Meaning of มันขี้ (man khi)

[nakriian]

มันขี้ [mān˧ kʰîː˥˩]

ມັນຂີ້ [mán˥ kʰ᷆ıː˧˩]

(For those who can’t read IPA), it sounds like someone is saying the English word “monkey” (this is just to give you an idea and I am not saying it sounds exactly like this word).


I heard some Thai teenagers use this phrase while playing a video football game at a game kiosk in the airport. I heard it more than one time, so I got a pretty good idea of the tone and the spelling (but I could be wrong, so don't assume my spelling or phonetic interpretation is correct). This is a slang phrase and I wasn’t able to find it in a Thai dictionary (probably because it's slang). I have a general idea as to what it means (possibly), but I want to hear from native speakers on this.


If you are a ไทย or ລາວ speaker, then please give your interpretation on this phrase. Please no Google, copy, paste on this one. Answer with your own knowledge. There are no wrong answers because you are just telling me what you think it means to you.


I did try asking asking some locals, but because it contains profanity, they gave me the usual “มันขี้ไม่มีความหมาย” (“man khi” has no meaning) (this is code for it has meaning, but I am not telling you because it’s awkward to explain. This is kind of like when you ask a Thai about the phrase ฝรั่งขี้นก (bird sh%$ foreigner) and they play dumb like they never heard of this phrase before).


I do have my own interpretation of the phrase “man khi”, but I don’t want to type it here because I don’t want to unnecessarily influence the answers. I want to get interpretations from others first.

[Mole]

Despite being so confident about what you heard, I belive you heard it wrong.

The term is probably "มันเขี้ยว". It has a variety of meanings. Although I know what it means and when it's used, I don't actually know how to explain or translate it into English.

Also, I'm pretty sure that any Thai will know what ฝรั่งขี้นก means. (Provided you've actually said it in a comprehensible way.) The reason you got a response like that is most likely that people were unable to understand your pronunciation of ฝรั่งขี้นก.

Also, it's not a "code blah blah blah". What they told you was straightforward. I'm gonna tell you too that "มันขี้" has no meaning whatsoever.

PS, I'm a native Thai.

I'd also like to point out to you that although most characters in the Thai and Lao scripts correspond to each other. You can't actually really use one script to write in the other language the way you did.

It's kinda like trying to show off that you know Cyrillic by writing English words in Cyrillic. That's more or less what you did with writing a Thai word/slang with Lao characters...

Edited January 29, 2014 by Mole

[kriswillems]

Well, I guess you know what ขี้ means. มัน is the pronoun used for animals.

The dog shits: หมาขี้ or มันขี้

I don't see how this can be related to a game unless there are creatures in the game that "drop" something.

Or maybe you heard just some part, f.i. มันขี้เกียจ

Edited January 29, 2014 by kriswillems

[nakriian]

Despite being so confident about what you heard, I belive you heard it wrong.

The term is probably "มันเขี้ยว". It has a variety of meanings. Although I know what it means and when it's used, I don't actually know how to explain or translate it into English.

Also, I'm pretty sure that any Thai will know what ฝรั่งขี้นก means. (Provided you've actually said it in a comprehensible way.) The reason you got a response like that is most likely that people were unable to understand your pronunciation of ฝรั่งขี้นก.

Also, it's not a "code blah blah blah". What they told you was straightforward. I'm gonna tell you too that "มันขี้" has no meaning whatsoever.

PS, I'm a native Thai.

I'd also like to point out to you that although most characters in the Thai and Lao scripts correspond to each other. You can't actually really use one script to write in the other language the way you did.

It's kinda like trying to show off that you know Cyrillic by writing English words in Cyrillic. That's more or less what you did with writing a Thai word/slang with Lao characters...

Mole, thank you for your reply. Actually, I heard it correctly and it is มันขี้. I was able to find a native Thai speaker that explained the meaning to me. มันขี้ is an expletive used to express emotion or sentiment. Gamers will often use it during the course of a game.

Also, it is spelled “believe”, not “belive”. The high front unrounded vowel is represented with the diphthong /ie/ in the word “believe”.

You said, “most characters in the Thai and Lao scripts correspond to each other”. This is actually false. Only some of the Thai characters have corresponding Lao characters. The Lao alphabet was reformed/standardized in 1970’s and many of the Lao letters were removed. The Lao alphabet is a true alphabet, whereas Thai is an abugida.

I am literate in Lao and ມັນຂີ້ is the correct spelling. The accompanying phonetic notation indicates the correct tones.

Edited January 29, 2014 by nakriian

[Mole]

I know it's spelled believe. It was a spelling mistake!

Hmm OK, so is it a Thai slang or Lao slang? If it's a Thai slang, why write it with Lao characters?

According to wikipedia, vowels in Lao script can not stand alone, but must have a accompany consonant. This is an abugida in my book.

In the Thai wikipedia, all the Lao characters are listed with their Thai counterpart. I was the impression that many letters had exactly same pronunciation as in Thai.

Also, seems like you obviously already knew very well the answer to your question...

