Let's Learn One Word A Day.

[clearmirror]

How about 'moom'- which is- 'a corner'

[phuketsub]

ถนนลูกรัง (thanon look rang) = dirt road.

ถนนลาดยาง (thanon laad yaang) = paved road

Useful when you live in the sticks...

[phuketsub]

How about 'moom'- which is- 'a corner'

This reminds me of how much I loved the Thai word for spider (แมงมุม, maeng moom, or literally ' corner bug) when I first learned it.

My daughter and I have a lot of fun playing around with the difference in the languages, especially when the Thai word is somewhat more 'direct' in derivation than the English equivalent.

For example, when we are speaking English we don't use the word 'nostrils' but rather say 'nose holes', which is the overly direct translation of the Thai word รูจมูก.

You can have a lot of fun with it and it's useful for teaching purposes as well.

I wonder if any other forum members have done this...

[slerickson]

Sounds good!

[Sawan Chan 7]

Sorry -- this thread is for experts -- no use to us beginners

Beginners can learn one word, come on.

How about pen - pakkaa

[bearpolar]

Sorry -- this thread is for experts -- no use to us beginners

Beginners can learn one word, come on.

How about pen - pakkaa

ปากกา

bpaak gaa though

[StoneVisa]

Actually, there is no right or wrong way to transliterate or romanise Thai words. There are quite a number of systems used to transliterate Thai language, if you have noticed. The best method that ensures everyone has a common understanding on how to transliterate one language to another language is by using IPA because its symbols are meant to represent the sound of languages. Looking at the way you romanize thai words, I guess you are using Benjawan Poomsan Becker's transliteration system?

[bearpolar]

G and K are too very very distinct souds.

Doesnt matter the way you translate it, its never K its a G sound.

Does Gay and Kay sound similar to you? they really don't

when you're uncertain about a word you can always look at http://www.thai-language.com/

Edited December 8, 2015 by bearpolar

[StoneVisa]

In the context of using symbols to represent sounds in English, I agree that k and g are distinct sounds.

However, we are crossing into the reality of another language, and as we know, transliteration are not perfect. If you were to look at the transliteration used by RTGS or ISO 11940-2 (an ISO standard for a simplified transcription of Thai language into Latin characters.), you will notice that as an initial consonant:

ก is transliterated as k, whereas ข ฃ ค ฅ ฆ is transliterated as kh.

This is the standard used by many books to transliterate Thai language, even though their way of transliteration comes into conflict with what we have learned from the English language system.

If you want to accelerate your vocabulary learning rate, you can look up the antonyms（if applicable) of the words that you are learning, and you would have easily doubled your number of words learned per day. For example: Love/Hate:รัก/เกลียด Like/Dislike: ชอบไม่ชอบ etc.

[bearpolar]

I don't really care what the common transliteration system does. ก sounds no where near k and any book using K to symbolize ก is completely off-the chart retarded.

You can record a million thais, the only thais that are gonna pronounce ก anywhere close to K are those with a speech impediment unless its a final consonant

KH and K are the same sound to an english speaker, so these books are, once again, completely retardfed. Khite Kite same sound Gite Kite very different.

You can ask any thai you meet to write you down what ก sounds like and i would bet anything that almost every single thai will use the letter G

edit: theres a few exception in the language where go gai is pronounce as a K but those are exceptions ie: kathoey that should be grateuy

Edited December 8, 2015 by bearpolar

[jimmy630]

It took me about a month to learn the Thai alphabet from a book. After 2 years of one to one lessons with a Thai teacher.

I am convinced that anyone over 40 needs to learn the written language to achieve good spoken Thai.

[Lampang2]

On 12/8/2015 at 0:55 PM, bearpolar said:

I don't really care what the common transliteration system does. ก sounds no where near k and any book using K to symbolize ก is completely off-the chart retarded.

You can record a million thais, the only thais that are gonna pronounce ก anywhere close to K are those with a speech impediment unless its a final consonant

KH and K are the same sound to an english speaker, so these books are, once again, completely retardfed. Khite Kite same sound Gite Kite very different.

You can ask any thai you meet to write you down what ก sounds like and i would bet anything that almost every single thai will use the letter G

edit: theres a few exception in the language where go gai is pronounce as a K but those are exceptions ie: kathoey that should be grateuy

 

กะ-เทย

 

not a trace of R in ga-teuy

not in the spelling or the sound

 

many postings from you being plain confusing , off the chart

 

 

 

[Baanguru]

Anyone who wants to travel to Thailand will not have any trouble meeting locals there who speak English but of course not everyone is really good in speaking the English language. In that case, knowing few Thai words and phrases can go places as locals will appreciate you more because of your attempt to learn their language. 

[Johnniey]

On 8/27/2016 at 7:14 AM, Baanguru said:

Anyone who wants to travel to Thailand will not have any trouble meeting locals there who speak English but of course not everyone is really good in speaking the English language. In that case, knowing few Thai words and phrases can go places as locals will appreciate you more because of your attempt to learn their language. 

