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To Think is to Know Posted by palmisano on May 22, 2013
Like in English, the Thai language differentiates between ‘to think’ and ‘to know’. However, Thai is a bit more complicated in that both words can be omitted from a context-obvious sentence, and ‘to know’ is divided up into three different words.
The Dreaded Thai Kows Posted by palmisano on May 20, 2013
When I teach a new set of beginning learners in my class, the very first lesson I give is on Thai tones. To scare them a bit I present various words that sound the same, but change meaning depending on the tone. While most teachers prefer to give the famous ‘mai’ example, I prefer the…
The Hand Posted by palmisano on May 13, 2013
In the last post we learned the basic body parts. Now that you’ve learned a general list of body parts, let’s go to the intermediate level and get more specific with one of them: the hand (meuu1 มือ).
Thai Body Parts Posted by palmisano on May 9, 2013
In Thai culture, different body parts are worthy of different levels of respect. This respect is determined by the height from the ground. For example, the head is the highest and should be revered, while the feet are the lowest and are therefore used to show disrespect. As such, touching a Thai on the head…
Gaw, and more Gaw Posted by palmisano on Apr 30, 2013
The word gaw3 ก็ has another case which I didn’t mention before. In this case, it’s as if you are determining the answer to a question half-way through your answer. By saying it this way, you are implying you hadn’t thought about the answer before being asked about it.
Jing Jing! Posted by palmisano on Apr 29, 2013
When I teach Thai to my beginner level students, I try to focus all my examples on the most common Thai words. After I graduate them from the 25 most common Thai words, I then move them on to the top 100. One of those ‘top 100’ words is จริง (jing1), which literally translates as…
Thai Question Word Slang Posted by palmisano on Apr 28, 2013
In English, there is both ‘spoken English’ and ‘written English’. We don’t realize it, but the way we write English isn’t always the same as how we speak it. In Thai this is taken to an even more extreme level…