Wow, a new article. Yeah, that’s right, look impressed. If you’re interested in linguistics, and particularly Thai, that is.

A couple of things have been revolving around my brain recently, amidst the flood of booze and sunbeams. And PHP code, yuck.

Firstly, learning Thai is hard. But it’s not that hard. Every Thai person I meet asks me how many years I have lived here. I will have been here for seven months tomorrow, and most Thais can’t believe I’ve picked up this much vocabulary in such a short time. Either that or they’re all being suspiciously polite. If so, I wonder what they want…

Anyway, there are apparently well over a million words in the English lexicon. In Thai, I’m told that there are maybe forty thousand. I’m still a beginner, of course, but it has already struck me that such everyday things as nuance, subtlety – even my beloved puns, are alien to the Thai way of thinking, or at least of speaking.

The Eskimos have a hundred words for snow, so we are told^[1] The Thais, in contrast, seem to have one word for each thing – perhaps two at most.

Consider this example – how do you introduce yourself to people? “Hi, I’m John, what’s your name?”, “Hi. I’m John. (looks at person expectantly)”, “How do you do, my name’s John, what’s yours?”, etc etc etc. All variations on a theme, of course, but at least noticably different.

Every single Thai person I have met has asked me “khun cheu arai?” (lit. “you name what?”) or the more informal “cheu arai” (lit. “name what?”). No variations, no exceptions. The only surprises have been when they’ve been able to actually pronounce my name on hearing it^[2]

Perhaps not the greatest example, especially for non Thai speakers, but the pattern seems to continue in almost all areas of the language. The Thais do have a few of their own rather cute phrases to fill in the gaps in their vocabulary – “same meat” is used to describe a couple who are what I guess we would call “soul mates”, which is a little more romantic. Likewise, one can deny being homosexual by asserting that “I do not like trees from the same forest”, which is rather more poetic.

Newspeak

But I was talking to a friend recently, who asked if I knew the word for “remember”. I didn’t, but knew “mai leum”, which means “not forget”. The word “mai” can effectively double your vocabulary – no need for antonyms when you can just learn half of the words, and put “not” in front of them to convey the other half.

And then I recalled a passage from George Orwell’s 1984:

“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words, Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself.

Take ‘good’, for instance. If you have a word like ‘good,’ what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘ungood’ will do just as well — better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good,’ what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and ’splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning, or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you want something stronger still. Of course, we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there’ll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words –in reality, only one word. Don’t you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was Big Brother’s idea originally, of course,” he added as an afterthought.

Chillingly, how do we express ourselves in Thai?

“dee” = “good”
“dee mak” = “very good”
“dee mak mak” = “very very good”

“mai dee” = “not good”
“mai dee mak” = “very not good”
“mai dee mak mak” = “very very not good”

We’re not so far away, are we? There may be words for ‘excellent’ and ’splendid’, but I am not aware of them.

Hey, You!

At the other end of the scale are the personal pronouns. “Him, his, her, it, its” is “khao, khao, khao, khao, khao”, which is easy enough. Wiping out the gender (and neuter) differences, if a little odd, is at least more sensible than French/Spanish/etc where every single noun has a gender which must be memorised.

But addressing people is another matter entirely. The Thai social hierarchy is enormously complex, but all Thais seem to generally know their place in it, at least compared to other Thais. They get a little confused by we “farang” (lit. “Western barbarian”, apparently) folk, but they generally know where they rank amongst each other.

To address someone as an equal, you would use the word “khun” for “you”. To address them as a superior it would be “pee” instead, and to address them as an inferior (and you’d better be sure that they agree with you), it’s “norng”.

You’d generally use “pee” for anyone more senior in position or age than yourself, “khun” for almost everyone else, and “norng” for a younger sibling. In fact, “norng chi” means “younger brother”, and “pee chi” means older brother”. Same with “norng sao” and “pee sao” for sister.

You can’t simply mention in conversation that you have a brother – you have to use “older brother” or “younger brother”. The heirarchy is that ingrained.

There are more options of course – on the vulgar side, naturally. “Mung” is from the Issan/Lao tongue, and is a rather more offensive version of “norng”, and “i” (or “e” for addressing females) is simply obscene, and likely to get you beaten up.

This being Thailand, of course, this wonderfully intricate method of addressing each other is summarily ignored all too frequently by the Thais themselves, who prefer to avoid the whole issue by referring to themselves by name instead. Thai style!

An English conversation:

Barry: “Hello Mike, would you like to go to the pub?”
Mike: “Hello Barry. I certainly would.”

A strictly correct Thai conversation:

Barry: (mentally discerns whether Mike is inferior, superior or equal)
Barry: “Hello Mike, would (inferior/superior/equal) you like to go to the pub?”

Mike: (mentally decides whether he agrees with my choice, then answers with either:)
Mike: “Hello Barry. I certainly would.”
or optionally beats me to death if incorrect.

A more informal Thai conversation (they honestly do this):

Barry: “Hello Mike, would Mike like to go to the pub?”
Mike: “Hello Barry. Mike certainly would”.

There you go – the whole social hierarchy issue dodged perfectly. More time for drinking. Mine’s a Guinness.