Same/different, classifiers (beginner)

[thailandsgreat]

Hi

Can I please ask two beginners' questions?

A.

How would I express that I bought two things in the same/different places?

Here are some tries from me.

A กับ B ผม ซื้อ ที่ แห่ง ไม่ เดียว

or

A กับ B ผม ซื้อ ที่ แห่ง ต่างกัน

I bought A and B in different places.

ผม ซื้อ A ที่ ร้าน หนึ่ง

ผม ซื้อ B ที่ ร้าน อีกหนึ่ง

or

ผม ซื้อ B ที่ ร้าน อื่น

B.

I am not sure about classsifiers either.

In Paiboon dictionary the clf. for ร้าน is ร้าน.

So "two shops" should be ร้าน สอง ร้าน . But when the clf. is the same as the noun, maybe you just skip it and say "ร้าน สอง"? Or can you omit the noun and only use the clf. "สอง ร้าน"?

I sometimes see the clf. อัน . It seems to have a wide usage. In a dictionary I find "อีก อัน หนึ่ง" - "another one". When I am not sure which clf. to use, can I then use อัน and still sound "reasonably" ok? Like:

ร้าน หนึ่ง อัน - one shop

ร้าน สอง อัน - two shops

กระดาษ สอง อัน - two papers (if I forgot the most appropriate clf. for paper)

Thanks for any pointers on this.

[CaptHaddock]

A. I would say

ซื้อAและBที่ร้านต่างๆ

B. When the classifier is the same as the noun you may omit the noun, but not the classifier. So, either คนสองคน or สองคน is correct. In fact, you may sometimes omit the noun, but not the classifier, even if they are not the same when the noun is clearly implied. See the following example.

อัน is indeed widely used. For instance, the classifier for หนังสือ is เล่ม, but you might her a Thai with a book in her hand ask the clerk: อันนี้เท่าไหร่

I am guessing that you might get away with อัน instead of แผ่น with กระดาษ, but it wouldn't work with ร้าน. อัน is for small things.

The key to learning the use of classifiers is to be very clear about the words that call for a classifier and here I am not talking about the nouns themselves, but the quantification words. When to use a classifier is to some extent more important than getting the classifier exactly correct, a point on which the Thais are tolerant. So, these words require the classifier:

นี้

นั้น

ใหม่

numbers

เยอะ เยอะแยะ

น้อย

คนละ แต่ละ ทีละ

เดียว

ต่าง

I am sure that I forgetting some, but the list is not that long, fortunately for us.

[tgeezer]

For the sake of discussion, why not consider this?

I bought them in different shops.

You would be saying this to explain; if you had bought a computer and a cabbage you wouldn't be saying it.

'Different shops' when someone believes 'same shop': ร้านไม่ใช่ที่เดียวกัน . ไม่ใช่ร้านเดียวกัน .

A simple statement:

ผม-ซื้อ-นังสือ-สองเล่มนี้-ที่ร้านร้าน

ที่ is the preposition ร้าน is the place where the verb took place, not an adverb, repeating the place ร้าน ๆ makes the noun plural so presumably the verb has to happen more than once.

ร้านสองร้าน, I agree says 'two shops' but if the objects are A and B ร้านร้าน means two shops also.

Let's see if that is acceptable!

[CaptHaddock]

For the sake of discussion, why not consider this?

I bought them in different shops.

You would be saying this to explain; if you had bought a computer and a cabbage you wouldn't be saying it.

'Different shops' when someone believes 'same shop': ร้านไม่ใช่ที่เดียวกัน . ไม่ใช่ร้านเดียวกัน .

A simple statement:

ผม-ซื้อ-นังสือ-สองเล่มนี้-ที่ร้านร้าน

ที่ is the preposition ร้าน is the place where the verb took place, not an adverb, repeating the place ร้าน ๆ makes the noun plural so presumably the verb has to happen more than once.

ร้านสองร้าน, I agree says 'two shops' but if the objects are A and B ร้านร้าน means two shops also.

Let's see if that is acceptable!

Not acceptable. Only a very few nouns can be made plural by repeating them. For instance, เด็กๆ พ่อๆ แม่ๆ. There may be a few other that don't come to mind now, but there are very few in all. ร้าน is definitely not one of them. You could say ซื้อสองเล่มนี้ที่หลายร้าน.

[tgeezer]

I was reluctant to say หลาย because It means มาก the opposite to น้อย.

What about นานาร้าน that means ร้านต่าง ๆ ?

Or just say สองร้าน which answers the question on classifiers nicely.

I have it mind that repeating nouns makes them plural, I must have got it from somewhere, I will research it.

[CaptHaddock]

I was reluctant to say หลาย because It means มาก the opposite to น้อย.

What about นานาร้าน that means ร้านต่าง ๆ ?

Or just say สองร้าน which answers the question on classifiers nicely.

I have it mind that repeating nouns makes them plural, I must have got it from somewhere, I will research it.

หลาย means "several." I find it used with countable things rather than aggregates for which you will see มาก. Don't know about นานาร้าน. Haven't encountered it in that usage. The only examples I have of นานา are นานาชาติ and นานาชนิด. I think its use is much more restricted than หลาย.

