#thai vocab

[polyglot-thought]

[Thai, Indonesian, Malay->English]

Cute animal I found out existed today: The Flat-headed Cat (Prionailurus planiceps)

And they are endangered 😢

They are native to southern Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra and Borneo.

Since I am a language blog, I will show you how to refer to Prionailurus planiceps in the official languages of each respective country (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia) 😄 with Color Coded Translations

—

Thai

แมวป่าหัวแบน

maew bpàa hŭua baen

flat-headed (wild) cat

—

Indonesian

kucing liar kecil

little wild cat

—

Malay

kucing hutan

forest/jungle cat

—

Please correct me if I made a mistake

$5 translation commissions here

[fuck-i-like-too-much-stuff]

Okay so after surviving the "Pond, look at me." Numerous "are you feeling shy?" "Let's try this" * proceeds to climb over him without realising they're being filmed. * "he doesnt like skinship"- "i dont"- "but he will do it for you. You're special"- "i know, its an honor."

I have 2 questions- 1) The fuck? 2) Phuwin are you insane?

[findmeinthefallair]

Happened the other night but we had a minor racism incident where a teen slammed into my brother on purpose, blamed him for knocking into them, and shrieked at him to eff off to China. He was uninjured but I heard it happen quickly, a few metres behind me. For this to happen in peak summer tourist crowds, in central Edinburgh..apparently this kind of attack has worsened a lot since Brexit, though I hear London is cosmopolitan enough that it is generally much less frequent there. But it's pretty brazen of these racists. And ofc..they get the home country wrong, assuming we all come from there.

[khaotungsfirst]

decided that it's actually fucking stupid to get so much thai immersion almost daily and not study it so here i am now trying to learn the thai alphabet

[daily-spanish-word]

people la gente

Imagine a big group of gents, gentlemen. Like: a few thousand very British fellows running the London marathon, all sporting black business suits, bowler hats and umbrellas.

Imagine the people waving with their hands.

Imagine encountering a hen party of thai women. The bride being so rich that she flew all her 200 best friends over to your city to celebrate.

Many people go to the beach in July. Mucha gente va a la playa en julio.

[airenyah]

there goes the sign again with classical music and we've moved on from beethoven to mozart's kleine nachtmusik

[foralleternityidiot]

Should I just watch to sir with love without subs? At this rate I think I can understand 80% just from body language and dramatic eye contact

[historicallyaccurateweedshoppe]

Sixteen random words in Thai

ถนัด [thanat] v. to be an expert in; adv. skillfully, accurately

สม [som] v. to be well-matched, suitable

ระบือ [rabue] v. spread; adj. well-known

โฉมเฉลา [chom chalao] n. beautiful girl

แฉล้ม [chalaem] v. to be beautiful; adj. beautiful

พลิกแพลง [phlik phlaeng] v. to equivocate, modify

อภิวันท์ [aphiwan] v. to worship

เปรอ [preu] v. to service, attend upon

สนิธ [sanit] adj. close

สมาทาน [samatan] v. to hold to (religious precepts)

ปวง [puang] det. all

ชวด [chuat] n. great grandparent; year of the rat; v. to lose, fail

โฉด [chot] adj. mad, bad, evil, foolish

อะคร้าว [akrao] proud/prideful of

เนา [nao] v. to hem; to stay/live; n. ship

ป่าชัฎ [pa chat] n. wilderness

[visualtaehyun]

Ep. 9 language notes

Disclaimer: not a native Thai speaker, still learning 🙏

1 year before Non's disappearance

whatchu doin? sleeping? still doing homework you? gonna go shower mh why? gonna shower too?* you dick hahahaha 🤨 see you tomorrow~ ok see youuu 😊

*This is just dirty implication rather than wordplay, but in trying to find out if Phee did make a pun on อาบน้ำ /aap naam/ (= shower, bathe), I learned a new word which I felt it was only fair to inflict on y'all in all its 'love juice' equivalence, considering how much it fits with the straight-outta-porn vibes of the PheeJin NC: น้ำรัก /naam rak/ = lit. love fluid, slang for semen, cum 🌚 You're welcome for the very useful vocab lesson lmao!

Revealing strong picture evidence - Teacher lures student into running away with him

As expected - Police reveals picture evidence of young male teacher taking schoolboy aboard long-distance bus. Rush to file charges on the basis of abduction of a minor

From the moment the police officer received the report from the parents of young A (fake name) about their son disappearing from their home, without anyone knowing where he'd gone, he feared that the young male teacher [the boy] was close to had lured him away. After receiving the report he therefore took the lead in the search.

[This was a lot of new vocab for me so take this translation with a grain of salt, please!]