And anyone who comes to live here should always learn the language as it could literally save their lives.

 

Great thread, surprised more members don't want to learn.

 

Here's my word for the day.

 

Mourning - การไว้ทุกข์  gaan wai took

[The manic]

I like the idea of lists of words that have the same tone. 

[MarkFinn]

On 8.12.2015 at 1:55 PM, bearpolar said:

I don't really care what the common transliteration system does. ก sounds no where near k and any book using K to symbolize ก is completely off-the chart retarded.

You can record a million thais, the only thais that are gonna pronounce ก anywhere close to K are those with a speech impediment unless its a final consonant

KH and K are the same sound to an english speaker, so these books are, once again, completely retardfed. Khite Kite same sound Gite Kite very different.

You can ask any thai you meet to write you down what ก sounds like and i would bet anything that almost every single thai will use the letter G

edit: theres a few exception in the language where go gai is pronounce as a K but those are exceptions ie: kathoey that should be grateuy

These are problems of the English language, I think most languages have ก, in my language it's K exactly. KH in my language is  ข , G is the G in English and it doesn't exist in that Thai alone. I could write  กระเทย  in my language as it is said in thai "Ka thöi" or "Kra thöi"  as it is written in formal Thai. Except for tones, any Finnish person would read it correctly as said in Thai even if they knew nothing about Thai language. The wowels are highly problematic in English as well "A as in car, bad, or hate" What is that? Who constructed the English writing system was probably very very drunk. :D  I think English needs a new writing system where letters stand for a sound. And while doing it, switch to metric system as well. :D

Edited December 18, 2016 by MarkFinn
typo

[DavidHouston]

Consider the world's languages along a spectrum,  one end of which is "highly phonetic" (where the language's orthography closely represents the sounds produced) and the other end of which represents "non-phonetic" (where the orthography bears no relationship to the sounds produced). Near or at the "highly phonetic" end are languages like Spanish and Russian; at the other end is Chinese. (Japanese has elements of both.)

 

Thai would be close to the "highly phonetic" end of  the spectrum because most of its words closely follow the spelling;  a number of words, however, are pronounced differently than the spelling (สามารถ, เขา "คั้ว", ไหม "มั้ย", กับ "กะ"). And, whereas Thai orthography fairly well indicates pronunciation, the opposite is not true. That is, a particular pronunciation may have several writing alternatives (ทำ, ธรรม, ธัม; สาร, ศาล). Additionally, foreign words brought into Thai are rarely transcribed into Thai with the tone indicators which Thais add in vocalizing the foreign words.  But, still, for  a very large percentage of Thai words, "what you see is what you say".

 

English, on the other hand, is a basket case. On the phonetic spectrum English is somewhere in the middle.  Many of our words are what you see is what you say. But, for many words, the spelling is a scant indication of how they should be pronounced. As Mark Finn stated above, our great weakness is our vowels. Even words like "cat" could be "แคด" or "คัด" or even "คอด" (each ignoring the indicated tone). The reason, of course, is our large number of dialects and sub-dialects which are spoken around the world, some of which are mutually unintelligible. (Have  you ever listen to to persons from India speak English to each other in an airport or two Caribbean taxi drivers speaking English to each other at a cruise ship?)

 

One might ask, "How come the gurus of the English language are unable or are unwilling to regularize their language?" I believe the answer is simple; in fact there are two answers: First is stubborn tribalism; no more need be said on this fact. Second is the fact that we English speakers believe that maintaining our ability to read fast is more important than the difficulty non-native speakers (or our children for that matter) in learning our language. We speed-read because we recognize words with a certain spelling; were "through" be changed to "thru" or "mutually" be changed to "mew-choo-lee", we would be stymied and certain tribes would be offended.

So, English is particularly unsuited for Thai transcription. Suggestion? Put on your big boy pants and learn to read and pronounce Thai using its own native orthography.  

 

 

Edited December 19, 2016 by DavidHouston

[bannork]

Quite right David. Learning to read Thai is not difficult and it helps one's pronunciation immeasurably.

Back to learning one word a day

สำออย  to whine, grumble ,moan 

and then we can have ทำสำออย to spoil or pamper

[MarkFinn]

David you have good points, but I beg to differ that English would be in the middle of the phonetic spectrum, I think it is more at the complicated end. Of course the Chinese writing system is way farther that way, but that is more of an exception among languages. One more difficulty with English language that I didn't mention yet is the actual vowel sounds. Not just the fact that there's no clear correspondence between writing/sound of them, but the vowel sounds are quite complex and unusual. In Finnish language we have all the vowel sounds of Thai and they can be combined freely. Finnish and Thai are basically 100% the same, except that we make some combinations that Thais don't do and vice versa. 
Many vowel sounds of the English language go somewhere in between or off the Thai and Finnish vowels, and there are quite a few "sort of start with this vowel sound and then switch to kinda this sound" vowels when explained to a Thai or a Finn, going to the direction of imitating a style rather than saying out loud the letters. Combined with the fact that sometimes the letters you see represent this sound, are at other times showing for a different sound. 

