Subject: ¨Ñ¡Ã is jak or jak gra

[nakriian]

Subject: ¨Ñ¡Ã is jak or jak gra

If you say the word ¨Ñ¡Ã for wheel as a stand-a-lone word, do you say (1)jak or (2)jak gra? ́(getting conflicting using thai-language.com's online dictioanry.

Also, when you use it in combination with other words, like motorcyle for example ¨Ñ¡ÃÂҹ¹µì, is it (1)jak yaan yohn or (2)jak gra yaan yohn?

[Tod-Daniels]

Well, I don't think anyone would call a wheel of anything a ¨Ñ¡Ã and instead they'd probably use ÅéÍ if they were talking about a "wheel".

Still in perusing the thai-language entries you can see that ¨Ñ¡Ã is a Thai word "ripped" from Sanskrit/Pali; ¨¡Ú¡, and that can "muddy" the pronunciation some. You're not really getting conflicting info, you're getting the two possible pronunciations of that word depending on its usage and whether it's in a compound as a prefix a suffix or stuck somewhere in the middle.

It would appear (from my brief perusal) most of the time if the word ¨Ñ¡Ã is used as a stand alone, or added at the end is pronounced as jàk and if it's at the beginning of a word like ¨Ñ¡ÃÂÒ¹ it's jàk-​grà~​yaan (although sewing machine ¨Ñ¡ÃàÂ纼éÒ doesn't follow this because it's jàk-​yép-​pâa, but I've only heard sewing machines called à¤Ã×èͧàÂ纼éÒ, even when referring to the treadle (foot operated) machines the Soi side clothing repair women use).

Interesting, none the less. . .

[nam phyyng]

In Esaan they use the word "jak" as a shortened version of "Bohujak" which is the Esaan version of "Mai rujak" ("don't know"). Typical Esaan usage is "jak leaw" (mai rujak leaw). I used to hear this a lot in the Esaan village where I lived for 2 years. I am not sure of the correct tone though as Esaan tones are sometimes different from pasaa khlaang tones.

[Tod-Daniels]

I gotta hand it to the O/P, I found this same topic on 3 of the Thai language forums I peruse.

I post on two of 'em but was "invited to leave" the other one some time ago.

You sure got your bases covered with that kinda exposure,

Then again, the "shot-gun approach" can be effective at getting a consensus from replies.

Good Luck

[nakriian]

Tod-Daniels, good observation, I was just thinking about that earlier. I was wondering if that was you. Problem is, when I ask Thai people and they hear me asking another Thai person the same question, they get upset. I have to listen to the whole, "I guess you don't believe me, blah, blah, blah..." (sad fact is, I don't believe them, received too much bad info from Thais. At the same time, there are some things only Thais will know. You can read all the books want, it just won't get it done. Sometimes a Thai person's help is needed).

P.S. I don't mean it in a bad way when I say a Thai person's help is needed sometimes. I do like Thai people. I also think they mean well and they really do want to help you. At the same time, good intentions don't mean right answers.

Furthermore, not to be a dead horse. I don't think they know English well enough to explain things properly. You have to remember, they all grew up seeing English language, on signs, hearing it in movies, in music, and they are taught some English in school. However, we as farangs (not all farangs, but most of us), never dealt with Thai language. I saw the ß symbol when I traded foreign currencies and for me, that was the first time I ever saw Thai writing and looked up the letter/word and I was an adult then, already graduated. Point is, they may be familiar with English as they have been surrounded by it since birth, but that doesn't qualify them to explain anything to you. I had a secretary that warned me she couldn't speak English, but insisted she spoke just fine. However, I totally retract what I said now, because the more I talk to her, the more I realize she wasn't kidding. She is just familiar with it, but not able to explain anything very well in English.

[Tod-Daniels]

Sorry this is long. I have a tendency for overly long overly verbose posts.

I too have had Thais "get upset" (as much as Thais are allowed to show that they're upset within cultural limits) when I've asked another Thai the same question when in a group setting, even a group of Thais who know each other quite well. I'm always of the mind that the more people you ask the better overall answer you'll get given different peoples' understanding of the topic.

While I can't say I particularly "like" the Thais, I do have an incredibly high degree of tolerance for them, you know with this being THAI-land or what I call the "Land 'O Thais" and all. It's my experience they DO mean well with their explanations, and definitely "warm up" to anyone who's put time into their language to get past "2-word-tourist-thai" or "phrozen-phrazes". I think that's because so few foreigners ever invest that much time into Thai language acquisition. Once your Thai gets to a “workable” level, I’ve found the answers they can give you in Thai about usage are far closer to the mark and have far more value than the ones they come out with trying to explain things in English.

