Tuesday Thai Tutorial #2

Daily Verb"To be"เป็นþen

Daily Noun"Car"รถrôt (wrought)

 "Motorcycle"มอร์เตอร์ไซค์maaw dtuuhr sai

Daily Adjective"Three"สามsaám

 "Four"สี่ seĕ

Daily "?" Word"What?"อะไรă-rai

Daily Other Word"polite word"ครับkhrâp

 "polite word"ค่ะkhà

 "polite word"คะkhâ

Daily Qualifier"Vehicle"คัน khan

The letters for today are the letter KH (ค, which I call a "sibilant K"... so that it is stretched a little bit, similar to the QU in "quiche"), the letter N (น), and the vowel A ( -ัี which looks like a little "a"). In the "khan" above, the consonant ค comes first, and then the vowel ( -ั ) above it, and then the consonant น. This particular "A" (there are several in Thai) is for when the vowel comes between two consonants. If you will remember from last week's lesson, the qualifier word for person, คน, was simply the KH plus the N... with no vowel. In the Thai written language, the "uh" sound in คน is understood. Therefore it is pronounced KH(o)N. Add the "A" sound, and it changes it to KH(a)N. (As an added bonus, you get 2 free Thai words today for the price of one: If you use คัน (khan) as a verb intead of a qualifier, it means "to itch". If you put it in a sentence as a noun, it means "a handle". The qualifier from last week, คน (khon) as a verb means "to mix".)

The special words today are something that is placed at the end of just about every sentence by Thai people when they are speaking. They don't mean anything in particular, but are put there in order to be polite. An equivalence in impact in English would be if you were to end all of your sentences with "Okay?". ("The whether is nice, okay?") Men use the word ครับ (khrâp), and women use the word ค่ะ (khà... note the little apostrophe from last weeks lesson indicating a falling tone) for ending sentences, and use the word คะ (khâ... with a high tone) after asking a question.

The question word for today is อะไร (ă-rai) which means "what?", and the verb for today is เป็น (þen — which is halfway between a "B" and a "P"... say "Ben" with a bit of a punch to it), which means "to be". The simple sentence, เป็น อะไร (þen ă-rai) means "What's wrong?" or "What's up?" If you want to ask what kind of car a person is talking about, you would say รถ อะไร (rôt ă-rai), which translates as "What car?" as in asking for more specific information about a car. (This is different from "which car?" that asks for a car to be pointed out to you... which you have not learned yet).

Notice the word for motorcycle is "maaw dtuuhr sai". Say it quickly and you'll realize that this is simply "motorcy" without the "cle". Thai people can't have a word that ends in the letter "L". (When forced to do so, they change it to the letter "N".) However, literally thousands of words in the Thai language come straight from the English language. "Motorcy" is one of them. Even more straightforward is "beer", "apartment", "TV", and "happy". (For the last two words, Thai people have their own words, but use these as well... so feel free to say "þen happy!")