Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Thai profile comments

  Tags: Thai
 Language Learning Forum : Collaborative writing Post Reply
wombat
Tetraglot
Groupie
Australia
Joined 6876 days ago

49 posts - 50 votes
Speaks: English*, German, French, Thai
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 1 of 2
30 November 2006 at 12:47am | IP Logged 
A few comments on the Thai profile:

"Helper words such as ekaung show relationships between words"

I haven't heard of this word - should it be 'kaung' or 'kawng'?

As in:
"rot kawng pom" - my car
"bahn kawng pom" - my house

"including tense of verbs"

'kawng' (or 'ekaung') isn't used to show tenses of verbs: 'dy', 'mah', 'ja' and 'laew' are used for this.

   "pom mah laew" - I have come
   "pom ja bpy" - I will go

"at least 25% of the words are recognizable as borrowed words from English and French" - in my opinion only at *most* 5 percent of Thai words stand out as obvious English borrowings. There may also be some French ones, but I think they must be well disguised. I've just read a simple letter from a Thai friend (as a totally non-representative sample) - out of a letter of about 300 words, the only English borrowing I can see is 'email'.

"Thai has five tones and has complex rules governing which sounds use which tones"

If you know the spelling of a Thai word you can work out the tones of the syllables from deterministic rules (with just a few exceptions that can be memorised). This is an advantage over Chinese where memorising the written character does not tell you the tone. Likewise knowing the tones used in a Thai word can help you memorise the spelling, but many alternate spellings can give you the same tones, so it is only a hint. Thai spelling aims to preserve the etymology of words by its use of a variety of identically sounding consonants - great for educated Thais and linguistic historians - difficult for learners.



Another interesting facet of Thai:
- the characters Thais use for transliterating their language into English aren't a good match to English sounds. This means most English speakers reading from guide books and maps usually get the Thai sounds (for place names, food etc.) completely wrong, through no fault of their own. It can also be a hindrance for Thais trying to learn English. However no system would be perfect, there are sounds in Thai that aren't in English.



1 person has voted this message useful



scottim
Diglot
Newbie
United States
journeytothai.blogsp
Joined 6329 days ago

16 posts - 16 votes
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Thai

 
 Message 2 of 2
24 December 2006 at 7:23pm | IP Logged 
Quote:
There may also be some French ones, but I think they must be well disguised.


Well, to state the obvious, there's always the word for "French". :) And the word for "foreigner" must be derived from the word for "French".

...but I can't think of others.
1 person has voted this message useful



If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.1719 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.