No need to research repeating nouns as plural. I discussed this very issue with my teacher recently. What I explained is correct 100%. The only other examples that I could come up with in addition to those above is:

เพื่อนๆ ป้าๆ ลุงๆ ลูกๆ

This is now either the complete list of such nouns or very close to it.

[thailandsgreat]

A. I would say

ซื้อAและBที่ร้านต่างๆ

B. When the classifier is the same as the noun you may omit the noun, but not the classifier. So, either คนสองคน or สองคน is correct. In fact, you may sometimes omit the noun, but not the classifier, even if they are not the same when the noun is clearly implied. See the following example.

อัน is indeed widely used. For instance, the classifier for หนังสือ is เล่ม, but you might her a Thai with a book in her hand ask the clerk: อันนี้เท่าไหร่

I am guessing that you might get away with อัน instead of แผ่น with กระดาษ, but it wouldn't work with ร้าน. อัน is for small things.

The key to learning the use of classifiers is to be very clear about the words that call for a classifier and here I am not talking about the nouns themselves, but the quantification words. When to use a classifier is to some extent more important than getting the classifier exactly correct, a point on which the Thais are tolerant. So, these words require the classifier:

นี้

นั้น

ใหม่

numbers

เยอะ เยอะแยะ

น้อย

คนละ แต่ละ ทีละ

เดียว

ต่าง

I am sure that I forgetting some, but the list is not that long, fortunately for us.

Thanks, I appreciate. It gives me a start. Much I didn't know.

So "new books are expensive" is

หนังสือเล่มใหม่ที่มีราคาแพง

http://i.imgur.com/63tV5Sy.png

Why they need a ที่ in the sentence I dont understand. Google also translates "a beautiful day" to วันที่สวยงาม.

I know ที่ can be a relative pronoun, but I dont understand why they use it here.

... "a different book/another book" ought to be

หนังสือ เล่ม ต่าง(-กัน)

etc.

Many words to express time, like วัน, seem to be used mostly as classifiers (and not nouns) since I think they usually appear only once, after the quantifier. When I pay one more night in a guesthouse I say

จ่าย ค่า ห้อง อีก 1 วัน (or คืน) ครับ

But I don't know if it is correct.

But another example from a dictionary seems to have the clf. before the quantifier, instead!

อีก อัน หนึ่ง - "another one"

In spoken Thai the classifier is also often dropped as I understand.

http://i.imgur.com/G6mNw0H.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Cu3h9Ax.jpg

The second example is from the Lonely Planet Phrasebook. (LP is mostly correct but here I think they mix up plane and plate. Usually a good sign though - the passage was probably written by native Thai speaker

This is all pretty new to me so I have to digest it a little. I have just memorized words as I travel and I lack hearing the language. My listening comprehension is very poor so far.

Thanks for your help.

[CaptHaddock]

So "new books are expensive" is
หนังสือเล่มใหม่ที่มีราคาแพง

http://i.imgur.com/63tV5Sy.png

Why they need a ที่ in the sentence I dont understand. Google also translates "a beautiful day" to วันที่สวยงาม.
I know ที่ can be a relative pronoun, but I dont understand why they use it here.

I would translate that sentence as "new books which are expensive." ที่ is the relative pronoun.

... "a different book/another book" ought to be
หนังสือ เล่ม ต่าง(-กัน)
etc.

หนังสีือเล่มอื่น หรือ หนังสืออีกหนึ่งเล่ม

Many words to express time, like วัน, seem to be used mostly as classifiers (and not nouns) since I think they usually appear only once, after the quantifier. When I pay one more night in a guesthouse I say
จ่าย ค่า ห้อง อีก 1 วัน (or คืน) ครับ
But I don't know if it is correct.

วัน is not a classifier. It's a unit of time. Like baht is a unit of currency, not a classifier.

But another example from a dictionary seems to have the clf. before the quantifier, instead!
อีก อัน หนึ่ง - "another one"

This is a special case of the numeral หนึ่ง which can appear following the classifier. Only หนึ่ง acts this way, but it can appear before the classifier also.

In spoken Thai the classifier is also often dropped as I understand.
http://i.imgur.com/G6mNw0H.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Cu3h9Ax.jpg
The second example is from the Lonely Planet Phrasebook. (LP is mostly correct but here I think they mix up plane and plate. Usually a good sign though - the passage was probably written by native Thai speaker

Dropping the classifier is an intrusion into contemporary Thai from English usage. Don't think it is yet accepted as correct, but you do hear it.

This is all pretty new to me so I have to digest it a little. I have just memorized words as I travel and I lack hearing the language. My listening comprehension is very poor so far.

You need to be studying with a competent Thai teacher from whom you can get clarification for the many questions of this kind that will naturally arise. You will not succeed at becoming fluent by teaching yourself from books although many of us started that way.

Listening comprehension is the most difficult skill to develop. If you keep studying you will get to a point where you can express yourself fairly well and Thais will understand you, but yet understanding them will still be hit or miss. Even with only a few hundred words in our vocabulary we can usually find a way to express our meaning, if not natural or idiomatic to Thai. But the Thai speaker may choose from his vocabulary of maybe 20,000 words for which your meager vocabulary is not sufficient to understand them. Add to that the fact that Thais are not used to speaking their language with foreigners. It doesn't occur to them to speak more slowly and clearly while limiting themselves to the kind of formal language foreigners would learn in a school. They may not even know how to speak more slowly if we ask them to. So, they don't help us out in that way.

