Origins Of Some Pronouns

[Richard W]

I was giving ลื้อ and คุณ as examples of Thai pronouns taken from other languages, when I found gaps in the argument.

Ratchabandit gives the origin of ลื้อ as 'Chinese ลื่', but what dialect is this from and how is the word written? The best stab I can make is Teochew, but from what I can find that would make the original form เล่, written 你.

For คุณ the origin appears to be Pali/Sanskrit guNa 'string, quality, merit', but I don't understand the syntax of คุณ + name given the original meaning. What is the origin of this? I can imagine some sort of compound with นาย and นาง, but is that what happened?

[yoot]

你 ( ni2) is the standard Chinese writing for every dialects means ' You'. For Teochew dialect, it's pronounced as 'ลื่อ' which is the origin of the word 'ลื้อ' you mentioned.

คุณ means merit, goodness, value, virtue, favour, benefit.

คุณ+ name given the original meaning is used in the purpose of giving honour to the person we state the name. In the past, คุณ was only used with people who were in the higher ranks, but later it's adapted to use with everyone except members of the royal family who are in the higher ranks than "หม่อมหลวง"

Edited January 17, 2006 by yoot