Fun In The Office

[Lithobid]

Having fun in the office today, staff sent me a e-mail with two subjects and pictures of my GF

1. วันวานยังหวานอยู (จนถึงทูกวันนี้)

2. บังเอิญเจอ รูปนางงามจักรวาน

I replied with the usual inside joke, and some photo's

รูปนี้ไม่นางไม่งาม เป็นปลาดุก!!

แต่ผมจะคิดถึงเธอทุกวันมากๆ

They laughed and told me it should be ไม่ใช่นางงาม

Am I splitting up a compound noun here, I found definitions for both นาง and งาม seperately, thought when I split em up, it seemed either incorrect or to change the meaning.

Any help?

Cheers!

Lithobid

[meadish_sweetball]

บังเอิญเจอ รูปนางงามจักรวาน = (We/I) happened to stumble upon a picture of Miss Universe.

นางงาม is a compound noun meaning 'beauty queen'. Since นาง is a noun, it can not be negated with ไม่.

ไม่ is used to negate verbs and adjectives (so from a grammatical standpoint, you were right in using it to negate งาม... Your Thai friends were correct though, in teaching you that you need to use ไม่ใช่ when you want to negate a noun like นาง.

I suspect you wanted to pull something off along the lines of 'This is not a picture of a lady or somebody beautiful, this is a picture of a catfish'... perhaps somebody with better colloquial Thai with me can come up with something idiomatic to achieve that, I am a bit too tired to think something up at the moment.

[Lithobid]

บังเอิญเจอ รูปนางงามจักรวาน = (We/I) happened to stumble upon a picture of Miss Universe.

นางงาม is a compound noun meaning 'beauty queen'. Since นาง is a noun, it can not be negated with ไม่.

ไม่ is used to negate verbs and adjectives (so from a grammatical standpoint, you were right in using it to negate งาม... Your Thai friends were correct though, in teaching you that you need to use ไม่ใช่ when you want to negate a noun like นาง.

I suspect you wanted to pull something off along the lines of 'This is not a picture of a lady or somebody beautiful, this is a picture of a catfish'... perhaps somebody with better colloquial Thai with me can come up with something idiomatic to achieve that, I am a bit too tired to think something up at the moment.

Great explanation!

You hit the nail on the head with the response! I know it sounds negative, but it's an inside joke.

Great lesson

ไม่ for negating adjectives and verbs

ไม่ใช for the nouns

Didn't know that, you cleared up a lot!

Cheers

Lithobid

[rak sa_ngop]

2. บังเอิญเจอ รูปนางงามจักรวาน

Well I have finally worked out that จักรวาน means Universe and is spelled จักรวาล in my dictionary.

[Lithobid]

2. บังเอิญเจอ รูปนางงามจักรวาน

Well I have finally worked out that จักรวาน means Universe and is spelled จักรวาล in my dictionary.

ใช่ you are correct, จักรวาล is the correct spelling, although this was an office joke,

by spelling จักรวาน วาน means "Ass" in southern dialect, as to call my friend an

ass not Miss Universe.

Thanks for the ATTN to detail!

Lithobid