Thai Language and Vocabulary

Thailand has its own language and alphabet which is completely different from Western languages. The Thai alphabet contains 44 consonants and 18 vowels. In addition, Thai is a tonal language with 5 different tones, meaning the same word can have 5 different meaning dependent on the tone. Believe me this can be very confusing when you are learning the language! Golf has demonstrated for me already and I’ll be damned if I can hear much difference in the tones most times and I certainly can’t reproduce them. Very funny for her and very frustrating for me.

That being said, most common words and phrases can be picked up by the Westerner and it is very appreciated by the Thai’s. Want to get a smile? Simply use some Thai phrases when you are in Thailand. Even if you mangle the pronunciation it will be appreciated and in most cases will get you a huge smile and possibly a new friend.

Here’s a great resource for Thai writing: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/thai.htm

However if you just want some basic phrases to use keep coming back here to Thailand Musings. I will try to add short lists of 5-10 words or phrases each week and if you have any questions about any of them you can certainly leave a comment and Golf can help you.

So, here’s the first of many Thai vocabulary lists:

Sawasdee – Hello

La korn - goodbye

Korp khun – thank you

Khun cheu a rai? – What is your name?

Khun pood pa sa ang krit mai? – Do you speak English?

Kor tode – excuse me

Ka rue na – please

Sa ba dee mai? – How are you?

Dee – good

Mai dee – bad

Please note also that Thai’s are very polite, especially to strangers. When speaking it is polite to add –khrab to the end of any sentence or phrase if you are a male. If you are a female you would add –kaa. So “Hello” is said like this:

Sawasdee khrab (for males)

Sawasdee kaa (for females)

Please do not forget to add these to everything you say lest the person you’re speaking to think you are rude and unthinking. Let me know if there are any words or phrases in particular you’d like to learn and I’ll be happy to include them in the next Thai vocabulary post.

Popularity: 49% [?]

Talk About Size…(Thailand vs. America)

I woke up at 5 o’clock in this morning with my eyes still closed…tired, have to push myself so hard because I want to go to the gym. Steve has to be at work before 6 so I just need him to drop me at the gym first and then I can go back to nap again later.

One thing (from a lot of things) that different between Thailand and here is “size”. Yes,size…

I grew up with the size that different from Thai women size. What is the Thai women size look like? Hmm…mostly for Thai women will have the average height around 5′ to 5′5″, most of them thin and also small but for me is 174 centimeters or 5′8″. And do you know seem like I’m the tallest one in my nursing class on that time. So when I stay with my Thai girl friends I will be a lot different from them.

The problem was when I went to shopping either with them or by myself I have to pray for myself…please have my size for these sexy dress, please let me fit with these Jeans or those cute pants something like that. One good thing is I’m not a fat girl so not that difficult for me for find my size at least sometimes anyway. Still for my clothes size will be “large” or “extra-large”, once a while will be lucky with medium but just occasionally.

First few weeks since I got here, Steve said I need to get the coats and some clothes for wintertime. Ok, I said because I think it would be nice and can see what and how is the shopping mall in here look like. After we’re done with choosing process and then I have to try them on. Steve asked me what size do you want to try on Golf? For me no need to think though because I know my size. So I told him right away “extra large” or at least “large” honey. But you know what…make me surprise a lot! Because they’re too loose and for finally I ended up with smaller size!!! OMG

I couldn’t believe on that time, I called and talked to my friends. They laughed so hard and said if they come over here they might have to wear the kid size. ;-D

I had the conversations with some of my friends at work. And I brought this story up while we talked because I wanted to know what and how do they think about it. Most of them had exactly the same idea that because people in here, a lot of them are overweight and big so that’s why they have to produce the size of the clothes similar to the size of people in here.

Hmm ok, I got it…but what if they have to travel to Thailand then what ’s going to happen?

In Thailand we don’t have so many places where we can drive through just like in here. We don’t have McDonald’s drive through, the banks drive through or Starbucks drive through etc. Every place we need to go and get the service from we need to walk in and not so convenient like this. Well, we have the delivery for some, but still not as good as drive through. And I like it a lot…but sometime I think it’s too much. Because when you can get every things so easy and so convenient, you will getting lazy and for finally don’t want to do anything.

Just my idea…

Popularity: 24% [?]

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