The Word 'to'

[Radius]

What is the translation in Thai for 'to' as in:

To fast

To slow

To high

To low

Is there such a word in Thai or do these translate differently?

Edited September 21, 2008 by Radius

[MKAsok]

Not the clearest of questions... What do you mean by 'to fast?' Do you mean 'to abstain from eating food?' If so the verb is อด, pronounced 'ot.' The 'to' something is not used with verbs in Thai. Thais don't say, 'I'm going to fast' unless it's an action in the future, in which case the auxiliary verb จะ meaning 'will' is used, they just say, 'I fast.' I'm sorry, but I've got no idea what you mean by 'to high,' or 'to low.'

[Radius]

to high to reach

to low to see from this cliff

the first 'to' in each of these sentences.

[MKAsok]

So you mean 'too,' not 'to' then?' เกินไป pronounced geernbpai...

mk

[stonybonytony]

I've also heard มากไป (mak pai) and just ไป (pai) on its own. Though this is one of the words I find is most often misunderstood/not understood when I use it, so I'm going to try เกินไป next time.

[Radius]

Aaah yes, lol. English is also not my native language.

I indeed mean too. I am sorry about that.

Thank you for your explainations I think I will get it now.

[MKAsok]

I've also heard มากไป (mak pai) and just ไป (pai) on its own. Though this is one of the words I find is most often misunderstood/not understood when I use it, so I'm going to try เกินไป next time.

Very true in my experience. Many Thais shorten เกินไป to just ไป

Radius - you might want to note that เกินไป comes after the thing you're describing e.g. fast too, slow too, high too, low too etc.

mk

[mynextgig]

I've also heard มากไป (mak pai) and just ไป (pai) on its own. Though this is one of the words I find is most often misunderstood/not understood when I use it, so I'm going to try เกินไป next time.

Very true in my experience. Many Thais shorten เกินไป to just ไป

Radius - you might want to note that เกินไป comes after the thing you're describing e.g. fast too, slow too, high too, low too etc.

mk

เกินไป means 'too much' so can be used with all of the OP's original suggestions.

Too Fast = Fast too much (literal)

Too Slow = Slow too much (literal)

etc etc

It can be shortened to just ไป, and often is in informal conversation. Or you can add มาก at the beginning which adds emphasis and makes it 'Much too much'

Edited September 22, 2008 by mynextgig

[Radius]

Something I noticed:

"pai" also means : "to go" (same tone, this makes it confusing)

I cannot read Thai btw

Edited September 22, 2008 by Radius

[MKAsok]

Something I noticed:

"pai" also means : "to go" (same tone, this makes it confusing)

I cannot read Thai btw

As is the case with many things in Thai language, the context will make it totally obvious.

Edit: By the way - and it's been said many times before in this forum, but always worth repeating - if I had to give you one piece of advice about learning Thai, it would be to learn to read it as soon as you've mastered the very basics.

mk

Edited September 22, 2008 by MKAsok

[Radius]

I haven't covered the basics enough to my opinion.

I am able to construct small lines, but a conversation is almost undoable at this time.

But I am currently (with some added English, hand and footwork) able to get my point across most of the time.

I think I need to learn more before I embark on the reading and writing adventure.

[grtaylor]

Something I noticed:

"pai" also means : "to go" (same tone, this makes it confusing)

I cannot read Thai btw

As is the case with many things in Thai language, the context will make it totally obvious.

Edit: By the way - and it's been said many times before in this forum, but always worth repeating - if I had to give you one piece of advice about learning Thai, it would be to learn to read it as soon as you've mastered the very basics.

mk

I second that - it really makes much more sense when you can read it!

[Luukhin]

Something I noticed:

"pai" also means : "to go" (same tone, this makes it confusing)

I cannot read Thai btw

pai or gern pai, 'too' in this context funtions as an adverb modifying adjectival verbs or what you call them adjective. Thai has no adjectives. It always follows the word it modifies. As for verbs, mak pai or mak gern pai, 'too much' is used. It is easy to tell whether it is a verb or an adverb. Pai is an adverb if it follows adjectival verbs. In case that pai follows verbs, pai is an adverb if the verb it follows is not directional verbs such as dern 'walk,' wing 'run' etc.