Therefore we have to expect that adequate comprehension takes longer to develop.

[thailandsgreat]

So "new books are expensive" is

หนังสือเล่มใหม่ที่มีราคาแพง

http://i.imgur.com/63tV5Sy.png

Why they need a ที่ in the sentence I dont understand. Google also translates "a beautiful day" to วันที่สวยงาม.

I know ที่ can be a relative pronoun, but I dont understand why they use it here.

I would translate that sentence as "new books which are expensive." ที่ is the relative pronoun.

... "a different book/another book" ought to be

หนังสือ เล่ม ต่าง(-กัน)

etc.

หนังสีือเล่มอื่น หรือ หนังสืออีกหนึ่งเล่ม

Many words to express time, like วัน, seem to be used mostly as classifiers (and not nouns) since I think they usually appear only once, after the quantifier. When I pay one more night in a guesthouse I say

จ่าย ค่า ห้อง อีก 1 วัน (or คืน) ครับ

But I don't know if it is correct.

วัน is not a classifier. It's a unit of time. Like baht is a unit of currency, not a classifier.

But another example from a dictionary seems to have the clf. before the quantifier, instead!

อีก อัน หนึ่ง - "another one"

This is a special case of the numeral หนึ่ง which can appear following the classifier. Only หนึ่ง acts this way, but it can appear before the classifier also.

In spoken Thai the classifier is also often dropped as I understand.

http://i.imgur.com/G6mNw0H.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Cu3h9Ax.jpg

The second example is from the Lonely Planet Phrasebook. (LP is mostly correct but here I think they mix up plane and plate. Usually a good sign though - the passage was probably written by native Thai speaker

Dropping the classifier is an intrusion into contemporary Thai from English usage. Don't think it is yet accepted as correct, but you do hear it.

This is all pretty new to me so I have to digest it a little. I have just memorized words as I travel and I lack hearing the language. My listening comprehension is very poor so far.

You need to be studying with a competent Thai teacher from whom you can get clarification for the many questions of this kind that will naturally arise. You will not succeed at becoming fluent by teaching yourself from books although many of us started that way.

Listening comprehension is the most difficult skill to develop. If you keep studying you will get to a point where you can express yourself fairly well and Thais will understand you, but yet understanding them will still be hit or miss. Even with only a few hundred words in our vocabulary we can usually find a way to express our meaning, if not natural or idiomatic to Thai. But the Thai speaker may choose from his vocabulary of maybe 20,000 words for which your meager vocabulary is not sufficient to understand them. Add to that the fact that Thais are not used to speaking their language with foreigners. It doesn't occur to them to speak more slowly and clearly while limiting themselves to the kind of formal language foreigners would learn in a school. They may not even know how to speak more slowly if we ask them to. So, they don't help us out in that way.

Therefore we have to expect that adequate comprehension takes longer to develop.

OK, I missed the มี. Then I understand "... ที่มี ..." - " ... which have ...".

The order of things seem "flexible" to me. Maybe because I just dont know the rules.

noun-clf-adj

หนังสือ-เล่ม-ใหม่

noun-adj-quantifier-clf

หลายคนครับ ผมได้ เพื่อน-ใหม่-หลาย-คน อ๋อ ผมพบคนไทยคนหนึ่ง เขาบอกว่าเป็นเพื่อนเก่าคุณ

"A lot of people. I made a lot of new friends. Oh, I ran into a Thai. He said he was an old friend of yours."

http://i.imgur.com/EXIo2uH.png

I agree fully with what you say about self studies of an Asian language. Since my listening is so poor I can't practice much, and when I get the time I must try to find a teacher.

Thanks for your help.

[CaptHaddock]

The order of things seem "flexible" to me. Maybe because I just dont know the rules.

noun-clf-adj
หนังสือ-เล่ม-ใหม่

noun-adj-quantifier-clf
หลายคนครับ ผมได้ เพื่อน-ใหม่-หลาย-คน อ๋อ ผมพบคนไทยคนหนึ่ง เขาบอกว่าเป็นเพื่อนเก่าคุณ
"A lot of people. I made a lot of new friends. Oh, I ran into a Thai. He said he was an old friend of yours."
http://i.imgur.com/EXIo2uH.png

Yes, there is flexibility in the word order.

เก่า means "old" in the sense of "aged," not in the sense of "for a long time." I would say เชาบอกว่าเป็นเพื่อนสนิดคุณมานานๆแล้ว Mistakes like this do not inspire confidence in the text you are using.

You need a good teacher, among other reasons, to teach you how to say especially the tones, but also the long and short vowels, etc. and then correct you when you get it wrong again and again. While you are learning the tones you will pay more attention to the way the Thais pronounce them which will help both your pronunciation and your comprehension. I think it is all but impossible for a Westerner to learn the tones correctly without a competent Thai teacher.

