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#71
20-09-2005, 10:44
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My personal favourite is CAN/CANNOT for yes/no
I guess because it is so formal in English-but it always makes me laugh-particularly when you ask what you think is a simple and innocuous sort of question and you get a very serious "velly solly Sir CANNOT!!!!" 
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#72
20-09-2005, 12:22
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I can see why this would seem funny to you. However, a peculiar thing about the Thai language is that there is no such word as "Yes", as we know the word in English. The closest thing to a straight out yes in Thai is "Chai". Chai means yes, however, it only means yes if someone asks you a rhetorical question. IOW, if I say(in Thai), You are going to see you friend later, aren't you? The answer would be "Chai" because in Thai the "aren't you" part of the queston is "Chai mai?" and if you say "Chai" it means yes. But if you say "Mai Chai" it means no, so the word "Chai" means either yes or no, in this case, depending on whether "Mai" precedes it. The other two common yes words are "Dai" and "Khaa(for a woman) or Khap(for a man). Dai basically means OK. Like can you do it for me? Dai means OK or yes, i can. The word dai often means can, but has other meanings, too. In this case, the question would end with "Dai Mai?" in Thai, meaning "can you?" and the answer is Dai for yes and "Mai dai" for no. So, directly translated to Engish, dai=can and "mai dai"=can not. Khaa or Khap is not as clear to me. But I have used it often. It seems to be an indicator of agreement. If someone asserts an explanation or is making a point and you agree, or don't want to bother debating the point, you can say, Khap!! and a woman could say Khaa! In this case, when a man says it, it is high, sharp, and abrupt. When a woman says it, it is soft and trailing off, sort of fading a way, and dropping in pitch(IINM!), which is a very interesting difference, when you think about it. I think depending on the context it can mean anything from "I agree wholeheartedly" to "Yeah, sure....whatever." Of course, that is only if Khap stands alone when spoken in response to something someone said to you. It is an affirmation of what was said. In all other cases, it has no meaning, except that it shows that you are being polite and respectful to the person you are talking to. For questions which have an action verb in them, such as "Are you going now?" then to say yes, you repeat the verb. The verb for go is "bai", so you would say "bai" to answer yes. If someone asked "Did you go to the market?" the you would say "bai laew", which is to say "go already" or "went already?" Sorry to be so pedantic, but when you understand Thai a litte, then you can see why thay say some of the funny things they do! JayBee 
__________________
LOS is warm, soft, smooth, and brown. 
Last edited by JayBee : 20-09-2005 at 12:30.
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#73
20-09-2005, 22:52
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I agree. When you start to learn how sentences are constructed in Thai, their poor english doesn't seem quite so poor. Still the cutest thing I've ever heard, though.
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#74
20-09-2005, 23:47
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#75
21-09-2005, 07:36
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555555555.............pum poi dog...........l'm tipping he does not bother with chop sticks though.
__________________
 HHplc Rose Tinted Glasses 6999 Baht each....Order NOW via PM....A Must for First Time Visitors to Phuket 
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#76
21-09-2005, 15:16
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Watching Thai news programs with a female interviewer, they frequently use 'khaa' as we would in the UK say 'yes... yes.... yes, go on, yes... yes....', only Thais do so constantly throughout the interviewee's replies, whether they hesitate or not. Male interviewers do not use 'khrap' so much, I recall noticing.
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#77
23-09-2005, 21:23
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I think they speak endears them to me. I love it and I'm constantly doing double takes to figure out what they're saying sometimes. Other times I know exactly what they're saying...
I buy, you pay. Honest and direct. First time I heard that one I laughed my ass off for days. Now I try to say it before they do. Same as .. up to you. Drives them crazy when you beat them to it. /grin
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#78
30-09-2005, 22:28
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pretty funny conversation last night:
on the phone with ex-gf. shes flying home to LOS by herself from Italy. she asked me if they had a toilet on the plane. i said yes. she then asked em, what if she has to go #2? i say, you can go in the toilet. she then asks me where does her poop goes. i say it gets flushed out of the plabne(at least i think it does) she then asks, "it no go on people's house?" i say plane to far up. she then says that she will wait to go. pretty funny exchange
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#80
01-10-2005, 16:37
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I hear some Thais, especially one monk I know make the uuuuuuuuu-eeeeee sound, like right in the middle of his sentences,if he thinks something you said or did is funny or odd!! It just really crackes me up to hear him. It is real high-pitched when he does it!
__________________
LOS is warm, soft, smooth, and brown.
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#81
01-10-2005, 19:57
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555555555..  It goes into a big tank on the plane, Which is emptied after the plane lands, Would not like that job myself 
__________________
LIFES A BIT*H THEN U MARRY 1 
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#82
02-10-2005, 08:09
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The Honey Dippers
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I live in an area with septic tanks. All the shit collects in the tank while the waste water is siphoned off into underground gravel-filled trenches where it soaks down into the earth. Now they have big trucks with pumps and hoses to suck it out. Not such a bad job, really. There is no smell when they open the tank until the hose breaks the surface. Pee-yuuuuuu! Then it is bad. But, oddly enough, one gets used to it very quickly, and then it is not so bad. In fact, on rainy days, there is no smell at all for some reason! It is weird to see all the condoms floating on top of the water in the tank! They used to call the guys that did this job, the HONEY DIPPERS, because in the old days, when they did not have big gas-engine driven suction pumps, they used big giant-sized ladles and had to scoop up all of the shit out of the tank, pour it in buckets, and dump the buckets in the tank on the truck. Can you imagine scooping up shit in ladles and dumping buckets of shit all day for a living?? Now that was nasty!!  Talk about having a shit job! JayBee
__________________
LOS is warm, soft, smooth, and brown.
