Farang Or Falang ?

[Cassandra]

No need to get your guard up, I was really just being curious as I have not seen you participate in the Thai language forum. If you feel I am wasting your time you can of course refrain from answering.

I have to confess to being amused by this exchange, particularly the exquisitely polite skewering of someone who obviously doesn't know what he is talking about by someone who obviously does.Kamanga presumably knows he has been found out but still comes back, not very effectively, to preserve a semblance of his lost dignity.

My advice to Kamanga: never reinforce failure.

[Kananga]

No need to get your guard up, I was really just being curious as I have not seen you participate in the Thai language forum. If you feel I am wasting your time you can of course refrain from answering.

My apologies.

falang aloi lorn nueng loi an thank you very mahk.

[Kananga]

No need to get your guard up, I was really just being curious as I have not seen you participate in the Thai language forum. If you feel I am wasting your time you can of course refrain from answering.

I have to confess to being amused by this exchange, particularly the exquisitely polite skewering of someone who obviously doesn't know what he is talking about by someone who obviously does.Kamanga presumably knows he has been found out but still comes back, not very effectively, to preserve a semblance of his lost dignity.

My advice to Kamanga: never reinforce failure.

It's a shame some people are so unpleasant. My advice to cassandra: If you don't have anything nice to say, dont say anything at all.

[meadish_sweetball]

Well done, and sorry about being a bit suspicious.

(The classifier should be 'luuk' for guava fruit though, not 'an' - but that is a vocabulary error and not a grammatical mistake.)

[Kananga]

Well done, and sorry about being a bit suspicious.

(The classifier should be 'luuk' for guava fruit though, not 'an' - but that is a vocabulary error and not a grammatical mistake.)

No worries! Sorry for being a bit defensive and thanks for the lesson.

All we need now is cassandra's apology to preserve a semblance of lost dignity.

Edited July 5, 2006 by Kananga

[Cassandra]

No need to get your guard up, I was really just being curious as I have not seen you participate in the Thai language forum. If you feel I am wasting your time you can of course refrain from answering.

I have to confess to being amused by this exchange, particularly the exquisitely polite skewering of someone who obviously doesn't know what he is talking about by someone who obviously does.Kamanga presumably knows he has been found out but still comes back, not very effectively, to preserve a semblance of his lost dignity.

My advice to Kamanga: never reinforce failure.

It's a shame some people are so unpleasant. My advice to cassandra: If you don't have anything nice to say, dont say anything at all.

That's not a very nice thing to say.You just received a well deserved mild ribbing.No big deal.Would you like me to recomend some Thai language text books for beginners?

[Kananga]

No need to get your guard up, I was really just being curious as I have not seen you participate in the Thai language forum. If you feel I am wasting your time you can of course refrain from answering.

I have to confess to being amused by this exchange, particularly the exquisitely polite skewering of someone who obviously doesn't know what he is talking about by someone who obviously does.Kamanga presumably knows he has been found out but still comes back, not very effectively, to preserve a semblance of his lost dignity.

My advice to Kamanga: never reinforce failure.

It's a shame some people are so unpleasant. My advice to cassandra: If you don't have anything nice to say, dont say anything at all.

That's not a very nice thing to say.You just received a well deserved mild ribbing.No big deal.Would you like me to recomend some Thai language text books for beginners?

Ha! Well, I'll give you points for trying to come back and salvage some dignity. (you still failed though). Next time wait a while before coming out with such dribble in future. Even better would not to post such ass kissing crap in the first place. It will save you such embarrasment.

[rio666uk]

my wife is Issan - she pronounces farrang as fa-lang... as do her thai friends, one of which is southern...

as much as i would like to pronounce R's as my old thong-lor language teacher wished... i just cannot roll my R'sssss, no matter how hard i try - just end up spitting everywhere and looking a tw@t

so if R = L for the wife, then its good enough for me too

PS: Kananga take no notice of it

[meemiathai]

Not sure if people understand what I am saying,

Does being able to vibrate the tongue mean being able to pronounce the 'r' sound? I have never met any thai person who can't pronounce 'farang', it's just that they always like to pronounce as 'falang'.

Especially the isaan people, there are so many 'r' sounds in their music. No?

[Boon Mee]

There's no tongue vibration involved w/pronouncing Farang - Farang.

Reason a lot of Thai's say Falang has to do with pure laziness and a bit of disinclination to pronounce words with their tongues to the back of the mouth.

Ask a Thai to say the word 'squirrel' sometime to illustrate this point.

[meadish_sweetball]

When pronouncing a Thai ร , the tip of the tongue is right on/behind the alveolar ridge, and flaps once or several times against or slightly behind it.

There is nothing going on in the back of the mouth... That would be another type of 'r'.

[Boon Mee]

When pronouncing a Thai ร , the tip of the tongue is right on/behind the alveolar ridge, and flaps once or several times against or slightly behind it.

There is nothing going on in the back of the mouth... That would be another type of 'r'.

Kow jai - I defer to the linguist.

With the 'back of the mouth' - think you're on about words like 'err' used among friends to concur a point.

