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Help with a Thai sentence (ให้) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| doubleUelle Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 3980 days ago 67 posts - 95 votes  Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Thai | Message 1 of 5 19 December 2013 at 6:49am | IP Logged |
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I recently came across this sentence:
เธอไม่ได้ทำอะไรให้ฉั นเลยสักนิด I understand most of the words, except for ให้, which seems to have a new meaning every time it's in a different sentence. I also don't understand how this sentence comes together as a whole. I get the feeling that the ให้ is crucial to it and that I'm missing something because of that. Help? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| doubleUelle Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 3980 days ago 67 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Thai | Message 2 of 5 19 December 2013 at 6:51am | IP Logged |
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Not supposed to be a space in that sentence. Silly website bug.
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| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5075 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 3 of 5 19 December 2013 at 6:26pm | IP Logged |
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It translates roughly as "You have done nothing for me"; the ให้ is indeed crucial. You will encounter the construction, ทำ(อะไร)ให้(ใคร) - to do (something) for (someone), pretty frequently. Similar pattern:
ซื้ออะไรให้ใคร: to buy someone something, อย่างเช่น เราซื้อของขวัญให้เพื ่อน* - buy a friend a present นำเงินค้าจ้างที่ได้ไ ปซื้อข้าวมาให้ปู่กิน * - ... buy food for grandpa to eat It's a pretty productive construction, you can take many verbs instead of ทำ or ซื้อ, you can use nouns or verbs instead of อะไร, and you can also use different stuff instead of ใคร, e.g., verbs. Just get exposure to many of those sentences and you will develop a feeling for it. The ให้ is always required. *Ignore those silly spaces. Edited by Bakunin on 19 December 2013 at 6:28pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| doubleUelle Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 3980 days ago 67 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Thai | Message 4 of 5 19 December 2013 at 7:07pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks!
I guess my other question is, what does the ได้ do in this sentence? It's supposed to mean "can" but it sometimes comes up in sentences where it doesn't mean that (this being one example). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5075 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 5 of 5 19 December 2013 at 7:31pm | IP Logged |
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Here, it's a marker of the past. Those translations like "ได้ = can" don't work very well for many function words in Thai because there rarely is a one to one relationship with English (and why should there be?). It might be easier to try not to translate those frequently occurring function words like ได้ and ให้ etc. and just observe how they're used. Over time you'll get the hang of it.
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