What's This?

[Tywais]

I often read the Thai subtitles when watching English language movies to improve my reading speed. Occasionally I see this ก็ preceeding a phrase or sentence. My guess it is something like a pause as when a speaker is collecting their thoughts similar to someone saying "well" eg: "Well, I will think about it" before making the statement. Any comments?

[Bobcat]

Yes, that is correct - roughly equivalent to "well", "um" "er" (for the French) and the likes. It is a bad habit that seems to be used often by Thai teenagers when responding to questions.

[Tywais]

Yes, that is correct - roughly equivalent to "well", "um" "er" (for the French) and the likes.  It is a bad habit that seems to be used often by Thai teenagers when responding to questions.

Thanks, what I thought. I often see errors in the Thai subtitles that try to approximate the English terms (sometimes quite funny) and also it seems quite informal and loose in the speech like using the above term. Seems like half the time they can't get the numbers right either. Seems to be some lazy translators but then that has to be an incredibly boring job.

[katana]

GAW ก็ can indeed mean 'well,...' when your pausing to think of a reply.

I have also seen more meanings, depending on the context and where it appears in the sentence. Sethaputra has a small section on GAW ก็, and describes it's various uses eg to express probability/possibilty etc.

[meadish_sweetball]

What appears to be number discrepancies can be due to translation from Imperial measurements into Metric.

[Tywais]

What appears to be number discrepancies can be due to translation from Imperial measurements into Metric.

I can understand that but usually it is in a variety of contexts from a persons age to a street address. Often the error would be missing a digit or transposing numbers. Could also be if the English spoken language has strong accents they may have problems with. In a way it's good, keeps me on my toes and let's me know my reading skills are improving.

Used to be I could only get the first word maybe two, now I can pretty much read all the sentences before it switches (depending on how fast the dialogue is going). Good learning tool. Reminds me of school when learning speed reading. They would flash words/sentences at faster and faster rates to improve your eye skills.

[meadish_sweetball]

Then you are already way past me in reading speed. I guess I should watch more TV and spend less time on TV...

[Johpa]

I often read the Thai subtitles when watching English language movies to improve my reading speed.  Occasionally I see this ก็ preceeding a phrase or sentence.  My guess it is something like a pause as when a speaker is collecting their thoughts similar to someone saying "well" eg: "Well, I will think about it" before making the statement.  Any comments?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I was taught by my Thai professor, he from the old school of Haas, that ก็ was perhaps the most difficult word in Thai to learn how to use correctly ( for my English students the most difficult word was always "a") and certainly the most difficult word to explain. It was the only word which he could not explain linguistically to his own satisfaction. But he emphasized that it was a word with several grammatical functions including denoting the boundary between clauses and sometimes denoting the boundary between topic and comment. He used to note that Thai was a topic oriented language as opposed to English which is a subject oriented language. Thus one often reads in Thai sentences such as "As for the man in the car...." which establishes a topic as opposed to a subject. So this fine man, with a PhD in Thai linguistics was left to telling us to just listen to its occurence and through some sort of osmosis we would start using it without being aware of it and he was correct yet again.

[Neeranam]

"Gaw"

hypothetical meaning - pom gaw bpai tha mee peuan - I'll go if i have someone to go with.

Still - sa at reu mai sa at gaw ja sai - whether clean or not, I'll still wear it.

Also - tae tee nee gaw mee - but they have them here too.

subsequently - proong nee gaw bpai laew - by tomorrow, i'll be gone

consequently - bpuat hua gaw gin yaa si - if you have a headache you should take medicine.

contradictory reply - this is expensive - gaw mai paeng thao rai - no, it's not that expensive

uncertainty - how many are there? -gaw praman hok jet - about 6 or 7.

so - gaw kwam pit kong khrai - so, whose fault was it?

and be done with it - roi baht gaw laew gan - let's make it 100 baht and be done with it.

these are just some uses I can think of and some from "Thai reference grammar" by Higbie and Thinsan.

[skylar]

and however - yang rai gor tdam

[Jack Jones]

It also makes your responses more polite and understated (also from Thai reference grammar).

That book has a specific list of phrases that use ก็ , a very useful chapter

[gburns57au]

In most cases the word GAW can be replaced by the english word "after"