I love my job, full of surprises, here is one of them :
One day, one of my students tried to impress me with the new word he learnt over the weekend.
He said, “You will be so proud of me, Mia….I learnt a new word last weekend”
I smiled and excited, “อะไรค่ะ??” (à-rai ká : what??)
he looked so proud and said…..
“ ผม มี แฟน “ pŏm(I : for male speaker) mee fan (boyfriend, girlfriend) : I have a girlfriend
“เขา มี บ้าน” kăo(he or she) mee bâan (house or home) : he/she has a house
“คุณ มี ความสุข” kun(you) mee kwaam soòk (happiness) : you have happiness (literally mean you are happy)
Then he said “I looked up more words then came up with this last sentence..actually I loved it when I was in Thailand…..ready???”
“ผม ขอบ ขี้ ช้าง” pŏm (I) chôb (to like) kêe chaáng (elephant)
I laughed (of course not out loud) then tried to pull myself together and gently explained……
“Well, what you need in this sentence is ขี่ (kèe) with low lone…..it means to ride”
“BUT what you said was ขี้ (kêe) with high tone…..its changed the meaning”
He was lost for a second….I could see he was thinking very, very hard
“What you meant to say was I like to ride an elephant…right???” I said
“Yeah??????” he replied (he still did not get what was wrong)
I held back my laugh and said ”BUT what your sentence means….I like elephant Sh*t!!!! ”
(Forgive my French)
He laughed at his mistake then quickly said “Well, I think I need more fiber”
I simply said ” Now you know why Thai pronunciation is extremely important “
Vocabulary
อะไร à-rai what
มี mee to have or has
ชอบ chôb to like
แน่นอน nâe non absolutely, certainly
ผม pŏm I (for male speaker)
แฟน fan boyfriend, girlfriend
เขา kăo he or she
บ้าน bâan house or home
คุณ kun you
ความสุข kwaam soòk happiness
ช้าง chaáng elephant
ขี่ kée to ride
ขี้ kêe shit or poop
Sentences
ผมมีแฟน pŏm mee fan I have a girlfriend
เขามีบ้าน kăo mee bâan he/she has a house
คุณมีความสุข kun mee kwaam soòk you have happiness (literally mean you are happy)
ผมชอบขี่ช้าง pŏm chôb kèe chaáng I like to ride an elephant
ผมชอบขี้ช้าง pŏm chôb kêe chaáng I like elephant poop
ps. Thai don’t use ขี้ kêe as swear word.
FYI : Sh*t is one of my favorite swear….please dont tell my students!
Time to practice…..
The guy is ridingขี่ (kèe) an elephant..while the elephant is ขี้ (kêe) pooping
Thai Proverb
Nice article. I like how you differ between long and short vowels in your transliteration which a lot of learning materials don’t do. A lot people don’t know that it’s not only important to get the tone right, but making the vowel of each syllable long or short equally important.
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Thank you very a whole lot for sharing. this is precisely what i used to be in search of for. I’m glad to see that I’m now not the only one to be into this topic. I’m able to definitely go to this blog another time.On this post DVD you first speak slowly so that people can recognize, then they say the equal component at regular, supersonic velocity so that they can learn the way it is really stated! Cool thoughts.