Various: ja / gamlang / yang / laaeo etc

[DUS]

I might not be able to write all the Thai words in the "correct" transliteration but I hope that you will still understand most things I write and ask about. So here we go:

 

This week, I´ve had the pleasure of "learning" (but not grasping) the following sentence structures, times and the continous "ing" form. Maybe getting examples and translations will help me understand when and how these structures are correctly used in Thai. So let me see if I can get these things summarised correctly for you (I hope I´ll get away with not putting tone marks everywhere where they actually should appear):

 

1. jà (verb) (laaeo) --> e.g. jà gin bia laaeo

 

2. gamlang já (verb) (laaeo)

 

3. jà (verb) laaeo

 

4. gamlang (verb) laaeo

 

5. gamlang (verb) yùu ---> That´s the easy one and I am familiar with this one and also about the option to drop either of the 2 words (gamlang or yuu)

 

6. yang (verb) yùu

 

 

Then, in my notes I also find the following 2 structures:

 

jà yang mâi ...

yang mâi ...

 

If I remember correctly "yang mâi ..." refers to something in the past like "I haven´t yet (action) ...". But "ja yang mai"? Phew, I am lost ... :-)

 

The content presented at school was so much this week that I wanted to catch up over the weekend so maybe there is some help here from people on this forum who might provide some info, insight or general help with the above structures etc. Would be cool!

 

Thank you and have a nice weekend everyone.

 

DUS

 

 

[Oxx]

Might I suggest you buy yourself a Thai grammar book.  "Thai:  An Essential Grammar" by Smyth is a very good place to start.  (None better in my opinion.)  If your search around a bit you might even find a free PDF download.

 

Once you've mastered all that book has to offer, move on to "Thai Reference Grammar" by Higbie and Thinsan.  However, I'd suggest not getting this until you're confident reading Thai because the romanisation system used init is, quite frankly, idiosyncratic.

[DUS]

Thank you Oxx..... Great recommendations and I am not ashamed to say that I actually have both books right here on my desk. Mind you, as a beginner, I am still struggling with some of the above.

 

Having said that, I found out that

 

yang (verb) yuu means "I am still (verb)-ing" 

 

and 

 

gamlang ja (verb) means "I´m about to (verb)" 

 

So yes, there´s some progress..... :-)

 

 

[Johpa]

You are not going to grasp all the Thai methods of indicating time, mood, and voice in one weekend.  But it is not all that complex, certainly not any more complex than expressing the same things in English, often referred to technically as the modal auxiliary verb or "aux" for short.  And to put it into some further technical perspective, English has only two true verb tenses, present and past.  Give it some time for the examples to become redundant.  Repetition is one of your friends.  When I was learning Thai years ago, many of these grammatical structures took about a year to fully internalize. Be patient.  To paraphrase the Buddha, right understanding, right thought, and then right speech.