Looged into msn via hotmail, hardly use it anyways, someone I have no idea who (old acquaintance?) suddenly I get a pop-up that says "อยู่ไหน". I can't even make out their username but I copied their comment to here. In google translate, it says "far" as an english equivalent, which doesn't make sense. Just wondering, thanks.

short for คุณอยู่ที่ไหน meaning where are you?

In 'chat sa-peak', "M-talk' or even colloquial Thai, it means

"Where are you?"

ไหน (nai^R) is a question word meaning "where", and อยู่ (yuu^L) is the word (which in this case) means “to reside” or to be somewhere.

So the phrase อยู่ไหน means kinda sort of like; Where are you or where do you live? ..

Hope it helped. ..

Sorry, I had to make the Thai bigger, I'm old already. ..

How about

อ ยู่ไหน Which Address

or drop the first letter and it could be

ยู่ไหน Which You That could be someone using Thai Alphabet trying to say it in chat lingo

อยู่ไหน Is not just used to ask where a person is. But to ask where any noun is.

Thanks much for all the answers. That certainly makes sense as a messenger pop up greeting. I can't help but wonder how long it took you guys to have such decent thai reading abilities, and can it be done on your own or should be through a class.

I can't speak for the others but I've managed to pick it up by myself. I struggle sometimes but once you've got the basics it starts to embed itself into your brain.

At first, pretty much like when you learn your first language, you find your self sounding out words with the individual letters but after a while you can see whole words.

Like the word ไหน which has a silent 'ห' at first you might have to 'spell' it out to your self but fairly quickly you can just see the whole word and it 'reads itself' in your head like English does.

As for how long it takes, that all depends on how much you study and how your brain works. For me, after about four months of daily self-study (a couple of hours), and some repetition exercises, I could read simple words. Now I can still read simple words but I can read quite a few more.

It's very worth while in my opinion, and gives you a good feeling to be able to read at even a basic level. It also gives you the advantage of being able to read a word without knowing what it means, then you can look it up and increase your vocabulary.

Give it a try. The good people of this language forum have been very helpful to me, and others.