Last edited by JayBee : 02-10-2005 at 08:13.
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#85
03-10-2005, 23:56
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I had to laugh at how one girl pronounced my name, Marcus. I had just come out from C&N heading to Bangla Rd. All of a sudden I hear a girl calling Maket, Maket from across the street. Got spotted by a girl I met the previous trip.
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#87
04-10-2005, 13:26
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Phon is the correct Thai pronunciation of your name! There are some words(and names) that are very hard for them to say in correct English. It is more natural for her to say it in Thai.
__________________
LOS is warm, soft, smooth, and brown.
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#88
04-10-2005, 14:19
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I never agreed with that...
Is Pierre a Paul ?? Is Jean a John ?? Is Luk a Luke ?? Etc.. I always think you should maintain what the name is in the persons home tounge and pronounciation.. As my name is murder for then to say I jst say my name is Sep Tang (save money) gets a laugh and its closer than they usually get by butchering my real name..
__________________
Men have only 2 emotional states, hungry and horny.. So ladies, if you see me without an erection, make me a sandwich.
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#89
04-10-2005, 22:28
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well, maybe she is just getting me back! funny story. when i 1st met gail at sabai room. i picked her and when she came out of the fishbowl she said "me,gail" so for a whole week i thought her name was miguel(which i thought was aweird name for a thai girl, but you never know) so one day she was going out and i was going out, i told her id sign her in to my room so she could come and go as she pleases. she came back that day to get the key and becasue i wrote miguel, which i still thought was her name after a week, she was all upset when i got to the room, she said i had another girl in the room!
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#90
04-10-2005, 22:34
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Dude, you have the weirest communication failures..
LMAO
__________________
Men have only 2 emotional states, hungry and horny.. So ladies, if you see me without an erection, make me a sandwich.
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#91
06-10-2005, 13:06
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Not same same. I am not talking about a Thai version of Paul. I am just saying that the way you pronounce Paul in Thai is Phon. The reason is because you can not have an L sound at the end of a word. If the word ends in L, then it is pronounce same as if the L was an N. It's like we cannot pronounce Paul's girlfriend's name, so we call her Gail for lack of being able to pronounce it the Thai way, Gail is the English pronunciation of her name, but it is not a different version of Thai name, just our best effort to pronouce it. Due to the fact that no Thai words or names end in L sound, it is a given that her name is not actually Gail, unless she adopted an English name or was given an English name by her parents, which is higly unlikely. What is most likely is that her name is Gaew, or Kaew, which to us would be very difficult to pronouce correctly, maybe impossible for most of us, but when spoken by a Thai person, it would sound to us like they said Gail. Furthermore, there are very few Thai names that we pronounce correctly. Unless the name happens to have only mid-tone syllables in it, then we probably pronounce it wrong every time! So is it OK for us to pronounce it the way we can pronounce it, but not OK for them to pronounce our names the way they are pronounced in Thai? I don't usually believe in a double standard. What's fair for us, is fair enough for them! JayBee BTW, if Gail's name was Gail, she would tell you her name was Gain and that is how her friends would pronounce her name!
__________________
LOS is warm, soft, smooth, and brown.
Last edited by JayBee : 06-10-2005 at 13:23.
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#92
06-10-2005, 13:31
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Well put me in the camp of a name should be pronounced as per the pronounciation of the name holder.
London is not Londres etc.. Munchen is not Munich... In fact cities all over Europe suffer this renaming and I have never understood that localization of names either.. If I know I am miss pronouncing a persons name as per the way they say it I change and pronoucne it the way I should... I know 2 Geew's (high / falling) thats what I call them.. No its not OK for us to screwball thier names.. Similarly to me Phon is not Paul (whether pronounced in NY / Bangkok / London / or Tokyo.. Paul is Paul and Phon is a badly pronounced version...
__________________
Men have only 2 emotional states, hungry and horny.. So ladies, if you see me without an erection, make me a sandwich.
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#93
06-10-2005, 13:52
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I think that position is admirable! Good for you. And that is the ideal case, I agree. However, just as most farangs get Thai names wrong, most Thais will get English names wrong except for a few easy ones. Even my Thai teacher, who lives here, has a degree from the University of Michigan(one of the best in the US), and speaks excellent English, cannot get the name David right, and calls him Day-weed. Just as most TGs are going to say "welly nice," unless they are really upper class and then maybe can say, "werry nice." But how many can say "very nice?" Probably only a handful in all of LOS! To say Paul may not be quite that hard for them, but it is very difficult, because they don't understand how to end a word in an L sound. Their mouths just don't work that way naturally. The circuit to move the oral muscles and tongue that way is just not developed. So it is good to be idealistic, and encourage people to improve. But IMHO.you have to accept that, practically speaking, it is not easy, and most people are going to get it wrong.
__________________
LOS is warm, soft, smooth, and brown.
Last edited by JayBee : 06-10-2005 at 13:55.
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