[thailandsgreat]

The order of things seem "flexible" to me. Maybe because I just dont know the rules.

noun-clf-adj

หนังสือ-เล่ม-ใหม่

noun-adj-quantifier-clf

หลายคนครับ ผมได้ เพื่อน-ใหม่-หลาย-คน อ๋อ ผมพบคนไทยคนหนึ่ง เขาบอกว่าเป็นเพื่อนเก่าคุณ

"A lot of people. I made a lot of new friends. Oh, I ran into a Thai. He said he was an old friend of yours."

http://i.imgur.com/EXIo2uH.png

Yes, there is flexibility in the word order.

เก่า means "old" in the sense of "aged," not in the sense of "for a long time." I would say เชาบอกว่าเป็นเพื่อนสนิดคุณมานานๆแล้ว Mistakes like this do not inspire confidence in the text you are using.

You need a good teacher, among other reasons, to teach you how to say especially the tones, but also the long and short vowels, etc. and then correct you when you get it wrong again and again. While you are learning the tones you will pay more attention to the way the Thais pronounce them which will help both your pronunciation and your comprehension. I think it is all but impossible for a Westerner to learn the tones correctly without a competent Thai teacher.

I will not get many likes for this but I write it anyway

After 7 years of Chinese studies in China I am completely fluent.

I say tones are not so important. I am poor with tones but almost all Westerners are. Just say the words as well as you can. (A very rough guess is that there are more consonants in Thai than Chinese making tones even less important.)

If you just read the phonetic Thai out of a dictionary (and maybe listen to audio) there is a good chance a Thai speaker will understand what you say.

Even though I have an accent in Chinese a person from Beijing will understand me 100% but he will understand 0% if a Chinese speaks Hong Kong dialect. So the Chinese are pragmatic and consider the foreigners' accent just one of many.

So I am a little irreverent to the tonal complexity of at least Chinese. Naturally it would be better to speak perfectly, one should try, but one has to prioritize when learning an Asian language.

I will not push this question. For some reason people get irritated when I say it. (Even others than the teachers earning money on, and showing how complex Chinese is by, stalling students by emphasizing tones. Tones are really hard for Westerners, that I admit, I have seen in Chinese schools. Vietnamese students learn the quickest, Japanese also learn quickly even though their language is non-tonal, but so much else is similar. Korean, Thai also learn fast.)

[Richard W]

The เก่า means "old" in the sense of "aged," not in the sense of "for a long time." I would say เชาบอกว่าเป็นเพื่อนสนิดคุณมานานๆแล้ว Mistakes like this do not inspire confidence in the text you are using.

I think you are getting confused with แก่, to which the RID gives the primary meaning of มีอายูมาก.

เก่า can mean 'former' or 'ex-', and the RID gives it the primary meaning of ก่อน.

[CaptHaddock]

The order of things seem "flexible" to me. Maybe because I just dont know the rules.

noun-clf-adj

หนังสือ-เล่ม-ใหม่

noun-adj-quantifier-clf

หลายคนครับ ผมได้ เพื่อน-ใหม่-หลาย-คน อ๋อ ผมพบคนไทยคนหนึ่ง เขาบอกว่าเป็นเพื่อนเก่าคุณ

"A lot of people. I made a lot of new friends. Oh, I ran into a Thai. He said he was an old friend of yours."

http://i.imgur.com/EXIo2uH.png

Yes, there is flexibility in the word order.

เก่า means "old" in the sense of "aged," not in the sense of "for a long time." I would say เชาบอกว่าเป็นเพื่อนสนิดคุณมานานๆแล้ว Mistakes like this do not inspire confidence in the text you are using.

You need a good teacher, among other reasons, to teach you how to say especially the tones, but also the long and short vowels, etc. and then correct you when you get it wrong again and again. While you are learning the tones you will pay more attention to the way the Thais pronounce them which will help both your pronunciation and your comprehension. I think it is all but impossible for a Westerner to learn the tones correctly without a competent Thai teacher.

I will not get many likes for this but I write it anyway

After 7 years of Chinese studies in China I am completely fluent.

I say tones are not so important. I am poor with tones but almost all Westerners are. Just say the words as well as you can. (A very rough guess is that there are more consonants in Thai than Chinese making tones even less important.)

If you just read the phonetic Thai out of a dictionary (and maybe listen to audio) there is a good chance a Thai speaker will understand what you say.

Even though I have an accent in Chinese a person from Beijing will understand me 100% but he will understand 0% if a Chinese speaks Hong Kong dialect. So the Chinese are pragmatic and consider the foreigners' accent just one of many.

So I am a little irreverent to the tonal complexity of at least Chinese. Naturally it would be better to speak perfectly, one should try, but one has to prioritize when learning an Asian language.

I will not push this question. For some reason people get irritated when I say it. (Even others than the teachers earning money on, and showing how complex Chinese is by, stalling students by emphasizing tones. Tones are really hard for Westerners, that I admit, I have seen in Chinese schools. Vietnamese students learn the quickest, Japanese also learn quickly even though their language is non-tonal, but so much else is similar. Korean, Thai also learn fast.)