The dad switches from พ่อ /por/ + แก /gaae/ (= father/dad used as 1st pers. pronoun + familiar 2nd pers. pronoun) to กู /guu/ + มึง /meung/ (impolite 1st + 2nd pers. pronouns). He also curses:

แต่สุดท้ายไม่มีเหี้ยไรดีสักอย่าง /dtaae soot thaai, mai mee hiia rai dee sak yaang/ = But in the end, there's not a single fucking good thing [about you].

[lurkingteapot]

Hi, how would a non-binary person (me) get around the binary gender rules and vocab in Thai?

Thank on you for your amazing resources!

Hi there!

This is a question I feel like native speakers of Thai should be much more qualified to answer 😅 @recentadultburnout ? @jinitak ? Any takers?

For what it's worth, though: I also consider myself outside the gender binary, and am uncomfortable with some forms of gendered address in languages I'm fluent in, and as such have looked into it a bit. I'm barely conversational, so the things I list here have been sourced from conversations with queer and non-binary Thai acquaintances and a couple of language teachers plus my own observations, which may very well be faulty … so under the cut it goes.

First off: Thai isn't nearly as clearly binarily gendered as many beginner resources indicate. Beginner resources will say, oh, men™ say ผม (/pʰǒm/) and women™ say ฉัน (/tɕʰǎn/), but (as you may have already observed while watching shows or interviews) in reality people (queer or straight, cis or trans) will use several different pronouns for themselves and others depending on who they're talking to, and in what context—perception of gender is only one part of that. Your age, the tone of voice and level of politeness/formality you're affecting, the situation you're in at that moment, all those things affect how you talk about yourself to others, and how others talk about and to you. It's not as cut and dry as English "these are my pronouns" -- partially also because you'd kind of need to go out of your way to gender the person you're talking about in Thai.

One example: people of all genders can and do use ฉัน (/tɕʰǎn/), though I gather it's less commonly used by men these days. Contrary to what most classes will teach, men or people who are read as male may (and do!) use ค่ะ (/kʰâʔ/; often drawn out to ค่าาา (/kʰâː/ with a very drawn-out aaa)) and จ๊ะ (/tɕáʔ/) in affectionate/familiar conversation, and it's not unheard of for men to refer to themselves by their given name, either -- something a lot of teachers will say are "feminine" speech patterns. For women or people who're read as female to use particles such as ครับ (/kʰráp/) or pronouns such as ผม (/pʰǒm/) seems to be less common, though not unheard of, especially when a woman is affecting a brash personality at that moment. All that is to say … for those of us who fall somewhere in between (or outside the binary altogether), there's quite a bit of wiggle room.

Golf Tanwarin (former MP and the director of GMMTV show The Eclipse) uses different particles depending on context – I've watched interviews where they use ครับ (/kʰráp/) exclusively, others where they use both ครับ (/kʰráp/) and ค่ะ (/kʰâʔ/), and in the live spaces they opened when the Eclipse was airing, to my recollection they used ค่ะ (/kʰâʔ/) and จ๊ะ (/tɕáʔ/) pretty much exclusively. Some non-binary Thais use non-standard polite particles -- Silvy Pavida (The Warp Effect, Laws of Attraction) uses งัฟ (/ŋáp/) on their IG posts, for one example.

My personal approach (which, again! may or may not work for you) is that I go with what people expect from my appearance, and switch to other options only once I'd've got to know my conversation partner better. My reasoning for this is that as a language learner, trying to deviate from the expected language use will likely be perceived not as me trying to express my identity, but simply as me being bad at the language -- I feel like I need to attain and display a level of skill with the language that makes clear the uncommon way I use it is intentional, first. This might not be your approach! but it's worked for me so far.

What I'm doing in the meantime: I try to watch content by people who … idk, match the sort of presentation I aspire to, or who I feel kinship with? and try to emulate what they do (keeping in mind that most online content is rather informal); sometimes, when I'm comfortable enough, I will just try things out when I have the chance (though this can have embarrassing results).

tl;dr there's no way around it, but there are several ways to manage it, and you'll find out best by playing around and finding what works for you, personally :)

(also: I'm glad you found the 'learning Thai' link dump helpful <3)

[raaindropps]

I hate this teacher

[ID: A quickly drawn comic, showing a teacher- drawn in a spikey humanoid form- and a student- drawn as a cat. The teacher points to a board reading "Buriipo" in Katakana and says "This word is 'Bleepo'". The student asks "What does bleepo mean?" to which the teacher points again at the board and says "Bleepo is a noun. 'I go to bleepo'"

The student looks dejected and says "Um... okay...". Next, the teacher holds up a sign reading "Buriipo ga arimasu" in Japanese, and tells the students "Now read this". The student sweats.

