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When did farang start to mean a white person


kingstonkid

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13 hours ago, hotandsticky said:

No.

 

Clearly you are not familiar with often used terms of "Chocolate man", "Nippon", Khairks etc

 

Why are foreigners called farang in Thailand?

 

Farang (Persian: فرنگ) is a Persian (and Southeast Asian) word that originally referred to the Franks (the major Germanic tribe) and later came to refer to White Europeans in general. The word "Farang" is a cognate and originates from Old French: "franc".

I thank you for the lesson.

 

However I wonder how many Thais know this 

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13 hours ago, hotandsticky said:

No.

 

Clearly you are not familiar with often used terms of "Chocolate man", "Nippon", Khairks etc

 

Why are foreigners called farang in Thailand?

 

Farang (Persian: فرنگ) is a Persian (and Southeast Asian) word that originally referred to the Franks (the major Germanic tribe) and later came to refer to White Europeans in general. The word "Farang" is a cognate and originates from Old French: "franc".

Correct..but before the word reached Persia it passed⁷ thru Italy (Franchi) Greece (Franggi) and so on

I never thought of the word farang as a slur because it's just a corruption of 'Frank'

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8 hours ago, it is what it is said:

it's, i believe, connected to a word referring to the colonial french in neighboring countries

When I worked with Laotian Hmong  refugees in the camps back in 1979/80, they referred to the French as "fukees".  I kid you not.  Maybe it was all white foreigners, I don't know.

 

But I am not "farang".  I lived and worked in northeast Thailand for about 3 years 1977-1980.  "Boh man farang". I'm "Mak see da".  I've earned it!  I like to tease my in-laws and we all laugh.

 

Here at home we refer to Chinese as "Jek", Indians as "Kak", Africans as "I Meut" and so forth.  It's just a thing to distinguish various groups, though some are not nice.  I don't know if there are different common words to differentiate the 40 or so different ethnic groups in southern China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Burma.  I recently went to a cultural museum in Hanoi and I think I counted 45, though  that may have included some peoples far away.

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13 minutes ago, Damrongsak said:

When I worked with Laotian Hmong  refugees in the camps back in 1979/80, they referred to the French as "fukees".  I kid you not.  Maybe it was all white foreigners, I don't know.

 

But I am not "farang".  I lived and worked in northeast Thailand for about 3 years 1977-1980.  "Boh man farang". I'm "Mak see da".  I've earned it!  I like to tease my in-laws and we all laugh.

 

Here at home we refer to Chinese as "Jek", Indians as "Kak", Africans as "I Meut" and so forth.  It's just a thing to distinguish various groups, though some are not nice.  I don't know if there are different common words to differentiate the 40 or so different ethnic groups in southern China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Burma.  I recently went to a cultural museum in Hanoi and I think I counted 45, though  that may have included some peoples far away.

While it's been a few years and my memory isn't great, I think I was "poppa" to the wife' family, but I was definitely farang to the village crones that gathered under the house to gossip.

 

I was hansum man to bar girls that didn't know me and ATM to those that did.

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