Why I'm such a คนขี้บ่น about this is that this really makes the pocket Thai-English dictionaries pretty useless for non-native English speakers and they seem to be quite complicated and easily erroneous for English speakers as well. When I first started with Thai I was in big trouble and soon found out that the only way to go is to learn the Thai alphabet.
Anyway, the English language has the great advantage that grammar is fairly simple. With Finnish language it's logical, but still, a bit of a nightmare for any foreign learner, very very complex... We do miss some letters as well,for example we don't differentiate between v and w, but it's easy to explain in a dictionary using v and w.

 

Anyway I do think that teaching the international phonetic alphabet in schools might be good idea, but the "letters" in the system are quite peculiar though. I think teaching about the differences of the languages in the world would be good idea in schools around the world, one way or another. It would be more relevant than historical anecdotes which seem to be the backbone of school education after mathematics and mother tongue.

 

Oh, and one more thing. I think a cat is a  แค็ต :-)

[DavidHouston]

Ah! Would that we were all Finns! We recognize that Finland has one of the greatest systems of  education in the whole world. We watch with envy. 

 

Given your interest in language, perhaps you could create or update a Thai-Finish-Thai dictionary and put in online.  Does one exist already?

[MarkFinn]

3 hours ago, DavidHouston said:

Ah! Would that we were all Finns! We recognize that Finland has one of the greatest systems of  education in the whole world. We watch with envy. 

 

Given your interest in language, perhaps you could create or update a Thai-Finish-Thai dictionary and put in online.  Does one exist already?

Don't know about the education system, maybe it's just the cold and the dark. Kids might as well stay home and do homework since the outdoors don't appeal too much on winter evenings. :D
There's a basic Finnish-Thai dictionary book that I know of. I think there's nothing on the internet. Finland is kind of small market for these kind of things... But if I would end up with lots of free time that would be something interesting to do. 
But I think I need to study Thai more before that, my vocabulary is still very limited and I lack understanding of the grammar. Next step is reading/translating short articles. I have done it, but I need to start doing this more often and on regular basis to get the vocabulary hammered in my head. I realized watching educational videos, learning bits and pieces here and there and chatting on the phone some won't do it. I need to immerse myself way more in the language to speed up the process. And maybe one day I will read a Thai novel... Seems distant though...
I think you have quite good skills in Thai, are you self-learned? There's no formal teaching available here, only some beginner courses.

[Scott]

Troll posts remove.   Continue and face a suspension.  

[Piifo]

This is a said we have in common in French and Thai, which literally means goose feet but refers to the wrinkles on the side of the eyes.

ตีนกา

 

 

 

 

 

[MisterBKK]

Let's separate out the useless transliteration posts from the very good learn-one-word-per-day thread. Can the people interested in transliteration, start a new thread? Then maybe start one on religion :-)

 

Mr_BKK

 

[Lampang2]

Can buy rice

 

Homm Mali, but here just says Mali

Homm means smell good btw

A variant called jaow

Meaning Jasmin rice (before boiled)

Kaow suaj (same but boiled ready to eat)

Puzzling as you would think they misspelled kaow (rice)

But it should be kaow tjaow Mali

(dry before boiled)

 

Can be bought by liter or kilo.

Kilo is obviously to complicated to spell out so just says LO โล

 

 

Skickat från min SM-N910F via Tapatalk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[KhunBENQ]

Never noticed that they sell it by liter? ( ลิตร )

Worth checking next time at the market.

[Lampang2]

Never noticed that they sell it by liter? ( ลิตร )

Worth checking next time at the market.

 

You can analyze the density at home to find out which is the best deal.

 

 

จั๊ว = intensely, glaringly (white

มะลิ​ jasmine

 

:-)

 

Skickat från min SM-N910F via Tapatalk

 

 

 

[bradleyc93]

On 21.4.2017 at 10:24 AM, Lampang2 said:

 

You can analyze the density at home to find out which is the best deal.

 

 

จั๊ว = intensely, glaringly (white

มะลิ jasmine

 

:-)

 

Skickat från min SM-N910F via Tapatalk

 

 

 

Jasmine the name?

[Lampang2]

35 minutes ago, bradleyc93 said:

Jasmine the name?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasmine_rice

 

[DavidHouston]

Here's a new one for me "หลุมอากาศ" - "air pocket" or turbulence. From today's newspaper  คม-ชัด-ลึก :

"สายการบินรัสเซีย Aeroflot ระบุว่า มีผู้โดยสารหลายรายที่ได้รับบาดเจ็บจากเหตุการณ์ตกหลุมอากาศอย่างรุนแรง ก่อนถึงกรุงเทพราว 40 นาที ส่วนใหญ่ไม่คาดเข็มขัดนิรภัย"

 

The Russian airline "Aeroflot" announced today that most of the passengers who were injured as a result of the violent air pocket [or turbulence] encountered 40 minutes before reaching Bangkok were not wearing seat belts.