The student starts to think "Okay... that says Arimasu, so it's a noun that can both be 'had' and 'gone to'. That's most of them, though... Is it tangible, like a house? Or something like an appointment or date...? Lets look at the vocab list"

The student looks at the list. It reads "Fridge/table/bed/not bleepo", and they say "fuck".

They continue to think, "Most of these are tangible, so it's probably one of those.... But What? I don't want to say the phrase without being sure of what bleepo is... It's in katakana so it's a loanword probably. But theres no english word thay souns like it... another language then... FUCK!"

The teacher then points to the sign and says "This is said 'arimasu'".

The student pauses and looks back and forth. deadpan, they say "is that really what you think I'm struggling with". An arrow points to them reading "fluent in hiragana" /End ID]

[le-trash-prince]

I can't remember if we've talked about anything like this before but. OKAY SO. I have been thinking about like kim being obviously korean but also Kenta being half-Japanese (I think??) and like. consider Kenta waking up slowly (he used to come awake instantly but now he's safe, he can take his time to rise up from his dreams and it won't matter no one will get mad at him for wasting time or being late) and mumbling out "good morning" in japanese because he was dreaming about his mother. he doesn't remember much about her - he was so young when she was gone - but he remembers warm hands, her soft voice gentling him into sleep, waking him up each morning with the smile he can't quite picture and the words he can so clearly still hear.

and thennnn because I have also been thinking about omega kim, consider kim in heat (perhaps with beta kenta doing His Very Best) and in the middle of it, when Kim's most out of it, when he's simply nothing but clutching hands and helpless want, he slips back into his mother tongue. he can barely remember his own name like this, he cannot be expected to remember another language!

and also maybe when he's not in heat he'll teasingly call kenta hyung just for funsies. because maybe kim's voice is a little deeper and stronger when he's speaking korean and also maybe he's accidentally pavlov'd kenta into linking korean with kim's heat oops.

We have not talked about this no!! Kenta is half-Japanese, yes—they’re both half Thai.

Kenta feeling safe and warm when he’s waking up with Kim is always something that’s gonna make me melt into a pile of goo 🥹 And mumbling the snippets of JP he remembers when he’s sleepy wtf 😭😭😭 my heart

Kenta had been picking up little pieces of Korean, but after Kim’s first heat, he starts studying in earnest because it was a little nervewracking to not be able to understand what Kim was demanding. Of course a lot of the vocab Kim was using isn’t found in your typical online dictionary, so Kenta has to ask Kim directly about it. Which Kim takes absolute delight in letting Kenta know exactly what he was saying and watching Kenta go a little red (and then maybe they fuck about it)

And he would DEFINITELY get a kick out of calling Kenta hyung shfjfjf (Benz is always calling himself oppa lmfao) ESPECIALLY when he realizes he can use it as a clicker

Thank you for these lovely thoughts 🤩

[doitinanotherlanguage]

2024 Mid-Year Language Learning Recap

中文 / Mandarin Chinese

🎉 Goals reached so far: I got back to studying Chinese! I reviewed New Practical Chinese Reader 1 and 2. Now, I'm starting on the third book in the series. 🎯 Further goals for the rest of the year: My primary goal is to reach A2(/B1) level in Chinese (~HSK3). To do that, I'm planning to finish New Practical Chinese Reader 3, and start on New Practical Chinese Reader 4 (hopefully, I'll be able to complete that one entirely too this year).

Español / Spanish

🎉 Goals reached so far: I did a lot of revision for Spanish in 2023, so for the first half of this year I've basically just been chilling when it comes to Spanish, not doing much active studying (just watching youtube and movies). 🎯 Further goals for the rest of the year: Continue to keep up my Spanish level (~B1) with Spanish readers (Better Reading Spanish and Read & Think Spanish).

Français / French

🎉 Goals reached so far: I basically spent the entire spring in revising my French, because I had a short trip to Paris (!!!) in May. I revised all my study materials from A1 to A2/B1 in preparation. 🎯 Further goals for the rest of the year: Right now, I feel like I'm somewhere around the A2 level maybe - my speaking is only so-so, but my reading is very good (probably my English and Spanish help a lot!). For the rest of the year, I just want to concentrate on upkeep because the spring revision was quite intense. So, I'm predicting a lot of French movies and youtube in my near future lol.

ภาษาไทย / Thai

🎉 Goals reached so far: I just started learning Thai in late spring this year! So far, I've learned to read and write, and I'm now starting on the basics. 🎯 Further goals for the rest of the year: Attain the A1 level by completing Easy Thai. Although, honestly, I'm learning Thai just for fun right now, so I'm mostly studying it this year when/if I have the time.

한국어 / Korean

🎉 Goals reached so far: I revised my A1(/A2) materials. I haven't really touched Korean in a while, so I'm really looking forward to getting back to it! 🎯 Further goals for the rest of the year: I want to finally finish Continuing Korean so badly! I've been picking it up and putting it down for several years now, and I really need to just stick with it for once and just get it done. So, if I have the time this year, that's my goal for Korean.

