Manee

As promised, I’m picking up momentum on the Manee translation. Everyone’s comments/corrections and added input is starting to turn this into something of a community project. That’s very encouraging, so I thank you all for staying tuned!

In this episode, there is a lot of actual quoted conversation going on, which is something we haven’t done much of yet (if at all).

Even if there is not a lot of new material being discussed in every section we go over, if nothing else it’s all about practice, practice, practice! I know that I am definitely reaping the benefits of this project, even to the point of improving my Thai typing ability.

Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Let’s start with the entire Thai text first…

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Mary Haas - Thai Language Author

When I first started learning Thai, one of the comments I consistently received from people – native speakers and farang alike – was that sentence structure didn’t matter all that much, as the person you were speaking to would get the gist of what you were saying based on the context.

The more I dig into the Thai language, however, I think this statement may have more to do with the Thai’s ไม่เป็นไร culture than us actually having to not worry about sentence structure and grammatical rules. I love the fact that Thai people are very casual about this, as it does certainly take some pressure and anxiety out of having to actually speak Thai to a real person. But, it can also be something of a detriment to serious students.

Rules are certainly made to be broken, but before you can break the rules you have to know the rules.

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Many words in Thai are spelled one way but pronounced another. This can certainly be very confusing. Many times the confusion is a result of vowels and/or consonants being hidden in the written syllable but still present and affecting tone when spoken. Read more…

Consonant clusters are two consonants with no discernible vowel separating them. In Thai, there are fourteen: Read more…