For examples:

1. dii gern pai or dii pai = too good

2. gin mak pai or gin mak gern pai = I ate too much

Hope this helps.

[YangYaiEric]

Slightly off topic, but can anyone of the Thai language experts tell me what the literal translation of

'Kor Rap' means? Also, when can a male use the female form of the word 'me' (Chan), as in 'Chan pben pbai teeiaw prung-nee!".

Thanks in advance!

Eric.

[MKAsok]

Slightly off topic, but can anyone of the Thai language experts tell me what the literal translation of

'Kor Rap' means? Also, when can a male use the female form of the word 'me' (Chan), as in 'Chan pben pbai teeiaw prung-nee!".

Thanks in advance!

Eric.

I think you mean ขอรับ which is (from what I remember - Meadish, David Houston, Rikker etc. please feel free to step in) a very polite way for a male speaker to say 'yes.' Literal translation, I guess, would be 'may/can receive, but is really of little practical use. ฉัน can be used by a male speaker with intimates or when you're addressing an 'inferior.' Probably best to stick with ผม if you're not sure...

mk

[mangkorn]

"kor rap" is the old polite form that became shortened to "khrap" in usage.

Edited September 24, 2008 by mangkorn

[mangkorn]

Thai has no adjectives.

You can't be serious.

[Luukhin]

Thai has no adjectives.

You can't be serious.

Yes, I am serious. What part of speech do you think that 'หิว' hungry is? You might say that it is an adjective. For me, it is a verb.

Look at the following examples. I guess that we agree that กิน is a verb.

ผม กำลัง กิน I am eating.

ผม ไม่ กิน I don't eat.

ผม กำลัง หิว

ผม ไม่ หิว

หิว can be placed in the same position as verbs. It can be negated and collocates with a progressive marker "กำลัง" Have you heard a Thai say "กำลังอร่อย"? It is incorrect in English to say "It is being delicious." But, it is possible in Thai.

[5tash]

I think both of you are correct.

The categories "adjective" and "verb" tend to overlap in Thai.

Adjectives in Thai can also function as verbs which describe the state of something.

ห้องใหญ่ hawgF yaiL - a big room/the room is big. Thus "ใหญ่ yaiL" is both the adjective "big" and the verb "to be big".

[Rikker]

This is really an argument over terminology. One could also claim that there is an adjective หิว and a verb หิว that are homonyms.

[DavidHouston]

This might be an issue of cultural imperialism, that is, foreigners trying to shoehorn Thai (and other oriental languages) into their preconceived notion of how words should be classified. These notions are based on the foreigners' own experiences with their native languages and their languages' historical antecedents.

That having been said, I have found different approaches to Parts of Speech in several Thai texts. I do not have time now to quote extensively from these sources but here is a summary of what I found.

Kumchai Thonglaw, writing in "Principles of the Thai Language" in 1952 and thereafter, distinguishes between "verbs" and "modifiers", although he notes that modifiers can be verbs as well. (See page 250 of the 2545 (2002) edition.) Nawawan Phanthumaetha, writing in "Thai Grammar" in 1982 and thereafter, treats all action verbs and modifiers as two types of verb forms. (See pages 9 and 46.) Another author says that a single word can have multiple functions.

So, as to the question of whether "หิว" is a verb or an adjective/adverb/modifier, the answer is clearly "yes". If anyone would like more explanations from these texts, please let me know.

Good luck.

[mangkorn]

Uh, no: I wasn't talking about words like "hungry." I meant words that modify nouns - and those are called adjectives in English, e.g.: "LARGE house," "SMALL house," "RED house," "OLD house," etc.

Words that modify nouns are far different from words like "hungry," which do not modify nouns. I never mentioned anything about "hungry." Nor did I suggest anything about "eat," which is obviously a verb, in any language. I responded to the assertion: "Thai has no adjectives." That is incorrect. If "large house" in English is a noun modified by an adjective, then "baan yai" is also a noun modified by an adjective. They're the exact same construction. That is not "shoe-horning" anything.