You couldn't be more wrong. Getting the tones right is very important. If you don't get the tone right the Thai won't understand you. While tones are difficult for us, we can definitely learn them. I can pronounce the tones correctly now although I still make mistakes sometimes. If you have a competent Thai teacher who corrects you when you get the tones (or anything else) wrong, you will learn them.

Your attitude on tones is indeed irritating because it is stupid. You are setting yourself up to fail in Thai. Moreover, the tones are part of the beauty and the fun of the Thai language. Tones are important because in Thai the vowels carry the information unlike English where the consonants mostly carry the information. If you delete the vowels from a page of English text you'll find that you can still read it without any problem. You cannot even perform the experiment in Thai since you can't really delete all the vowels. The function of consonants in Thai is mainly to cut off the vowel sound, which is why there are so few terminal consonants. According to Marvin Brown English has 35 vowel sounds while Thai has 105.

So, a completely wrong-headed approach.

[CaptHaddock]

The เก่า means "old" in the sense of "aged," not in the sense of "for a long time." I would say เชาบอกว่าเป็นเพื่อนสนิดคุณมานานๆแล้ว Mistakes like this do not inspire confidence in the text you are using.

I think you are getting confused with แก่, to which the RID gives the primary meaning of มีอายูมาก.

เก่า can mean 'former' or 'ex-', and the RID gives it the primary meaning of ก่อน.

เก่า is used only with inanimate objects, while แก่ is used with people. I have never encountered the phrase เพื่อนเก่า, have you? If เก่า means "former" then the phrase เพื่อนเก่า would not mean "old friend" i.e. "friend of long standing," but "former friend." For "former friend" I would expect the phrase "อดีตเพื่อน."

[jamles]

เก่า is used with people as in:

ภรรยาเก่า former wife

สามีเก่า former husband

ถ่านไฟเก่า old flame

[CaptHaddock]

So, we can say that เก่า can be used with persons when the meaning is "former," but when the meaning is "aged" persons take the word แก่. So เพื่อนเก่า is correct usage for "former friend." The English phrase "old friend" with the meaning of a friend of long standing would require something like เพื่อนกันมานานๆ.

[thailandsgreat]

The order of things seem "flexible" to me. Maybe because I just dont know the rules.

noun-clf-adj

หนังสือ-เล่ม-ใหม่

noun-adj-quantifier-clf

หลายคนครับ ผมได้ เพื่อน-ใหม่-หลาย-คน อ๋อ ผมพบคนไทยคนหนึ่ง เขาบอกว่าเป็นเพื่อนเก่าคุณ

"A lot of people. I made a lot of new friends. Oh, I ran into a Thai. He said he was an old friend of yours."

http://i.imgur.com/EXIo2uH.png

Yes, there is flexibility in the word order.

เก่า means "old" in the sense of "aged," not in the sense of "for a long time." I would say เชาบอกว่าเป็นเพื่อนสนิดคุณมานานๆแล้ว Mistakes like this do not inspire confidence in the text you are using.

You need a good teacher, among other reasons, to teach you how to say especially the tones, but also the long and short vowels, etc. and then correct you when you get it wrong again and again. While you are learning the tones you will pay more attention to the way the Thais pronounce them which will help both your pronunciation and your comprehension. I think it is all but impossible for a Westerner to learn the tones correctly without a competent Thai teacher.

I will not get many likes for this but I write it anyway

After 7 years of Chinese studies in China I am completely fluent.

I say tones are not so important. I am poor with tones but almost all Westerners are. Just say the words as well as you can. (A very rough guess is that there are more consonants in Thai than Chinese making tones even less important.)

If you just read the phonetic Thai out of a dictionary (and maybe listen to audio) there is a good chance a Thai speaker will understand what you say.

Even though I have an accent in Chinese a person from Beijing will understand me 100% but he will understand 0% if a Chinese speaks Hong Kong dialect. So the Chinese are pragmatic and consider the foreigners' accent just one of many.

So I am a little irreverent to the tonal complexity of at least Chinese. Naturally it would be better to speak perfectly, one should try, but one has to prioritize when learning an Asian language.

I will not push this question. For some reason people get irritated when I say it. (Even others than the teachers earning money on, and showing how complex Chinese is by, stalling students by emphasizing tones. Tones are really hard for Westerners, that I admit, I have seen in Chinese schools. Vietnamese students learn the quickest, Japanese also learn quickly even though their language is non-tonal, but so much else is similar. Korean, Thai also learn fast.)

You couldn't be more wrong. Getting the tones right is very important. If you don't get the tone right the Thai won't understand you. While tones are difficult for us, we can definitely learn them. I can pronounce the tones correctly now although I still make mistakes sometimes. If you have a competent Thai teacher who corrects you when you get the tones (or anything else) wrong, you will learn them.

Your attitude on tones is indeed irritating because it is stupid. You are setting yourself up to fail in Thai. Moreover, the tones are part of the beauty and the fun of the Thai language. Tones are important because in Thai the vowels carry the information unlike English where the consonants mostly carry the information. If you delete the vowels from a page of English text you'll find that you can still read it without any problem. You cannot even perform the experiment in Thai since you can't really delete all the vowels. The function of consonants in Thai is mainly to cut off the vowel sound, which is why there are so few terminal consonants. According to Marvin Brown English has 35 vowel sounds while Thai has 105.

