คน And มนุษย์

[mikenyork]

I recently came across a passage in a book exhorting the readers (actually it's a transcription of a verbally presented sermon) to be more than just คน but to be มนุษย์. Silly me. I had always thought these to be synonyms from different levels of formality--analogous to ทาน and รับประทาน. Not so says my favorite informant. มนุษย์ has to do with ones humanity or spirituality. That set me to thinking of a way to express this idea in English. What would be all you-all's idea of how to render the following:

เราจะต้องดีกว่า สัตว์เดรัจฉาน เพราะว่าเป็นคน เราต้องกีกว่าคนเพราะว่าเราเป็นมนุษย์

[Groongthep]

My best attempt is:

We must be better than animals (beasts) because we are people. We must be better than people because we are human beings.

I'm assuming that กี in the second phrase is a misprint and is meant to be ดี.

Edited July 8, 2010 by Groongthep

[tgeezer]

I suspect that this sermon doesn't make sense.

We must be better than animals because we are people, better than people because we are human beings.

There is nothing wrong with speaking nonsense if the listener can be moved by it. Your favorite informant made sense of it and so can I or you, but there is no escaping the fact that คน มนุษย์ both mean the same thing.

The use of สัตว์ดรัจฉาน loads the mind to compare people to familiar animals, then the scene is set to make grades of people, คน ordinary and มนุษย์ civilised people.

Could the comparison have been สัตว์เดรัจฉาน, สัตว์ and คน do you think?

In answer to your question however, I am not much of a words-smith and have no thesaurus but maybe; domesticated animals, humanoid, civilised people.

[mikenyork]

My best attempt is:

We must be better than animals (beasts) because we are people. We must be better than people because we are human beings.

I'm assuming that กี in the second phrase is a misprint and is meant to be ดี.

Thank you and yes, it's a misprint. My Thai "typing" leaves a lot to be desired. Would you agree with a slight amendment? How about "we must be better than (merely) people"...

[bannork]

And ฝรัง don't even merit the word คน, somewhere between the beasts and people,well below มนุษย์ !

[mangkorn]

Is it ever possible to combine the two words, i.e., มนุษย์คน ?

Thai often embraces redundancies, but I wonder if it is allowed in this case?

[DavidHouston]

I do have a thesaurus: "คลังคำ" by ดร. นววรรณ พันธุเมธา. The word มนุษย์ is found on page 378. She says,

"มนุษย์ สัตว์ที่รู้จักใช้เหตุผล; สัตว์ที่มีจิตใจสูง [มักใช้ในความหมายว่าต่างกับสัตว์และพืช]"

And, she defines "คน" as "มนุษย์ [ใช้ทั่วไป]"

Thought y'all might appreciate this.

[mangkorn]

"มนุษย์ สัตว์ที่รู้จักใช้เหตุผล

Tragically, there is an abundance of empirical evidence that casts doubt upon that definition...

[SoftWater]

"มนุษย์ สัตว์ที่รู้จักใช้เหตุผล

Tragically, there is an abundance of empirical evidence that casts doubt upon that definition...

That definition takes its cue from the classical Greek (Aristotlelian) conception of 'human being as a rational animal'. Even the philosophers (not known for being overly concerned with empirical evidence) have abandoned it these days.

We digress...

Edited July 8, 2010 by SoftWater

[Groongthep]

And ฝรัง don't even merit the word คน, somewhere between the beasts and people,well below มนุษย์ !

Unfortunately yes, I too have on occasion heard the pronoun มัน and classifier ตัว used when referring to ฝรัง. Not often though, these words are usually used by angry bus and taxi drivers or shop owners and the like. Most polite Thai people wouldn't use them.

[mangkorn]

And ฝรัง don't even merit the word คน, somewhere between the beasts and people,well below มนุษย์ !

Unfortunately yes, I too have on occasion heard the pronoun มัน and classifier ตัว used when referring to ฝรัง. Not often though, these words are usually used by angry bus and taxi drivers or shop owners and the like. Most polite Thai people wouldn't use them.

Bannork was not referring to those words, but rather to the fact that a ฝรัง is not referred to as คน. The fact is that ฝรัง is noun, pronoun and classifier - in the real world. If you walk into a shop to buy something, you are never called a ลูกค้า - as any Thai person would be - but just a ฝรัง. If you walk down the sidewalk and trying to pass, someone will invariably say "move aside because a ฝรัง is trying to pass by." It is the most curious thing about Thailand, really. (There are a few million Thais living in Europe and North America; imagine what would happen if there if the shop clerks regularly said, "hey, there's an Asian here" - or other cruder racial characterisations, that would be truer equivalents of ฝรัง. Heavy lawsuits, no doubt...)

[Groongthep]

And ฝรัง don't even merit the word คน, somewhere between the beasts and people,well below มนุษย์ !

Unfortunately yes, I too have on occasion heard the pronoun มัน and classifier ตัว used when referring to ฝรัง. Not often though, these words are usually used by angry bus and taxi drivers or shop owners and the like. Most polite Thai people wouldn't use them.