Yet, if one dares to suggest that the modifier is not an adjective simply because it comes after the noun, instead of before the noun, then you would be asserting that Spanish has no adjectives, either. And you would be very wrong.

David: what is this about "cultural imperialism?" If we are writing these posts in English, then we use English words, and "translate." If you translate the Thai terms for those words as "modifiers," instead of "adjectives," well, fine, in English they are also called modifiers, also. No problem. But for greater precision, modifiers that modify nouns are called adjectives; if they modify verbs then they are called adverbs. The fact that Thai grammarians may not make that distinction, and just call them all "modifiers," does not mean that the "red" in "red house" is a verb. "Red" is not a verb in English, and "daeng" is not a verb in Thai. They modify the nouns "house/baan," which is precisely what adjectives do.

I thought that the art of translation is to describe words and ideas from one language in a manner that is best understood in the target language. But if a translation is "cultural imperialism," perhaps we should all just write in Thai, instead?

Cheers.

[DavidHouston]

Khun Mangkorn,

Here is one perspective, this one from Ajarn Nawawan, "Thai Grammar", page 46:

"คำกริยาใช้ขยายได้ทั้งคำนามและคำกริยา

คำกริยาที่ใช้ขยายคำนามมักเป็นคำกริยาแสดงสภาพ . . . คำกริยาแสดงสภาพจะขยายความหมายของคำนามในด้านต่างๆ เป็นต้นว่า

๑. บอกขนาด

ตัวอย่าง ๑. คุณแม่เอาแหวนใส่ไว้ในกระเป๋าใบเล็ก

๒. มีกระถางใหญ่ตั้งอยู่มุมห้อง

๒. บอกสี

ตัวอย่าง ๑. เด็กๆ เปรียบเหมือนผ้าขาว

๒. เขาชอบสวมแว่นดำ"

[The discussion in Nawawan goes on for several pages.]

In this context Ajarn Nawawan clearly calls words like "small", "large", "white", and "black" as "verbs", or more properly, "verbs indicating condition" or what some might call "verbs showing attributes" or "attributive verbs". (Grammarians or grammartician or grammarticists can tell us the correct term of art.)

My reaction was to the notion that the Western grammatical characterization of a Thai term in a given context should drive how Thais think about their grammatical structures. The statement "Thai has no adjectives" is not a reflection on Thai, but a reflection of the Westerner making that statement.

There is another approach to this "verb" vs. "modifier" conundrum. That is to identify the "hidden verb" or as we might say in English grammar, the "implied word." In English the exhortation said by a mother to a child, "Eat!" is a complete sentence with certain implied words. The full sentence with implied words is "[My child] (noun of direct address), [please] (adverb) eat (imperative form of the verb) [your dinner] (predicate object)."

Following along in this vein, one could utilize the concept of an "implied verb". Take the sentence, "ห้องนี้ใหญ่เหลือเกิน" ("This room is really huge."). One could say that Thai in these cases uses an implied verb "to be" which is rarely stated, except for our known list of exceptions, between the words "นี้" ("this", a pronoun) and "ใหญ่" ("large", an adjective). That would take care of the lack of a verb and would allow the word "ใหญ่" to be relegated to a proper "modifier" characterization.

Let's take another perspective. In the example above, "มีกระถางใหญ่ตั้งอยู่มุมห้อง" ("There is a big pot sitting in the corner of the room"), if one wishes to consider "ใหญ่" as a verb, one could expand the translation to say, "There is a pot, which is big, sitting in the corner of the room." Thus, one would translate "ใหญ่" as "is big". This is, I believe, what Ajarn Nawawan might be saying.

And, Khun Mangkorn, I misspoke. I was not trying to distinguish in my earlier posting between "adjective" and "adverbs", on the one hand, and "modifiers" on the other hand. "Twelve of one, half-dozen of the other." Rather I was discussing the distinction between the notion of "verb", on the one hand, and that of "adjective"/"adverb"/"modifier", on the other. I agree with you; the former is a matter of translation.

Personally, I do not care very much about the entire issue. My concern is with effective and clear communications, not taxonomy (i.e., parts of speech) or archeology (i.e., etymology). I bear no grudges: flail away at me!