English

🎉 Goals reached so far: I haven't really been actively studying English for years now, so I didn't have any goals for English this year. Although, I do now have a job where I get to use English from time to time and that's fun. 🎯 Further goals for the rest of the year: Basically, just keep getting better at using English at my job (e.g. there's a lot of specific vocab related to the field, and sometimes calls with English-speaking clients are a bit of a mess because neither of us knows the right words in English lmao). I also really want to get better at "Simple English/Plain English". Because a lot of my clients are immigrants and our only common language is English (which is a second language to both of us), I'd like to be able to speak more clearly and understandably.

Svenska / Swedish

🎉 Goals reached so far: I did a bit of Swedish revision in the beginning of this year (for job purposes) but I'm really lacking in motivation for Swedish... I need to use Swedish a little bit in my job so I'm trying to let that push me a bit to try to do at least something related to Swedish sometimes, but it really is hard when I just don't feel like it at all. 🎯 Further goals for the rest of the year: I guess my biggest goal is to find motivation for learning Swedish. It's never been a language I've been interested to learn for it's own sake (it was an obligatory subject at school), but it's useful for job prospects so... I'd really like to be able to use it more fluently because I've learnt it for so many years. I just need to get myself more hyped to be learning Swedish.

[daily-spanish-word]

people la gente

Imagine a big group of gents, gentlemen. Like: a few thousand very British fellows running the London marathon, all sporting black business suits, bowler hats and umbrellas.

Imagine the people waving with their hands.

Imagine encountering a hen party of thai women. The bride being so rich that she flew all her 200 best friends over to your city to celebrate.

Many people go to the beach in July. Mucha gente va a la playa en julio.

[heretherebedork]

As multilingual (5 and still learning) person I can tell that it’s great but sometimes I don’t know how to think in certain language haha

And that's okay! Let me be clear, my entire non-English vocab is the vague ability to kind of make my understood in Spanish, about five Thai words and a smattering of Yiddush as well as a knowledge of the Hebrew alphabet without much actual language comprehension.

So no worries! Be proud of what you know and enjoy it and don't worry about perfection in the language or perfection in a fanfic.

[recentadultburnout]

Info for writer in Thai series fandom: Family Vocabulary (Thai&Loan words)

You may have noticed before that there are some variations in the family vocab, and the thing is, it can tell you if that family has Chinese roots. It doesn't really tell you much since there are a lot of us who have not used any even when it's 100% true that they have some Chinese ancestry, and even if they do use it, it's not going to mean anything big either, but here is a list of what is Thai and what is a Teochew loan word. To give you some examples.

There are also loan words from Hokkien, but they are used even fewer. As for loan words from other cultures, in my opinion, they are either so old that we didn't really register them as loan words or so new that they are not yet part of the Thai language, ya know. Also, this chapter is for family terms, and there aren't any other widely used terms for family that I can think of in the others.

The Thai nickname for Google is "ah gu," which is identical with a word for uncle from the mother side.

For step-parents, add the word liang(เลี้ยง) which means raise, nurture at the back. Oh, and sometimes it was mai-ใหม่-new instead, like, he is your new dad and your bio one is an old one. And for adoptive-something add buntham(บุญธรรม) which means adopted (child) at the back. Like, Porliang, Porbuntham, for example.

You could add the word "khun" in front of those common words for more politeness. I wouldn't recommend adding it to words for people of the same age and younger, though. It can create a weird tone you might not want.

There are a lot of words for "father," but there is one specific word that sometimes means sugar daddy. That word is ป๋า(pa).

I was going to talk about other words for sugar daddy, but I suddenly remember that one time I read a really weird placement "pa" in a sentence and blue screen for a bit. So let's talk about why using transliteration might not be the best choice sometimes. As you can see, this word for dad is a letter "p" and a letter "a" when transliterated into English. P and A. like ภา(pa)-Pat's sister. like ป่า(pa)-forest/also protagonise of 2moons. like ป้า(pa)-aunt. And many, many other words. I mean, there are, like, at least three letters that are frequently written with P when in English, and we have five tones that have no way to tell the difference when in English. So sometime, to avoid confusion, it might be best to just don't use unnecessary transliteration words.

Using both common words and loan words is very normal, and I don't mean just using the common ones when talking about your relatives to other people. If your father's side used the loan words but your mother's side used the common words, then you might use ta and yai for grandparents on your mother's side and ahgong and ahma for grandparents on your father's side. Use only some of the loan words for a certain person in your family, but using common words for all the others is a common practice too. I didn't fill in all the loan words for that very reason, many people(including me) can't even remember all the words, let alone use them.

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