Bannork was not referring to those words, but rather to the fact that a ฝรัง is not referred to as คน. The fact is that ฝรัง is noun, pronoun and classifier - in the real world. If you walk into a shop to buy something, you are never called a ลูกค้า - as any Thai person would be - but just a ฝรัง. If you walk down the sidewalk and trying to pass, someone will invariably say "move aside because a ฝรัง is trying to pass by." It is the most curious thing about Thailand, really. (There are a few million Thais living in Europe and North America; imagine what would happen if there if the shop clerks regularly said, "hey, there's an Asian here" - or other cruder racial characterisations, that would be truer equivalents of ฝรัง. Heavy lawsuits, no doubt...)

Agree this holds true in many situations,especially with strangers, but the Thai people who know me refer to me as คุณ xxxx and use the classifier คน when talking about me or my friends and family. I think Bannork might hang out with a lot of other bannork.

[Groongthep]

And ฝรัง don't even merit the word คน, somewhere between the beasts and people,well below มนุษย์ !

Unfortunately yes, I too have on occasion heard the pronoun มัน and classifier ตัว used when referring to ฝรัง. Not often though, these words are usually used by angry bus and taxi drivers or shop owners and the like. Most polite Thai people wouldn't use them.

Bannork was not referring to those words, but rather to the fact that a ฝรัง is not referred to as คน. The fact is that ฝรัง is noun, pronoun and classifier - in the real world. If you walk into a shop to buy something, you are never called a ลูกค้า - as any Thai person would be - but just a ฝรัง. If you walk down the sidewalk and trying to pass, someone will invariably say "move aside because a ฝรัง is trying to pass by." It is the most curious thing about Thailand, really. (There are a few million Thais living in Europe and North America; imagine what would happen if there if the shop clerks regularly said, "hey, there's an Asian here" - or other cruder racial characterisations, that would be truer equivalents of ฝรัง. Heavy lawsuits, no doubt...)

I know from over 20 years of being in Thailand that this is not true.

[SoftWater]

Bannork was not referring to those words, but rather to the fact that a ฝรัง is not referred to as คน. The fact is that ฝรัง is noun, pronoun and classifier - in the real world. If you walk into a shop to buy something, you are never called a ลูกค้า - as any Thai person would be - but just a ฝรัง. If you walk down the sidewalk and trying to pass, someone will invariably say "move aside because a ฝรัง is trying to pass by." It is the most curious thing about Thailand, really. (There are a few million Thais living in Europe and North America; imagine what would happen if there if the shop clerks regularly said, "hey, there's an Asian here" - or other cruder racial characterisations, that would be truer equivalents of ฝรัง. Heavy lawsuits, no doubt...)

Ahh, this old topic again. Is it really "a most curious thing about Thailand"?

It wasn't so long ago that if an Asian walked into a British shop they would be referred to as 'there's a paki waiting to be served' (regardless of where in Asia they might actually come from). Similarly, words like 'nigger' and 'chink' were common currency. Later - much later - when the referents of these words obtained a voice within those societies and could complain about their use, these terms became associated with overt racism. But prior to that, the 'racism' (and yes, I'm old enough to remember), was generally (I hasten to add the qualifier) no more overt than that of the Thais calling you all 'ฝรั่ง'.

Yes, there is an inherent racism in such terms, but what really drives their use is the convenience of labelling and categorising people according to some obvious physical feature of 'otherness' rather than an overt intention to slur or demean.

Though I once shared the indignation, my view about being called 'ฝรั่ง' after so many years is just to realise it's not about you, its not personal, and more importantly, unlike minority groups in the West, you will NEVER have a voice in Thailand. Get over it or move on.

Edited July 10, 2010 by SoftWater

[fabianfred]

The use of the word สัตว์เดรัจฉาน makes me think this is to do with the Buddhism, where this term is often used.

It teaches that we are extremely fortunate to e born in the มนุษย์ realm and it is only our keeping of the five precepts which seperates us from สัตว์เดรัจฉาน.... those who do not are little better than animals since the five precepts are the basic morals held in every age and society and religion.

[mikenyork]

We are drifting a bit off topic. But, in AE, there were always polite and impolite words for those of other races, even when they were pretty much totally disenfranchised. These words later went out of fashion, but they were not, in their day, epithets, as were (and are) nigger and chink. The general term was "people of color". The polite word for what is now an African American was either colored person or nigra. For a Chinese person, Chinaman. Any word's meaning can be made to vary by attitude and tone of voice. Farang, as generally used here does not imply that the speaker views farangs as being racially inferior (as did nigger and chink). As a matter of fact, it is frequently used in circumstances where we are being given preferential treatment because of our race (which happens quite a lot to me). But we are "other". And thus it shall ever be. And as Softwater said, one has to either live with it or move on.

[AjarnPasa]

I have attached a pic of a poem from my ป.6 textbook called เป็นมนุษย์หรืเป็นคน

At the foot of the poem as a moral or lesson to be gained from the poem is this:

คนที่ได้ชื่อว่าเป็นมนุษย์ คือคนที่มีจิตใจสูง จิตใจสะอาด ส่วนคนที่มีจิตใจสกปรก ก็เป็นได้แค่คน

It then goes on to say that we therefore have the choice to be a มนุษย์ or be just a คน

So I guess, according to this the difference between a มนุษย์ and a คน is that the former is pure of heart and the latter is not.

Perhaps in English one might say we are all human beings, it's just that some of us are better at being human.