OFF-TOPIC (about Thais & English):

Just so you know ANY Thai whose ever attended "public school" learned English, those classes are mandatory not optional (even though the classes I've sat have some of the worse possible non-native English speaking Thais I've ever met in my life!). Most Thais, especially younger ones (under 40 y/o) actually have a fairly good reading and comprehension level in English, usually much higher than their spoken ability. What happens is, the second they walked outta the English class, there wasn't (and pretty much still isn't) any avenue open to them to practice what they learned on a daily basis. Foreigners as a rule “flock together” and we can’t be found scattered uniformly thru-out the country.

Thankfully with the internet and the real time connectivity the Thais have with each other and the world as a whole, this is changing. Still, once a student walks outta class they speak the "government approved version "Central Thai" at school, they speak their local dialect with their friends, at home with their parents and unfortunately the English they learned is just "filed away" somewhere.

Most Thais I know are far better versed on the "rules" of English grammar than they are at applying the rules in their spoken English. In fact, most of them know more English grammar rules than native speakers do (certainly far more obscure grammar rules than I remember). Quite honestly, I have no idea what a "present perfect continuous tense" sentence is; but I'd wager more Thais than foreigners could give examples of it without too much thought. This is because they're taught English by learning the grammar rules and NOT by "free speaking".

This knowing the rules of grammar in English is a double edged sword for almost every Thai out there. Before they speak, they hafta review EVERY possible grammar rule which might apply and every permutation of those rules too. This leads to a disconnect in their ability to speak. A great example Christopher Wright (a half Thai-half Brit kid who grew up in Bangkok and is famous for teaching English to Thais) uses is; he asked a student in his English class at a Thai uni, "What did you do this weekend?" The girl thought, thought some more, and finally answered with; "I go, went, gone to see, saw, seen a movie." He remarked that she tossed out all the forms of "go" and "see" in hopes that one of them was correct, because she was unsure which tense to use when denoting events which occurred in the past. It was her fixation on the rules which got in the way of her speaking.

The Thai education system plays an important role (as in it's 100% percent responsible for this problem) because it is "one way communication system". In Thai students' eyes, the teacher, holds ALL the knowledge on a subject and their task is to impart it to the students. Because of the hierarchical way Thais view superior/subordinate relationships within their cultural limitations, the teacher is almost totally beyond question. Students just can't ask the teacher a question if they don't understand something.

This is due to possible "loss of face". A student would NEVER EVER raise their hand in class and say, "Uhh, teacher, I'm really sorry, but I didn't quite understand that last part, could you go over it one more time for me?" That the student could "lose face" by seeming to be too stupid to understand.. OR (heaven forbid) the teacher could "lose face" by being too stupid to explain it in a way the students could understand.

Education wise it's the most counter productive system to pass on knowledge of any kind especially English that I've ever witnessed first hand. This is possibly why this country turns out "degree holding Thai auto-bots" by the boat load. These are people who have degrees but have no way of applying what they learned in real life situations.

Boring discourse or rant over...

Sorry that got off topic. I'm glad you're pushing the Thais to provide you answers, and glad you're tryin' different forums too, not everyone "jumps" around". Your determination in language acquisition is admirable. I wish I hadn’t “wasted” the first 3 of my 7 years here tryin’ to compel Thais to speak English. If I’da jumped into it way back when, like you seem to be, I’d be wicked good at Thai now, instead just a half a**ed foreign speaker of Thai.

Good Luck. .

[nakriian]

Tod-Daniels, good information. Posts like yours are helpful. You would be surprised how much people can get from reading what you might see as off-topic chatter. The off-topic chatter (not literally, just using it to identify the style), is what seperates this knowledge from book knowledge. Out of all the avenues I have used, I find myself coming back to the forums so I can have everyone answer my questions. The one on one with Thais is not productive.

Looking at the big picture, for me, I really don't feel I have made such great progress. I mean, I have dabbled in reading and writing for a while (embarassed to say how long) and even though I can read and write, I am still not satisfied with my abilities. I honestly don't know when the day of realization is for me. I keep thinking, one day, I will get this.

Just last night, went to Tesco Lotus, looking for some safety pins. I didn't know what to call them and my iPhone battery was dead, so I couldn't even look up the word using the dictionary app. So I resorted to what I often do, pulled out a piece of paper and drew it, then approached a store worker and pointed to my drawing and said Íѹ¹Õé·Õèä˹¤ÃѺ. I was then showed around the store for a while and got the usual äÁèÁÕæ. Let me translate äÁèÁÕ for you. äÁè means "lazy" and ÁÕ means "to find" so it means "I lazy to find". Forget about it meaning "no have", who ever came up with that had no working knowledge of real Thai. So after 15 minutes, I found the item that supposedly they didn't have. Once again, good intentions with unsatisfactory end results.