So, a completely wrong-headed approach.

I appreciate hearing your point of view and also getting help with my Thai questions here. Thanks to you and everyone that helps out.

The discussion on tones I prefer to leave.

[tgeezer]

That is a mess grammatically. Look at หนังสือเล่มใหม่ what is เล่ม saying 'One' book ? หนังสือใหม่ is new books or new book. If it is a particular book, หนังสือใหม่เล่มนี้. This new book, the ลักษณนาม เล่ม stands for หนังสือใหม่ หนังสือใหม่เล่มนี้แพง this new book is expensive. แพง is effectively an adjective because it describes a noun, it means มีราคาสูง so หนังสือใหม่เล่มนี้มีราคาสูง better to just use แพง.

[Richard W]

เก่า is used only with inanimate objects, while แก่ is used with people. I have never encountered the phrase เพื่อนเก่า, have you? If เก่า means "former" then the phrase เพื่อนเก่า would not mean "old friend" i.e. "friend of long standing," but "former friend." For "former friend" I would expect the phrase "อดีตเพื่อน."

One of the example sentences in the New Standard Thai-English Dictionary by Col Nit Tongsopit is

เธอเป็นเพื่อนเก่าของฉัน

She is an old friend of mine.

I didn't quote it before because I wasn't absolutely sure of the meaning of the sentence. I'm quite sure it doesn't mean 'former'. Literally, the word may be intended to convey that friendship was extant at an earlier time, in which case the likely deduction is that the friendship has lasted until now. I get the feeling that เก่า is just as ambiguous as in English.

That dictionary gives a whole slew of meanings for the compound เก่าแก่ - "old, classic, obsolete, elder, veteran, dateless, age-old, ancient, immemorial, long-standing, old-time, old-world, on the shelf".

[tgeezer]

'Old' is probably not ambiguous in ' เธอเป็นเพื่อนเก่าของฉัน since เธอ must be familiar to both parties.

The redundant words ของฉัน betray its English origin, "She is an old friend" but perhaps it isn't possible to be verbose in a Thai way!

Like มีราคาแพง, เขาเป็นเพื่อนสนิดคุ้นเคยกันมานานแล้ว would probably be lapped up!

[CaptHaddock]

เก่า is used only with inanimate objects, while แก่ is used with people. I have never encountered the phrase เพื่อนเก่า, have you? If เก่า means "former" then the phrase เพื่อนเก่า would not mean "old friend" i.e. "friend of long standing," but "former friend." For "former friend" I would expect the phrase "อดีตเพื่อน."

One of the example sentences in the New Standard Thai-English Dictionary by Col Nit Tongsopit is

เธอเป็นเพื่อนเก่าของฉัน

She is an old friend of mine.

I didn't quote it before because I wasn't absolutely sure of the meaning of the sentence. I'm quite sure it doesn't mean 'former'. Literally, the word may be intended to convey that friendship was extant at an earlier time, in which case the likely deduction is that the friendship has lasted until now. I get the feeling that เก่า is just as ambiguous as in English.

That dictionary gives a whole slew of meanings for the compound เก่าแก่ - "old, classic, obsolete, elder, veteran, dateless, age-old, ancient, immemorial, long-standing, old-time, old-world, on the shelf".

I had a discussion of this topic with my teacher with the following results, which I regard as definitive. None of the online dictionaries with which I am familiar approach this degree of detail in usage. If anyone knows of text with this kind of coverage please post a reference.

เก่า may refer to either persons or objects. If we want to describe a person advanced in age, we use คนแก่ not เก่า but when เก่า refers to an object it means "old" in the simple sense of having been around for a long time. หนังสือเก่า is "the old book."

เพื่อนเก่า means "old friend" in the sense of long-standing friend. It doesn't mean "former friend." However, the word เพื่ิอน encompasses a wider range of relationships than the English word "friend." It includes mere acquaintances and so is not necessarily as positive as "friend." This explains the otherwise puzzling construction เพื่อนบ้าน for "neighbor" which does not imply actual friendship. Perhaps for this reason "former friend" doesn't completely make sense to Thai speakers in the way the "former acquaintance" would sound odd to us. "Former friend" would be เคยเป็นเพื่อน แต่ตอนนี้ไม่คบกัน

However, consider these examples.

แฟนเก่า former boyfriend/girlfriend

นักเรียนเก่า former student, but could be current student of long-standing also. Occurs for instance in สมาคมนักเรียนเก่า alumni association

ครูเก่า former teacher, no longer teaches at the school.

So, เก่า sometimes means "old" and sometimes "former." Now here is a particularly interesting point of usage. When used with the classifier เก่า means "former," but if used without a classifier it means "old," as follows:

บ้านเก่า - "an old house" or "The house is old."

บ้านหลังเก่า - "the former house"

My teacher explained that only เก่า has meanings that differ depending on the presence or absence of the classifier.

เก่าแก่ means particularly old and valuable because of its age. Does not refer to physical condition. So antique furniture is เก่าแก่. Or อาคารเก่าแก่ an historic building. ครุเก่าแก่ might refer to a teacher retired after long service. เพื่อนเก่าแก่ would be a particularly close friend of perhaps forty years or more.