Edited September 25, 2008 by DavidHouston

[Rikker]

Like I said: this is just an argument over terminology! It might affect how we perceive the language, but it doesn't affect one's use of the language.

กิริยาแสดงสภาพ is the Thai equivalent of the English term "stative verbs" -- which is a linguistics term used with languages in which the boundary between verb and adjective is not clearcut, and especially if no "copula" (or "to be" verb) is needed -- i.e. ผมหิว not *ผมเป็นหิว.

This is why I made the comment that if we view things from a traditional English grammar perspective, we might argue that Thai has a modifier สีเขียว, which is an adjective, as seen in sentences like รถสีเขียวจอดอยู่หน้าธนาคาร "The green car is parked in front of the bank", and a homonym สีเขียว, which is a verb, as seen in sentences like รถคันนี้สีเขียว "This car is green" (even though "มีสีเขียว" is also a possible construction).

But that's all academic! No matter how you conceptualize it, the end result is the same: the language you speak aloud.

I agree that it's completely misleading to make a statement like "Thai has no adjectives" because it absolutely does have words which function like English speakers expect adjectives to. It would be like saying "Thailand has no oranges" because they don't have Florida oranges.

[sabaijai]

I've also heard มากไป (mak pai) and just ไป (pai) on its own. Though this is one of the words I find is most often misunderstood/not understood when I use it, so I'm going to try เกินไป next time.

มากไป (maak pai) is มากเกินไป (maak koen pai) without the เกิน (koen), the way I see it anyway.

You can also use เกิน (koen) alone, as in ดีเกิน (dee koen).

กิริยาแสดงสภาพ is the Thai equivalent of the English term "stative verbs" -- which is a linguistics term used with languages in which the boundary between verb and adjective is not clearcut, and especially if no "copula" (or "to be" verb) is needed -- i.e. ผมหิว not *ผมเป็นหิว.

Yes. Although the common grammatical terms used in English (eg, 'adjective' and 'verb') may not apply to Thai grammar, in the field of syntax there are adequate concepts and jargon, such as 'stative verbs', to describe Thai grammar neatly and efficiently.

[mangkorn]

Khun Mangkorn,

Here is one perspective, this one from Ajarn Nawawan, "Thai Grammar", page 46:

"คำกริยาใช้ขยายได้ทั้งคำนามและคำกริยา

คำกริยาที่ใช้ขยายคำนามมักเป็นคำกริยาแสดงสภาพ . . . คำกริยาแสดงสภาพจะขยายความหมายของคำนามในด้านต่างๆ เป็นต้นว่า

๑. บอกขนาด

ตัวอย่าง ๑. คุณแม่เอาแหวนใส่ไว้ในกระเป๋าใบเล็ก

๒. มีกระถางใหญ่ตั้งอยู่มุมห้อง

๒. บอกสี

ตัวอย่าง ๑. เด็กๆ เปรียบเหมือนผ้าขาว

๒. เขาชอบสวมแว่นดำ"

[The discussion in Nawawan goes on for several pages.]

In this context Ajarn Nawawan clearly calls words like "small", "large", "white", and "black" as "verbs", or more properly, "verbs indicating condition" or what some might call "verbs showing attributes" or "attributive verbs". (Grammarians or grammartician or grammarticists can tell us the correct term of art.)

My reaction was to the notion that the Western grammatical characterization of a Thai term in a given context should drive how Thais think about their grammatical structures. The statement "Thai has no adjectives" is not a reflection on Thai, but a reflection of the Westerner making that statement.

There is another approach to this "verb" vs. "modifier" conundrum. That is to identify the "hidden verb" or as we might say in English grammar, the "implied word." In English the exhortation said by a mother to a child, "Eat!" is a complete sentence with certain implied words. The full sentence with implied words is "[My child] (noun of direct address), [please] (adverb) eat (imperative form of the verb) [your dinner] (predicate object)."

Following along in this vein, one could utilize the concept of an "implied verb". Take the sentence, "ห้องนี้ใหญ่เหลือเกิน" ("This room is really huge."). One could say that Thai in these cases uses an implied verb "to be" which is rarely stated, except for our known list of exceptions, between the words "นี้" ("this", a pronoun) and "ใหญ่" ("large", an adjective). That would take care of the lack of a verb and would allow the word "ใหญ่" to be relegated to a proper "modifier" characterization.

