Not *that* kind of meat!
I’m having a lot of fun working on these Grammar Wars posts. Not only am I learning a lot, but I’m also finding that the most reader interaction is taking place on these discussions as well.
I recently wrote another Grammar Wars post comparing verbs that mean “to see.” One of those verbs — เจอ /jəə/ — has a few other meanings, however, and can be a bit tricky when trying to use it with its other meanings.
Let’s “dig in” (that one will hit you on the way out) and talk about a few more verbs that can, and may, confuse us farang and make us just a tad bit loopy.
The word เจอ means “to see,” as evidenced in my Grammar Wars post about “see” verbs. เจอ can also mean “to meet” or “to find/come across,” which is actually its more commonly associated meaning. However, the verb หา /hǎa/ is actually more common and used more frequently when talking about meeting someone at a location. For example:
ผมจะไปหาพี่ Joe ที่ร้านอาหาร
/pǒm jà bpai hǎa pîi “Joe” tîi ráan-aa-hǎan/
(I will “to go” “to meet/visit” “older sibling” Joe at restaurant)
I will go meet Joe at the restaurant.
I’m going to go out on a limb a little bit here and inject a little speculation. Normally I like to get a few more facts before making these presumptions public, but that’s how we learn, right? It seems to me that เจอ perhaps is used more passively instead of as directly as หา. What I mean by that is, เจอ seems to be used more for expressions like “See you later!” or “See you tomorrow” rather than talking about seeing actual objects or people.
As I said, that’s an off-the-cuff observation, so any thoughts from my fellow Thai language learners would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks Josh
I agree with your comments about เจอ and หา but note the difference between หา and ดู du both of which are said the mean see( amongst other things) in the Click Thai dictionary App ( which is also very good like the one you mention). In noticing how Thais speak duu seems to be used for watching or observing for some time, as in du nang, whereas har seems to be used for seeing in the sees of momentarily seeing, Eg I was him walk by.
The analogy with English does not help. For example we watch TV but see a movie.
I found thedifference between the thre words troubling at first but think I have now come to grips with the different uses.
The TV/movie comment is exactly the same way I had to learn the difference, too. Very confusing at first. So what you’re saying, “haa” seems to be used more as momentary, rather than “duu” which is longer in duration. That’s very interesting; I haven’t heard of that before. Makes sense, however.
เจอ means to meet whilst หา means to look for..
Here are some examples from what I have run across:
หา “go to see” as in ไปหาหมอ “go see a doctor”
เจอ “see” (meet, encounter) as in แล้วเจอกัน “see you later”
หา + เจอ “look for” + “find” as in หาไม่เจอ “look for, but not find”
พบ “meet” (just like เจอ but more formal)
ดู “watch” as in ดูหนัว “watch a movie”
เห็น “see” as in เห็นกับตา “see with your own eyes” but also in the figurative sense as Josh mentions in his original article.
มอง “look” as in มองดู (look + watch) = “stare at” and มองไม่เห็น “look but not see”
Thanks, Keith!