Some related grammar.

บ้านหลังเล็ก - a small house. This is not a sentence.

บ้านเล็ก - The house is small. This is a complete sentence. เล็ก in this usage is considered a verb, specifically, คำกริยาแสดงสภาพ

เสื้อมันขาว - the shirt is white. A complete sentence. According to my teacher, มัน here may be considered to be the verb "to be" although it seems to me to be more readily considered a pronoun. This usage is very common and idiomatic.

เสื้อขาว - "a white shirt" a phrase, or "The shirt is white," a complete sentence.

มัน is rude if used to refer to a person.

[tgeezer]

I agree that in เสื้อมันขาว "shirt it white," มัน says 'it is' the สรรพนาม and the กริยา rolled into one but I see it as you do just the สรรพนาม and its use makes it the shirt. Thai doesn't need to but seems to say เป็น for is!

If > ตัว the translation เสื้อตัวสีขาว would be "shirt, shirt white" which I think makes it an individual shirt. Whether a shirt or the shirt might be discussed but I don't think it matters because context takes care if that.

I think that เสื้อขาว is shirt/s white, shirt/s distinguished by colour.

เสื้อขาวบนโต๊ shirt white on table. Two descriptions must mean that there are shirts of other colours on the table or that there are more white shirts in view, not on the table.

In that context we dont know if it is; a, the or more than one.

The table is covered in shirts of many colours of which one of white is wanted.

ขอเอาเสื้อสีขาวตัวหนึ่งมาให้ฉันหน่อยครับ please bring me a/one white shirt...

ขอเอาเสื้อสีขาวตัวหนึ่งที่บนโต๊มาให้ฉันหน่อย

Please bring me a/one white shirt which /you will find /is on the table.

ขอเอาเสื้อสีขาวตัวเดียวที่อยู่บนโต๊ให้ฉันหน่อย

Maybe "The shirt" now.

เสื้อที่อยู่บนโต๊สีอะไร What colour is the shirt on the table?

เสื้อมันสีขาว The shirt is white.

I can't imagine why anyone would want to tell someone this. It is academic; taught in school but hardly used.

I don't know if any of this is correct, I think that the reason that only your teacher deals with this in depth is that he is very brave!

[tgeezer]

In addition to my last post which everyone found so "thought provoking!" I now consider เก่า to mean old rather than former .

On the golf course one is required to mark one's golf balls, when they are lost they are subsequently found by non golfers who sell them to golfers. Since I lose on average five balls per round, I often notice that I am buying my own balls back. My caddy prefers to refer to them as ลูดเดิม rather than ลูดเก่า.

[bifftastic]

The order of things seem "flexible" to me. Maybe because I just dont know the rules.

noun-clf-adj

หนังสือ-เล่ม-ใหม่

noun-adj-quantifier-clf

หลายคนครับ ผมได้ เพื่อน-ใหม่-หลาย-คน อ๋อ ผมพบคนไทยคนหนึ่ง เขาบอกว่าเป็นเพื่อนเก่าคุณ

"A lot of people. I made a lot of new friends. Oh, I ran into a Thai. He said he was an old friend of yours."

http://i.imgur.com/EXIo2uH.png

Yes, there is flexibility in the word order.

เก่า means "old" in the sense of "aged," not in the sense of "for a long time." I would say เชาบอกว่าเป็นเพื่อนสนิดคุณมานานๆแล้ว Mistakes like this do not inspire confidence in the text you are using.

You need a good teacher, among other reasons, to teach you how to say especially the tones, but also the long and short vowels, etc. and then correct you when you get it wrong again and again. While you are learning the tones you will pay more attention to the way the Thais pronounce them which will help both your pronunciation and your comprehension. I think it is all but impossible for a Westerner to learn the tones correctly without a competent Thai teacher.

I will not get many likes for this but I write it anyway

After 7 years of Chinese studies in China I am completely fluent.

I say tones are not so important. I am poor with tones but almost all Westerners are. Just say the words as well as you can. (A very rough guess is that there are more consonants in Thai than Chinese making tones even less important.)

If you just read the phonetic Thai out of a dictionary (and maybe listen to audio) there is a good chance a Thai speaker will understand what you say.

Even though I have an accent in Chinese a person from Beijing will understand me 100% but he will understand 0% if a Chinese speaks Hong Kong dialect. So the Chinese are pragmatic and consider the foreigners' accent just one of many.

So I am a little irreverent to the tonal complexity of at least Chinese. Naturally it would be better to speak perfectly, one should try, but one has to prioritize when learning an Asian language.

I will not push this question. For some reason people get irritated when I say it. (Even others than the teachers earning money on, and showing how complex Chinese is by, stalling students by emphasizing tones. Tones are really hard for Westerners, that I admit, I have seen in Chinese schools. Vietnamese students learn the quickest, Japanese also learn quickly even though their language is non-tonal, but so much else is similar. Korean, Thai also learn fast.)

You couldn't be more wrong. Getting the tones right is very important. If you don't get the tone right the Thai won't understand you. While tones are difficult for us, we can definitely learn them. I can pronounce the tones correctly now although I still make mistakes sometimes. If you have a competent Thai teacher who corrects you when you get the tones (or anything else) wrong, you will learn them.

