Cyrille

You mean like in thai when you want to make the point that a novel/play/documentary/poem/movie/football match/ lecture/english class/ daytrip to the museum etc was 'sanuk' or 'mai sanuk'?

natalie8

Done
-----
Or that something is beautiful or not beatuful, or food is delicious or not delicious? Those really grate on me.

Guy Mandude

I've seen English-Thai dictionaries and they ARE more than 10 pages thick. Not sure there is a Thai word for "inculcate" though Cyr.

Asper

My dictionary has 650 pages for the English-Thai and 350 for Thai-English.

__________________

Cyrille

I was referring to the active vocabulary used by many thais, obviously.

For sure there are plenty of people in our home countries with limited vocabularies, but in Thailand the limits seem to apply across a much broader cross section of society.

I just asked my wife.

The closest she could come up with was obron which simply means 'to repeat something again and again in the hope that it will be understood'

Speaks volumes, really.

Boonmee

This is basically right. Although I would say that 90% of Thai conversations are about food (and therefore do not get particularly complicated), it is definitely the case that the dialogues are much more vague than in English. It is quite common, in my experience, for Thais to misconstrue what someone is saying to them, so that many conversations involve phrases like "You mean like this?", "In what way?", etc. ie questions which lead to a narrowing-down of the subject under discussion.

For complicated English words (what we might call "advanced vocab") there are two possibilities in Thai. Firstly, Pali words. These are particularly used in religious and political contexts, for example Prachaathibtai (democracy), Aariyatham (civilisation), Samaati (meditation).
The second possibilty is a combination of words. Since this word has already come up, I'll use it as an example. "to inculcate (somebody) with (something)" = Plook fang (sing nai) hai kab (khon nai); lit: "Plant/build listening of something give with someone". "Claustrophobia" = Rohk klua jamkad boriwen (lit: disease of fear of limited bounds).

To summarise that more succinctly: whereas advanced English vocab is based around adaptations (even bastardisations) of Greek and Latin, Thai uses either pure Pali and Sanskrit, or combinations of "pure Thai" vocab.

Worth noting, too, that "pure Thai" vocab is largely monosyllabic, unlike Pali and Sanskrit which are Indo-European languages (putting them in the same family as most European languages, and Persian.)

I would suggest, therefore, that the reason Thais normally use quite vague, basic, vocab, is because otherwise sentences become very "wordy".

__________________
พุทธัง สะระนัง คะฉามิ
ธัมมัง สะระนัง คะฉามิ
สังฆัง สะระนัง คะฉามิ

Guy Mandude

I don't envy ELF learners. Although Thai is a tonal language, how can anyone argue that English is not? There are endless combinations of sound stresses that can change the meaning of a sentence (or word!) in English - so English IS a tonal language, but the rules for using tones are ridiculously complex.

And I'd like to suggest that though the Thai dictionary may be shorter, this does not mean that Thais experience anything less profoundly than a native English speaker. Anyone care to make the argument for linguistic determinism?

wangsuda

I can. The Thai language tones literally define the word. One can say the Thai word "mai" in all five Thai tones and get five different meanings. English uses stress and intonation to highlight important parts of a sentence or to show emotion. In English (UNLIKE THAI), the stress and/or intonation does NOT change the meaning of the word.

__________________

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
I'm all bound up with machinery and people keep pushin' me alla time!
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Cyrille

^ Right.

The use of stress and intonation in a language does not make it a tonal language.

Boon Mee - interesting points.

Hamster

That's a really interesting question Guy. Kudos for bringing it up. I've had a few conversations about exactly this topic over the years.

I tend to think that words help us to define, qualify, categorize, organize, and otherwise make sense of the enourmous range of sensory inputs we are bombarded with.

I further think that when we have no words to describe an experience, though the experience may well be profound, it unfortunately is also difficult to make sense of, and thus the experience loses some of it's meaning.

In this way, I think that the greater the complexity of an individual's language the greater the complexity of meaning can be found in his or her experiences.

These are my thoughts - no evidence, no quotes, no studies - just impressions and gut feelings.

__________________
...you get what you need.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Boonmee

Very interesting point, Hamster. This perhaps is the key to understanding Thai culture? Analysis, subconscious or otherwise, of personal experience is not as "thorough" as it is in the Western (bad term, but I mean to refer to native speakers of Indo-European languages) mind, due to a lack of linguistic "infrastructure" to cope with such analysis. If certain concepts do not exist linguistically, then they probably do not exist culturally.

I hasten to add, I am merely concluding this based on my own use of logic, rather than on any concrete research into the matter!

__________________
พุทธัง สะระนัง คะฉามิ
ธัมมัง สะระนัง คะฉามิ
สังฆัง สะระนัง คะฉามิ

Hamster

It is a sensitive subject to be sure.

The flip side is that there must certainly be categories and constructs in other languages, not found in western ones, that allow native speakers of those languages an understanding that we cannot fully grasp.

__________________
...you get what you need.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Guy Mandude

So if I don't know the word for "yellow," I can't see the color yellow? This is where linguistic determinism gets sticky. I believe that thought is pre-verbal and that thought is NOT shaped by vocabulary.

But I do get flustered by the "aroi" designation to judge all food. Does it mean "this food has enough chilis to satisfy my Thai palette?"

mr tarwater

women, fire & dangerous things

This category from the Dyirbal language is also the title of a great book by G. Lakoff