I do believe that Thai language can be learned by farangs as some farangs speak very well. However, there is no easy way. Pimsleur will not magically have farangs conversating back in forth with local Thais. It is just not happening. And the whole thing about the feds and the CIA using Pimsleur, come on? I am sure they do, but you are going to send someone to a foreign country for a major undercover operation and think they are going to be talking like locals after a Pimsleur 10 day course, come on, not happening. You will get some one killed thinking that. How about all the local stuff they need to know, Pimsleur going to help them with that to? Nada, not happening, this is why they offer that 10 day program for $10 (they did at one time, not sure now). There is no easy way, just go out there and get into the meat grinder and live to see another day. Eventually, you will figure it out.

There was that "ah hah" moment for me when I was still learning to read. I remember sitting on the bus (remember, I like that culturistic stuff, can't learn same things driving my car, accept to stay on the left side of the road, which I still forget sometimes). I was sitting on the bus and just started reading, easily, for the first time. It was at that moment that I knew I could read Thai (even though I don't understand it all, I can read it). So, I am hoping one day, I am listening to Thais speak and I get that "ah hah" moment where everything they are saying is easily understood and my responses are in real time and I can finally say, I beat this thing. They aren't so smart. This was not a big deal that I made it out to be.

[Tod-Daniels]

Thanx for not castigating me for draggin' the thread off topic. . .

The approach most foreigners (not you) take to learning this language remind me of the TONZ of books geared to teach English to Thais which can be found in every bookstore. The shelves are littered with "Learn to speak English" in; 90, 99, 120 and 140 hours. I think a person could attend Thai language school for the Ministry of Education's minimum required 4 hours a week for the rest of their lives, and never speak anything which resembled Thai enough to have Thais understand them.

While I've said it before; I've self studied Thai by buying the books Andrew Biggs (possibly the most famous non-native speaker of Thai) has written teaching Thais English. I used them in reverse, because they have the Thai, the English and then explain in Thai why they're different and in what ways. Christopher Wright's books are equally good in that regard. I did by those "comic book" situational learn English books for Thais too. Those are the ones I most often see Thais carrying around (given their penchant for "comic book" stuff). These books have the Thai sentence, the English sentence and then Thai script spelling out how the English words sound. They're remarkably close to how the actual English words are pronounced. Each chapter is situational and shows what would be said by whom in the situation. I got a lot of good "polite Thai" from those books too.

A while back I started reading what I call "trash teen romance novels" in Thai. I don't read the ones translated from English (because a LOT of them are really hard to read), but I do buy a lot from a company called Anit Publishing. They are written in modern spoken Thai, use a LOT of slang, and contain a lot of spoken dialog between the characters. Plus teens the world over all feel the same emotions; love, jealousy, anger, fear, etc. They're easy to read, and have provided me with a LOT of current colloquialisms or things said now a days that a foreigner wouldn't necessarily be exposed to.

Don't forget as foreigners here, most Thais think we can't understand them. This is a very valuable tool to exploit in "eavesdropping" on Thai conversations. I take public transportation here all the time in what I call "recon mode". I like to listen in to what's goin' on around me and see if I can understand the gist of the conversations.

Even in my daily life I rarely speak Thai when I'm around Thais unless I hafta, and prefer to engage them in English first. I like to "eavesdrop" on the back-chatter first to get a "feel" for things. It's super easy to go into a crowded food court and sit next to a table of Thais. Because we're foreigners it's unlikely to make them change the "social register" (how they're talkin' to each other), the way it would automatically change to a more polite register if an older Thai sat within ear-shot. I get a LOT of "slang", different ways to say things "more like Thais do", and tidbits of info by doing this all over Bangkok every day. Unfortunately the second you pull out a book written in Thai, the register will change because Thais catch on to the fact that if you can read Thai, most likely you can understand it too, lol.

Anyway, good luck, keep at it, and like I tell students of this language all the time; there’re 64+ million people here who seem to speak and understand Central Thai just fine. I'm pretty sure they all ain't smarter than you are. Some for sure, but not every last one of 'em. In the same breath I also tell people; I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed myself, so I know if I can speak something which sounds close enough to Thai that Thais answer me, anyone can do it to, IF they try. ..