Your attitude on tones is indeed irritating because it is stupid. You are setting yourself up to fail in Thai. Moreover, the tones are part of the beauty and the fun of the Thai language. Tones are important because in Thai the vowels carry the information unlike English where the consonants mostly carry the information. If you delete the vowels from a page of English text you'll find that you can still read it without any problem. You cannot even perform the experiment in Thai since you can't really delete all the vowels. The function of consonants in Thai is mainly to cut off the vowel sound, which is why there are so few terminal consonants. According to Marvin Brown English has 35 vowel sounds while Thai has 105.

So, a completely wrong-headed approach.

I appreciate hearing your point of view and also getting help with my Thai questions here. Thanks to you and everyone that helps out.

The discussion on tones I prefer to leave.

The tone of a word in Thai is as important as how it's spelled. It's part of the meaning of the word. You cannot separate the tone from the word. If you pronounce it incorrectly, you are not saying the word you intended to say. It really is as simple as that.

[bifftastic]

In addition to my last post which everyone found so "thought provoking!" I now consider เก่า to mean old rather than former .

On the golf course one is required to mark one's golf balls, when they are lost they are subsequently found by non golfers who sell them to golfers. Since I lose on average five balls per round, I often notice that I am buying my own balls back. My caddy prefers to refer to them as ลูดเดิม rather than ลูดเก่า.

But เมียเก่า means ex-wife, not old wife

[tgeezer]

In addition to my last post which everyone found so "thought provoking!" I now consider เก่า to mean old rather than former .

On the golf course one is required to mark one's golf balls, when they are lost they are subsequently found by non golfers who sell them to golfers. Since I lose on average five balls per round, I often notice that I am buying my own balls back. My caddy prefers to refer to them as ลูดเดิม rather than ลูดเก่า.

But เมียเก่า means ex-wife, not old wife

[tgeezer]

I agree.

Do you have any opinion on when ลักษณนาม or สรรพนาม are required?

[CaptHaddock]

I agree.

Do you have any opinion on when ลักษณนาม or สรรพนาม are required?

I don't quite understand your question.

I explained already in my first post in this thread which words call for the classifier. Is there something about that that is not clear? The pronoun is used instead of the noun not in conjunction with it, just as in English.

เก่า is not one of the words that calls for the classifier. However, with most nouns you may use the classifier + เก่า to give the meaning "former."

[tgeezer]

Rather than try to remember rules, I posted some situations on the 6th. I said that I had no idea whether I am right or wrong. I can explain my logic and was hoping to get the opportunity but nobody demurred so I take it we all agree.

The thing is that we never encounter these problems reading, only when someone comes up asking for rules without any context so examples are the way to go in my opinion.

Here is an example of a difficult question:

What is the difference between Is บ้านนี่ and บ้านนี้ is there any difference? I avoid นี่ in any role other than pronoun or, emphasiser as in มานี่ อยู่นี่; do you see นี่ as a วิเศษณ์ ?

[CaptHaddock]

Rather than try to remember rules, I posted some situations on the 6th. I said that I had no idea whether I am right or wrong. I can explain my logic and was hoping to get the opportunity but nobody demurred so I take it we all agree.

The thing is that we never encounter these problems reading, only when someone comes up asking for rules without any context so examples are the way to go in my opinion.

Here is an example of a difficult question:

What is the difference between Is บ้านนี่ and บ้านนี้ is there any difference? I avoid นี่ in any role other than pronoun or, emphasiser as in มานี่ อยู่นี่; do you see นี่ as a วิเศษณ์ ?

Your posts are often not clear enough to know how to respond. I can tell you that I for one declined to respond certainly not out of agreement, but because your posts were too muddled to be worth bothering about.

If you imagine that you can learn another language without remembering the various kinds of rules involved, then you might as well give up now. Like the poster above who believes tones in tonal languages are somehow optional, you are dooming yourself in the hope of making your task easier. The last chance you had to learn a language without remembering grammar rules was when you were two years old. Unless you acquire a new mother, you will have to learn your next language by understanding its grammar explicitly.

Your "difficult" question is only difficult because you don't know the grammar, i.e. rules that you don't want to be bother remembering.

นี่ is the pronoun meaning "here." (นี่ may also mean "this" the pronoun, as in นี่คืออะไร, but not "this" the adjective.) นี้ is the adjective meaning "this." You can say "the house is here" by บ้านอยู่ที่นี่ using the prepositional phrase ที่นี่ as a modifier for the verb อยู่ where ที่ is the preposition with the object นี่. Now, if you want to say "this house" you are going to use an adjective to modify a noun. When you do that in Thai you have to consider whether that particular adjective calls for the classifier and, if so, which classifier goes with that noun. นี้ indeed calls for the classifier. The classifier for บ้าน is หลัง. So, "this house" is บ้านหลังนี้. You may also hear บ้านนี้ without the classifier even though it is not strictly correct.

There is therefore no correct phrase บ้านนี่.

When you don't know the grammar, it's impossible. When you do, it's trivial. This is the level of grammar you would learn in the first or second month of a course with a competent teacher. If you are not studying with a competent teacher, well then, that explains it.