Edited July 5, 2006 by Boon Mee

[meadish_sweetball]

Yep, I see what you're saying Boon Mee.

That is the 'r' sound the Chinese use, as well. It is very distinct in Mandarin Chinese, in fact I think the word for one in Mandarin Chinese sounds very close to such an American 'err...'.

So you may hear it when talking to first/second generation Chinese in Thai.

You can also hear Thais using that 'r' in Thai pop songs, where the singer is 'ner farang' (trying to emulate a farang (American) accent) - some examples are the singer in Silly Fools on later albums, Thee Chaiyadej in some songs... etc.

[AmeriThai]

Reason a lot of Thai's say Falang has to do with pure laziness and a bit of disinclination to pronounce words with their tongues to the back of the mouth.

I've heard a lot of Thais describe it as laziness as well. What it gets down to for a number of people though is that it becomes a habit of speaking that way. As such, it becomes engrained into the speech for many people. Same kind of thing as with "khop" and "khrap".

[Richard W]

The Lao language in Laos, which is very closely related to Thai, does not have an 'r' sound at all, not even in the formal language.

Which, I have read, indicates that the 'r' sound is a later addition to the Thai language.

Which goes to show that you can't trust everything you read!

Basically an 'r' sound was original, but it tended to be rather aspirated. In many Tai languages, only this aspiration survives. SW Tai languages lacking /r/ use /h/ instead in native words, e.g. Lao/Isaan/Northern Thai เฮา 'we'. An attempt was made to preserve /r/ in learned loans, with varying degrees of success. Lao thus came to have two letters corresponding to Thai ro ruea - ho tam / ho hya / ho hyan for native words and lo loot (accidentally mislabelled lo ling by Unicode, so now receiving the formal alias 'LAO LETTER RO') for Sanskrit / Pali words.

Standard Thai did not undergo the change of 'r' to 'h' (though 'hr' simplified to 'h' spelt with ห) and Thai words beginning with ho nok huuk are therefore a miscellany of (i) dialect words showing the change, e.g. ฮัก 'love', (ii) expressive words ('ha!' and the like) and (iii) foreign loans, mostly Chinese and English.

[Tarragona]

Which goes to show that you can't trust everything you read!

True - interesting post. Thank you.

[bannork]

my wife is Issan - she pronounces farrang as fa-lang... as do her thai friends, one of which is southern...

as much as i would like to pronounce R's as my old thong-lor language teacher wished... i just cannot roll my R'sssss, no matter how hard i try - just end up spitting everywhere and looking a tw@t

so if R = L for the wife, then its good enough for me too

PS: Kananga take no notice of it

A lot of Issanites pronounce farang as 'bukseedar', the r is never rolled.

[Boon Mee]

my wife is Issan - she pronounces farrang as fa-lang... as do her thai friends, one of which is southern...

as much as i would like to pronounce R's as my old thong-lor language teacher wished... i just cannot roll my R'sssss, no matter how hard i try - just end up spitting everywhere and looking a tw@t

so if R = L for the wife, then its good enough for me too

PS: Kananga take no notice of it

A lot of Issanites pronounce farang as 'bukseedar', the r is never rolled.

bannork~

Is 'bukseedar' a derivitive of some Lao or Cambodian dialect?

[Tingnongnoi]

Bukseedar is Isarn dialect meaning Farang or Guava fruit

[sbk]

my wife is Issan - she pronounces farrang as fa-lang... as do her thai friends, one of which is southern...

as much as i would like to pronounce R's as my old thong-lor language teacher wished... i just cannot roll my R'sssss, no matter how hard i try - just end up spitting everywhere and looking a tw@t

so if R = L for the wife, then its good enough for me too

PS: Kananga take no notice of it

Rio, perhaps your wife's friend has been out of the south a long time. Everyone I have ever met or listened to in the south says "r" not "l'. Only exceptions are not natives.

In fact, it is a common laughing point amongst the locals that bangkokians and northerners cannot say "r".

[jdinasia]

my wife is Issan - she pronounces farrang as fa-lang... as do her thai friends, one of which is southern...

as much as i would like to pronounce R's as my old thong-lor language teacher wished... i just cannot roll my R'sssss, no matter how hard i try - just end up spitting everywhere and looking a tw@t

so if R = L for the wife, then its good enough for me too

PS: Kananga take no notice of it

A lot of Issanites pronounce farang as 'bukseedar', the r is never rolled.

That MIGHT be because there is no R sound as a final stop (tua sakot) in Thai R at the end is pronounced N

[meadish_sweetball]

Spurious... bannok is English and uses final position 'r' to indicate long vowel. There is no 'r' whatsoever in the spelling of บักสีดา, so there is nothing there to roll.

[bannork]

Spurious... bannok is English and uses final position 'r' to indicate long vowel. There is no 'r' whatsoever in the spelling of บักสีดา, so there is nothing there to roll.

Yes, I was only having a bit of fun there, I can't think of any word in English ending in r where the r is even prononuced.

[meadish_sweetball]

...except, of course, if you are Irish or North American - and if it links with another word starting with a vowel sound (the so called intrusive 'r').