"taking The Michael"

[SoftWater]

I need an idiom or common expression for what in English might be expressed as

'taking the mick out of x'

'taking the p*ss out of x'

'poking fun at x'

or

'ribbing x'

In my understanding, neither ล้อเล่น nor พูดเล่น (being more general terms for 'joking' or 'kidding' I believe) quite capture the same meaning as the above expressions.

BTW, I need something that is acceptable in, not formal, but at least polite company, not ภาษาตลาด!!

Thanks in advance.

[SimonN]

How about; หัวเราะเยาะ ?

[SoftWater]

Thanks Simon, that looks promising. Lexitron gives as an example

เธอแน่ใจว่าเขาหัวเราเยาะเธอ เธอจึงทำท่าปั้นปึ่งใส่

(NECTEC Lexitron 2 TH-EN)

[My translation: She was sure he was mocking her, so she acted indifferently.]

which fits the context I'm looking for, tho' I don't get the use of ใส่ at the end of the second clause (I always took ใส่ to be a preposition or verb, and can only make sense of it when it occurs between two other expressions. Any ideas how to read it here?).

Edited October 14, 2009 by SoftWater

[oevna]

Thanks Simon, that looks promising. Lexitron gives as an example

เธอแน่ใจว่าเขาหัวเราเยาะเธอ เธอจึงทำท่าปั้นปึ่งใส่

(NECTEC Lexitron 2 TH-EN)

[My translation: She was sure he was mocking her, so she acted indifferently.]

which fits the context I'm looking for, tho' I don't get the use of ใส่ at the end of the second clause (I always took ใส่ to be a preposition or verb, and can only make sense of it when it occurs between two other expressions. Any ideas how to read it here?).

I think your initial definition of ล้อเล่น is a pretty good one. These might also fit:

• ล้อเลียน
  
• หยอกล้อ
  

[Jay_Jay]

Normally in a situation where in English you'd use 'I'm just winding you up' or 'I'm just taking the Mickey out of ya' we'd probably just say แกล้ง

[SoftWater]

Normally in a situation where in English you'd use 'I'm just winding you up' or 'I'm just taking the Mickey out of ya' we'd probably just say แกล้ง

Thanks oevna and Jay_Jay.

ล้อเล่น and พูดเล่น do not capture the meaning I'm after, as I said in the OP.

Jay_Jay, Lexitron gives

Ex. พี่แกล้งน้องจนร้องไห้

[my translation: he teased her till she cried]

(forgive me if I ignore the complications of translating พี่ and น้อง and assigning nominal gender identities here)

This may or may not capture the meaning I'm after, depending on what พี่ was teasing น้อง about and how.

The meaning I'm after is a way of having a laugh at someone else's expense. You could think of Laurel and Hardy, perhaps, but the idea is that the victim is the butt of the joke, and will definitely not find it funny, even after the event they will utterly resent the 'joke'. It's the sort of thing you might see on Thai TV soaps (if you're unlucky enough to have watched any), where one of two female arch-enemies is telling some tale about the other that makes her look stupid in front of a man they are both competing for.

ล้อเล่น and พูดเล่น are not strong enough to capture that, or not at least without additional context: I don't know the word แกล้ง - does it always indicate that the teased person is being victimised? How about Simon's suggestion หัวเราะเยาะ (again, not an expression I'd come across before), which looks like it could carry the meaning I'm after.

Edited October 15, 2009 by SoftWater

[Rikker]

I agree with Jay_Jay. แกล้ง kind of covers the gamut, everything from a brother pulling his sister's pigtails, to somebody having a laugh at another's expense, to running another driver off the road because they cut you off. แกล้ง denotes the intent to victimize someone else (but ranging from playful to deadly).

There's also อำ, meaning to pull someone's leg, to play a trick on someone by misleading them. You can also put them together to make แกล้งอำ.

หัวเราะเยาะ I'd say means to mock. I think of pointing fingers and laughing. If you intentionally tripped someone and they fell in a puddle of mud, that's แกล้ง-ing them. Then if you and your friends stop and point and laugh, that's หัวเราะเยะ, เยาะเย้ย, etc. At least in my mind.

Anyone care to agree with / dispute that?

[SoftWater]

I agree with Jay_Jay. แกล้ง kind of covers the gamut, everything from a brother pulling his sister's pigtails, to somebody having a laugh at another's expense, to running another driver off the road because they cut you off. แกล้ง denotes the intent to victimize someone else (but ranging from playful to deadly).

There's also อำ, meaning to pull someone's leg, to play a trick on someone by misleading them. You can also put them together to make แกล้งอำ.

หัวเราะเยาะ I'd say means to mock. I think of pointing fingers and laughing. If you intentionally tripped someone and they fell in a puddle of mud, that's แกล้ง-ing them. Then if you and your friends stop and point and laugh, that's หัวเราะเยะ, เยาะเย้ย, etc. At least in my mind.

Anyone care to agree with / dispute that?

Thanks Rikker, lovely examples. I don't know what you do as a day job, but you would make a good teacher.

[mike_l]

There's also แซว , it's used very commonly to mean pretty much exactly the same as the phrases in the OP. It's not as wide-ranging in meaning as แกล้ง, so I think it's probably a better choice as it leaves less room for misunderstanding.

Edited October 15, 2009 by mike_l

[SoftWater]

There's also แซว , it's used very commonly to mean pretty much exactly the same as the phrases in the OP. It's not as wide-ranging in meaning as แกล้ง, so I think it's probably a better choice as it leaves less room for misunderstanding.

Thanks Mike, an interesting one.

แซว

[V] tease; kid; make fun of S.กระเซ้า, เย้าแหย่, ล้อเลียน

Ex. ตอนเย็น ผมจะชักชวนเพื่อนไปแซวผู้หญิง ที่ป้ายรถโดยสาร

(NECTEC Lexitron 2 TH-EN)

Not quite sure how to read this example to get the right meaning of แซว

My translation: "In the evening, I'll ask my friends to go tease girls at the bus stop."

Sounds a bit unnatural to me. Anybody else?

[SimonN]

There's also แซว , it's used very commonly to mean pretty much exactly the same as the phrases in the OP. It's not as wide-ranging in meaning as แกล้ง, so I think it's probably a better choice as it leaves less room for misunderstanding.

Thanks Mike, an interesting one.

แซว

[V] tease; kid; make fun of S.กระเซ้า, เย้าแหย่, ล้อเลียน

Ex. ตอนเย็น ผมจะชักชวนเพื่อนไปแซวผู้หญิง ที่ป้ายรถโดยสาร

(NECTEC Lexitron 2 TH-EN)

Not quite sure how to read this example to get the right meaning of แซว

My translation: "In the evening, I'll ask my friends to go tease girls at the bus stop."

Sounds a bit unnatural to me. Anybody else?

How about if we turn "ask" into "egg on"?

"In the evening, I'll egg on my friends to go tease the girls at the bus stop."

Still sounds a little unnatural though.

[Rikker]

I think the only thing that example sentence tells us is something about the person who wrote it. Weird!

แซว means to tease, but it's my sense that to แซว is relatively straightforward -- the person being teased understands it's teasing. Unlike อำ or แกล้ง, where it may not be realized (or revealed) until later that they were the target of a joke.

But then again, I'm American, so I don't have any native understanding of what it means to take the piss out of someone. I just hear it in British films and TV shows.