K-K Paired Words

[rak sa_ngop]

These are a (small) selection of what I call K-K paired words that I have come across in my reading and listening of Thai. I have not trawled through a dictionary looking for them, but there are plenty more in there.

Personally my brain only instantly recognises 2 or 3 of these words.

How many do you know???

กลบเกลื่อน

เคลือบแคลง

เกลี้ยกล่อม

เกลี้ยงเกลา

กลาดเกลื่น

เกรี้ยวกราด

ขมขื่น

ข่มขืน

กลัดกลุ้ม

เกลื่อนกลาด

กลมกลืน

กลบคลุม

เกรียวกราว

คลี่คลาย

เคร่งขรึม

ขึงขัง

Apologies in advance if there are any typos in the list.

[LazyYogi]

I don't recognize many. But you should really split this up into 2 lists: g-g words and kh-kh words.

[rak sa_ngop]

I don't recognize many. But you should really split this up into 2 lists: g-g words and kh-kh words.

Personaly I find it very difficult to distinguish ก ค sounds especially in fast spoken Thai. To my ear the ก sound is closer to kh than it is to g, so I transliterate it as k

I find it funny that a lot of farangs who think they speak good Thai, say the ก sound with a hard g, something I have never heard a Thai say. The sound is an inbetween sound between g and kh, and although some people may hear it as g, I find it sounds closer to kh. That's my personal theory.

Edited August 12, 2010 by rak sa_ngop

[Peppy]

Personaly I find it very difficult to distinguish ก ค sounds especially in fast spoken Thai. To my ear the ก  sound is closer to kh than it is to g, so I transliterate it as k  

I find it funny that a lot of farangs who think they speak good Thai, say the ก sound with a hard g, something I have never heard a Thai say. The  sound is an inbetween sound between g and kh, and although some people may hear it as g, I find it sounds closer to kh. That's my personal theory.

Technically you're right--ก is closer to kh than it is to g, in that it's just a kh but without the puff of air. Many English speakers (myself included), though, think it sounds more like an English g. But Lazy Yogi is right too--they are two different sounds.

[Briggsy]

From a learning point of view you may well be going about this the wrong way.

There is ample evidence from studies that learning vocabulary in groups of words and phrases related to a topic is far more likely to lead to retention than learning vocabulary in groups of words and phrases that have similar sounds. Indeed it may well be counter-productive. Thus words like สบู่ should be learned with ห้องน้ำ and ชักโครก and not สบาย and สะบัด

In addition, many of the repeater words you have listed are fairly obscure.

[rak sa_ngop]

From a learning point of view you may well be going about this the wrong way.

There is ample evidence from studies that learning vocabulary in groups of words and phrases related to a topic is far more likely to lead to retention than learning vocabulary in groups of words and phrases that have similar sounds. Indeed it may well be counter-productive. Thus words like สบู่ should be learned with ห้องน้ำ and ชักโครก and not สบาย and สะบัด

In addition, many of the repeater words you have listed are fairly obscure.

Yes you are probably right. I have given up learning words from lists as they have no context and therefore do not stick in the head.

This is why I try and read a lot, (Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes and of course Scooby-Doo). But the problem is that I am forever delving into the dictionary, and these paired words just keep cropping up again and again. I assume they are not commonly used in conversation, but certainly I hear some of them often on the VOA newscasts I listen to.

The more you learn a language the more difficult it seems to get!

[LazyYogi]

I don't recognize many. But you should really split this up into 2 lists: g-g words and kh-kh words.

Personaly I find it very difficult to distinguish ก ค sounds especially in fast spoken Thai. To my ear the ก sound is closer to kh than it is to g, so I transliterate it as k

I find it funny that a lot of farangs who think they speak good Thai, say the ก sound with a hard g, something I have never heard a Thai say. The sound is an inbetween sound between g and kh, and although some people may hear it as g, I find it sounds closer to kh. That's my personal theory.

k and kh certainly make sense. Only problem with k is when people pronounce it as kh and get eggs when they wanted chicken.

[rak sa_ngop]

Personaly I find it very difficult to distinguish ก ค sounds especially in fast spoken Thai. To my ear the ก  sound is closer to kh than it is to g, so I transliterate it as k  

I find it funny that a lot of farangs who think they speak good Thai, say the ก sound with a hard g, something I have never heard a Thai say. The  sound is an inbetween sound between g and kh, and although some people may hear it as g, I find it sounds closer to kh. That's my personal theory.

Technically you're right--ก is closer to kh than it is to g, in that it's just a kh but without the puff of air. Many English speakers (myself included), though, think it sounds more like an English g. But Lazy Yogi is right too--they are two different sounds.

I think that if you mentally transliterate ก as a ' g ', you will tend to speak it out as an english g i.e chicken comes out like the english word: ' guy '

Whereas if you think of it as an unaspirated kh, you will tend to speak it like the english k , which of course is generally aspirated. So chicken and egg start to sound very similar.

I find when listening to Thais speak I am sometimes not sure if they are talking about chickens or eggs, so I will stick to thinking of ก as an unaspirated k, and try and emulate the Thai sound.

[klons]

Here is a phrase with a G-K-K in context. I'm not sure what is driving one crazy, but I found this phrase to be a bit of a tongue twister. I'm more of a mush mouth than most.

เขา ไม่ได้ ชนะ การแข่งขัน กระโดด แต่ เขา ชนะ การแข่งขัน วิ่งแข่ง

[Hardie]

I know as many as this dictionary- http://www.thai-language.com/dict- three, so we're in some dense wilderness here. Most important is probably the one that means 'rape'. Assuming that the second part of a doublet is an emphasizer, then i could probably guess another two or three, but i wouldn't use them doubled.