I think that I have worked it out now. Making mistakes is good because being corrected reinforces memory in a way that looking up words does not. Often it seems that mistakes here are "jumped on" by some people which must be discouraging for learners so that they may be reluctant to post because, firstly they may fear criticism and secondly looking up words gets in the way of making the point.  
 

Yep. My Thai is absolutely packed to the hilt with reinforced memories! 555

Sometimes I use the wrong word, or mispronounce a word, and somebody will laugh at my mistake and make a big deal of it. I don't really like that, but have noticed that my memory in the future is much stronger at avoiding that same mistake again.

 

Traumatic or negative events leave a strong imprint on the human brain in order to help us avoid them again in the future and thus increase our chances of survival. Apparently it works with language learning as well.

The BIL's new flame is called 'Youpaa' but I heard 'Youkaa'. Youkaa is the name of a tree or short for Eucalyptis. I wondered why she was named after a tree. 

Everyone thought it funny when I called her Youkaa and no one told me for a good while that's it was Youpaa.  ????

4 hours ago, carlyai said:

The BIL's new flame is called 'Youpaa' but I heard 'Youkaa'. Youkaa is the name of a tree or short for Eucalyptis. I wondered why she was named after a tree. 

Everyone thought it funny when I called her Youkaa and no one told me for a good while that's it was Youpaa.  ????

Interesting,  Thai like to shorten words so Eucalyptis becomes Euca. ยูคา  and the girls name also ยุภา becomes ยุ so you may have well heard คุณยุคะ at some time. 

 

 

 

 

Eucalyptis is called ยูคา 

20 hours ago, ColeBOzbourne said:

Sometimes I use the wrong word, or mispronounce a word, and somebody will laugh at my mistake and make a big deal of it. I don't really like that, but have noticed that my memory in the future is much stronger at avoiding that same mistake again.

 

Traumatic or negative events leave a strong imprint on the human brain in order to help us avoid them again in the future and thus increase our chances of survival. Apparently it works with language learning as well.

When I was a young'un in the Air Force, a co-worker pointed out that I misspelled 'separate'.  I brushed it off as a common mistake.  He told me, it's easy to remember......sep a rat e (emphasis on 'a rat').  That was the last time I misspelled the word.  ศีรษะ is a good example of a Thai word that I've seen misspelled on those signs telling you to 'watch your head' when riding an escalator.  A Thai friend told me it's one of those trick words on Thai spelliing tests.  

When someone points out my mispronunciation/misspelling in Thai, I always thank them.  I can use all the help I can get with a difficult language.

ศรีษะ

Just in case there are people who don't know that you misspelt it intentionally. 

. 

My Dad sometimes gave me a  funny  look??

On 11/24/2020 at 11:51 PM, tgeezer said:

ศรีษะ

Just in case there are people who don't know that you misspelt it intentionally. 

. 

Like I said, it's a trick word.....but ศีรษะ is the correct spelling.

It seems to have got started with a mistransliteration. Based on the RID, the usual ศรี looks to be from Sanskrit ศฺรี, while the word ศีรษะ is from Sanskrit สีส (which would have been pronounced สีสะ). In other words there was no ร in the original and the consonant was ส not ศ (they're not the same in Sanskrit).

 

It's hard to see where the ศร came if not from ศฺรี, even though that would have been a mistake. But if so, why is the vowel where it is? It's a bit of a mystery. If it did come from ศฺรี, I reckon you may as well go the whole hog and spell it ศรีษะ.

 

The spelling ศรีษะ is used in some of the definitions in some dictionaries (Lexitron for example) but does not appear as a headword. Maybe the spelling is gradually changing.

I'd liken it to spellings like Sioux (for its native American/French influence) or other words that have foreign influence like sovereign or reign.  

Just to add a bit more confusion, it seems to be a very clever 'trick' word because my Thai teacher wrote it as follows, and she rarely misspells a word: ศรีษระ

I was prompted to look up ศรีษะ and was surprised to discover that I can't find it in the RID so it doesn't exist officially.  I had always thought that it meant the head because of the signs. So it appears to be a euphemism for หัว. 
I thought that ศรีษระ was promising but there is no such word in the RID as ษะ ษระ either. 

Perhaps people are so used to formal and informal words that having only one word for head หัว seems inadequate, there are probably one hundred words beginning with หัว after all. 

My last post is so big an example of a mistake that I want to take it out but can not! I should have looked up ศีรษะ ! 

Yes, both Thai-language.com and my Benjawan Becker list ศีรษะ as formal speech meaning 'head' for humans only.

I had never researched ศีรษะ before, only knew what it meant.  I assumed that ศรีษะ was the word, I have no teacher to point out this things so thanks to kokesaat for passing it on.