Etymology?

[mrkapom]

Hello all

I guess I have two questions.

1. Does anyone know if the words ขาว (as in สีขาว) and ข้าว are etymologically related?

When I first learned these words, I asked my Thai friend who was teaching me if they were related, and she scoffed as if it were a dumb question. No, of course they're not related. That has been the reaction every time I've asked since then, which has been several times, since despite the scoffing, nobody has known the etymology of these words (not that I necessarily expect them to, I have no idea what the etymology of "rice" is in English).

2. Does anyone have any idea about why the idea seems to sound so ridiculous to Thais?

If some asked me if the words "root" and "rudimentary" were related, I would have no idea, but seeing as how they sound a bit similar (root/rud-) and have some relation in meaning (roots being a source, or something at ground level, rudimentary being simple or the most basic level), I would say it was possible, even though I don't know.

Rice is white. Rice is a staple food in Thailand. ขาว and ข้าว are exactly the same apart from tone. It really doesn't seem that far-fetched to me that these words would be related, but reactions have been completely dismissive.

I would especially like to hear from Thai native speakers and or linguists. Thanks!

[Johpa]

I don't know the etymology of the two Thai words, but ask yourself, as a native speaker of English, what would your reaction be if a non-native speaker of English were to ask you whether the word pair pad:bad were etymologically related. They only differ from a single consonant being voiced or unvoiced. Look at tones as just such a phonetic feature, on par with the voicing of consonants.

[Richard W]

It's not a daft question. A distinguished linguist, Li Fang-Kuei, collected pairs of apparently related words where it looks as though word formation has done by switching the tone. The best known example, which he doesn't mention, is the demonstrative pronouns such as นี่ and demonstrative adjectives such as นี้.

Tones in Thai appear to derive from now-lost final consonants, though the best evidence of this is analogy with Vietnamese and Chinese, which seem to have developed tones at the same time, and have cognate words in non-tonal languages.

However these two words diverge as one goes back. The regularly developed form of ข้าว 'rice' is เข้า with a short vowel. Secondly, the initial consonants differ in White Tai and some Tai Lue, with the word for 'white' having /x/ (voiceless fricative) and the word for 'rice' having /kh/. Northern Thai spelling also reflects this difference. Northern Tai shows a related difference, with the 'white' word having a high consonant but the 'rice' word having a low consonant in Northern Tai (i.e. Northern Zhuang etc.) dialects.

[bifftastic]

If you ask a linguist, or someone with knowledge and understanding of how Thai languages have evolved, you will likely get an interesting answer (see above).

If you expect someone to know the etymology of words in a language that they just happen to speak through accident of birth....less likely.

[Aforek]

Rice is white ? it becomes white after two transformations to follow the taste of people, no reason that ขาว and ข้าว to be etymologically related; are we sure that rice thai people eat in ancient times , at the beginning of thai language, what white ?

[Aforek]

Rice is white ? it becomes white after two transformations to follow the taste of people, no reason that ขาว and ข้าว to be etymologically related; are we sure that rice thai people eat in ancient times , at the beginning of thai language, what white ?

Sorry for typing errors ... I meant, maybe, in ancient times, they ate brown rice