Keep hearing this, what does it mean

colloquial for "said that"

Kao bok wa ...

He/she said that...

Edited April 6, 201511 yr by manarak

Don't worry about it .. starts to get serious when they say "haam bok wa Forkinhades" (don't tell forkinhades)

Previous awnser was good of course.. just joking a bit

When i still lived in Holland the kids of my ex used to say "haam bok wa pa Rob" only when I came here I learned what it meant.

This is from a Thai song, spaces to separate words, color to reflect meaning: อย่า บอก ว่า ฉันรักเธอ 'don't (or never) say that I love you'

บอก bɔ̀ɔk = say

ว่า wâa = that

บอกว่า bɔ̀ɔk wâa said that

ว่า wâa can be defined differently depending on the context, but in this case it translates as 'that'. You can put it together with other words too, like think, know, see. For example:

คิดว่า kít wâa think that
รู้ว่า rúu wâa know that

เห็นว่าhĕn wâa see that

Putting simple words together makes a great way to expand your vocab.

wâa has an underlying meaning of 'to speak' and is used a such in Lao as in:

waa lao bo pen (I can't speak Lao).

In Thai, along with being used as a grammatical marker, like 'that' in English used to denote a new clause to be embedded within the sentence, it is used to note speaking your thoughts and conveying those thoughts to others. Up north it is common to hear:

waa yangai? (what do you think?...or...what do you say?)

But since it does carry grammatical information it is very difficult to translate as a single word. Try defining the word 'that' to a non-native English speaker.

wâa has an underlying meaning of 'to speak' and is used a such in Lao as in: waa lao bo pen (I can't speak Lao).In Thai, along with being used as a grammatical marker, like 'that' in English used to denote a new clause to be embedded within the sentence, it is used to note speaking your thoughts and conveying those thoughts to others. Up north it is common to hear:waa yangai? (what do you think?...or...what do you say?)But since it does carry grammatical information it is very difficult to translate as a single word. Try defining the word 'that' to a non-native English speaker.

When they use ว่า/waa in that context it's actually a shortened version of เว่าว่า/Wow-Waa which is the Laos equivalent of บอกว่า/Bok-Waa, and they're just removing the first part to make the sentence shorter.