you're one of those people who decided you're not going to bother with learning the correct tone for each word, or learn to read Thai script, which solves the problem. If you haven't trained your brain to hear and think and speak tonally, you're not speaking Thai. 

[cmarshall]

On 10/8/2020 at 9:22 AM, LawrenceN said:

It's น้ำโซดา. The way you spelled it would have a rising tone on the first syllable, which it doesn't have. Both syllables are mid tones and equal in emphasis. 

น้ำ has a high tone as indicated by the spelling, not a mid tone.  When Thai pronounce น้ำโซดา it's true that there is no emphasis on the final syllable, but it does sound that way to the Anglophone ear because of the long vowel.

[cmarshall]

16 hours ago, mbeau said:

Some languages are easier than others to achieve survival skills, but they are all very difficult to master, in their own way. I found that with Thai, the first daunting element was needing to learn the alphabet. Without that, forget it. Fortunately it can be accomplished by a bit of rote effort. Then there are the tones - but after a while these become second nature. Next is the huge array of personal pronouns. And finally there is the sheer number of words you need to know if you want to be comfortable at all levels. It's a life of hard work, unless you start as a child or are a particularly gifted linguist (which I ain't). In my opinion though, it is not as tough as Vietnamese - with which I really tried hard for several years but failed to break through the basic level. Possibly because I didn't start as young. In more recent years I have had occasion to spend a fair bit of time in Georgia, and wow! I'm not even going to try!

Well said.

 

Nearly anyone willing to pay the price in effort to learn Thai can do so, but most Westerners once they get a glimpse of how much work is required are not willing to pay that price.  More's the pity.

[Boomer6969]

Dunno about the percentage but that's all I know:

- เบียร์สิงห์

- บูมบูม

[LawrenceN]

36 minutes ago, cmarshall said:

น้ำ has a high tone as indicated by the spelling, not a mid tone.  When Thai pronounce น้ำโซดา it's true that there is no emphasis on the final syllable, but it does sound that way to the Anglophone ear because of the long vowel.

Now it's my turn to  admit fault. I was referring to just the word โซดา, butI wasn't clear about that. ????

[elgenon]

Please explain how one can know this. Interesting question but...

 

What percent of the English vocabulary do you know?

[BananaBandit]

34 minutes ago, Boomer6969 said:

Dunno about the percentage but that's all I know:

- เบียร์สิงห์

- บูมบูม

Though I'm sure your utterance of   บูมบูม   works fine orally, in a written context it might be better practice to use the  ๆ  symbol   ( called a  ยมก )  and instead write it as "บูมๆ"

 

For that matter, you also could employ the  ๆ  symbol to express the numerical part of your screen name. 

[cmarshall]

32 minutes ago, elgenon said:

Please explain how one can know this. Interesting question but...

 

What percent of the English vocabulary do you know?

For the size of your English vocabulary search on "english vocabulary size test" and you will find lots of online tests.  I took one of them that estimated my English vocabulary at 30,000.

 

I enter every new Thai word or phrase into Anki which is a flash card program for memorization.  So, I know that I have at least tried to memorize 14,493 Thai words or phrases.  Anki offers many advantages for a language student.