Why didn't you just tell the whole story in the first post, instead writing it like it's some kind of Jeopardy game or something...

Edited January 30, 2014 by Mole

[starrdog]

Isn't it ฝรั่งขี้งก? Or maybe that's what it should be and ฝรั่งขี้นก is used as a play on words because they're both white?

[Mole]

no, it's นก as in bird excrement

It used to only mean greedy farangs with not so much money, but still look down on anything Thai and behaves arrogantly as if they're better than Thais. Also because of their lack of money, they tends to be cheapskates and will haggle to death or only buy the cheapest of cheapest of fake goods.

But now, the meaning has more evolved to mean like a backpacker tourist on a shoestring budget.

[Mole]

Just want to add that ironically, the original meaning of ฝรั่งขี้นก, nowadays, people just calls them ฝรั่งขี้งก instead.

[Tomtomtom69]

Despite being so confident about what you heard, I belive you heard it wrong.

The term is probably "มันเขี้ยว". It has a variety of meanings. Although I know what it means and when it's used, I don't actually know how to explain or translate it into English.

Also, I'm pretty sure that any Thai will know what ฝรั่งขี้นก means. (Provided you've actually said it in a comprehensible way.) The reason you got a response like that is most likely that people were unable to understand your pronunciation of ฝรั่งขี้นก.

Also, it's not a "code blah blah blah". What they told you was straightforward. I'm gonna tell you too that "มันขี้" has no meaning whatsoever.

PS, I'm a native Thai.

I'd also like to point out to you that although most characters in the Thai and Lao scripts correspond to each other. You can't actually really use one script to write in the other language the way you did.

It's kinda like trying to show off that you know Cyrillic by writing English words in Cyrillic. That's more or less what you did with writing a Thai word/slang with Lao characters...

Mole, thank you for your reply. Actually, I heard it correctly and it is มันขี้. I was able to find a native Thai speaker that explained the meaning to me. มันขี้ is an expletive used to express emotion or sentiment. Gamers will often use it during the course of a game.

Also, it is spelled “believe”, not “belive”. The high front unrounded vowel is represented with the diphthong /ie/ in the word “believe”.

You said, “most characters in the Thai and Lao scripts correspond to each other”. This is actually false. Only some of the Thai characters have corresponding Lao characters. The Lao alphabet was reformed/standardized in 1970’s and many of the Lao letters were removed. The Lao alphabet is a true alphabet, whereas Thai is an abugida.

I am literate in Lao and ມັນຂີ້ is the correct spelling. The accompanying phonetic notation indicates the correct tones.

I am also literate in both Thai and Lao and can confirm that some Thai and Lao words can be written in each others languages using their equivalent consonants/vowels, diphthongs, but others can't be. It seems that this example can be.

[Mole]

Yes, I know that too, but it's only meaningful if the word happen to be the same in Thai and Lao language.

Otherwise you could potentially just write any Thai word with Lao script and vice versa, but it wouldn't really mean anything in the other language.

[nakriian]

Mole, thank you for the follow up reply.

An abugida is a writing system where certain implied vowels are unwritten. Let's look at Thai, which is an abugida. In the example สบายดี, the vowel for the first syllable is not written. However, a person reading it knows to add a low front unrounded vowel and pronounce it as [sà˩·bāːɪ˧ dı̄ː˧].

Now, let’s look at Lao, which uses a true alphabet. All vowel sounds are marked with diacritics when written according the Lao PDR's propagated and promoted spelling standard. In the example ສະບາຍດີ, all vowels have been indicated as they should be in a true alphabet.

[kriswillems]

could you have heard:

มันขี้น

ขี้น is Isaan, for something for เอาขึ้น

It might be used in the context of a football game, maybe in the meaning of picking up the ball. Or maybe some message pops up.

Edited January 30, 2014 by kriswillems

[Mole]

I even asked about this on facebook and nobody has even ever heard of this expression. Must be something used in very limited group of people.

Perhaps it's not even a Thai slang, but Lao, since OP wrote it in Lao.

[Richard W]

According to wikipedia, vowels in Lao script can not stand alone, but must have a accompany consonant. This is an abugida in my book.

An abugida is a writing system where certain implied vowels are unwritten. Let's look at Thai, which is an abugida. In the example สบายดี, the vowel for the first syllable is not written. However, a person reading it knows to add a low front unrounded vowel and pronounce it as [sà˩·bāːɪ˧ dı̄ː˧].

A far better example is นก [H]nok. The short vowel /o/ is never written in Thai; it is always implicit. That is what makes Thai an abugida. Peter Daniels claims to have invented the term as a category of writing system, and he requires the implicit vowel. If สบาย makes Thai an abugida, then doesn't prism make English an abugida for those who lack syllabic nasals?

There's a very similar term to 'abugida', 'alphasyllabary', which is characterised by the vowels being subordinate to the consonants. All abugidas are alphasyllabaries, but a few alphasyllabaries are not abugidas, e.g. Lao and the Thai script writing system for Pali that marks all the vowels. I find 'alphasyllabary' a more useful term; whether a particular writing system using an Indic script is an abugida or not is less useful to know.