Let's take another perspective. In the example above, "มีกระถางใหญ่ตั้งอยู่มุมห้อง" ("There is a big pot sitting in the corner of the room"), if one wishes to consider "ใหญ่" as a verb, one could expand the translation to say, "There is a pot, which is big, sitting in the corner of the room." Thus, one would translate "ใหญ่" as "is big". This is, I believe, what Ajarn Nawawan might be saying.

And, Khun Mangkorn, I misspoke. I was not trying to distinguish in my earlier posting between "adjective" and "adverbs", on the one hand, and "modifiers" on the other hand. "Twelve of one, half-dozen of the other." Rather I was discussing the distinction between the notion of "verb", on the one hand, and that of "adjective"/"adverb"/"modifier", on the other. I agree with you; the former is a matter of translation.

Personally, I do not care very much about the entire issue. My concern is with effective and clear communications, not taxonomy (i.e., parts of speech) or archeology (i.e., etymology). I bear no grudges: flail away at me!

Why does this word "eat" keep munching its way into this topic and gobbling up the scenery?

I never said anything about "eat" - nor about any other verb, nor adverb.

I very clearly addressed words which modify nouns. If one wants to make the case that words that modify nouns should not be considered adjectives in Thai, then one is obligated to follow that same reasoning and argue that English has no adjectives. The real question is: what is that point of that argument? Whence this campaign to abolish the word "adjective?" That's like saying an elephant should not be called an elephant simply because you prefer another word for it.

[DavidHouston]

Sorry, Khun Mankorn. I used a bad example with the exhortative, "Eat". It was not a reflection on anything you raised. Let me substitute "Drink!" or "Be Merry!" as examples of English language sentences in which major parts of speech are not explicitly stated but are clearly understood. I clearly was not clear enought in my posting and I withdraw the entire set of comments.

[mangkorn]

Domnern-Sathienpong:

คุณศัพท์(N) : adjective

คุณนาม(N) : adjective

Lexitron:

คุณศัพท์(N) : adjective

Benjawan Poomsan Becker:

คุณศัพท์(N) : adjective

thai2english.com:

คุณศัพท์(N) : adjective

thai-language.com

คุณศัพท์(N) : adjective

The list goes on and on....

Edited September 27, 2008 by mangkorn

[Rikker]

Mangkorn, I'm with you on this one. From a typical layman's perspective, it's perfectly fine to say Thai has adjectives.

To be fair, the word คุณศัพท์ is a recent term, coined specifically as an equivalent to the English word 'adjective', and thus not an organic word.

It's a more recent way of looking at parts of speech for Thais, who have long been influenced by Indian grammarians, who similarly did not make this distinction.

The typical Thai term: วิเศษณ์ comes from Sanskrit viśeṣaṇa, meaning "qualifier" or "modifier":

Definition from Monier-Williams:

n. (in gram.) " differencer " , a word which particularizes or defines (another word which is called vi-śeṣya q.v.) , attribute , adjective , adverb , apposition , predicate Pa1n2. Tarkas. Sa1h. &c

And to play devil's advocate, from the Wikipedia article on 'adjective':

In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's referent.

The logic behind the statement "[language X] has no adjectives" is that most (or all) adjective-like words also function readily as adverbs, verbs, perhaps even nouns, depending on the language. Thus, the "main role" is not as an adjective. Insofar as this is true of Thai, it's possible to make this claim (although I'd say it's only appropriate in a technical or academic setting--it can be misleading when taken out of context).

Edited September 27, 2008 by Rikker

[meadish_sweetball]

I think it helps to free one's mind when one realizes that the grammatical categories we are used to, are only one way of approaching the analysis of a language.

It is perhaps not helpful for beginners, but for me as an intermediate learner who struggled to get through advanced texts, it was a bit of an eye-opener. The words I had thought would only function as noun-modifiers suddenly appeared to take on the role as active verbs.

Not sure why you react so strongly to it mangkorn. It's just terminology after all.