Saturday, February 21, 2009

ภาษาดางๆ

I find these mystery language quizzes very amusing.
Reminds me of House.

Translations of "My Hovercraft is full of eels."

The Thai version is:
โฮเวอร์คราฟท์ของผมเต็มไปด้วยปลาไหล
It uses the masculine pronoun ผม, a female discussing her hovercraft infestation would say:
โฮเวอร์คราฟท์ของฉันเต็มไปด้วยปลาไหล

I assume that you could use เรา to be non-gender-specific. เรา can represent both 1st and 2nd person, singular and plural. I don't really know which way it would be interpreted in a hypothetical sentence with no context.

Also I have to note that the transliteration given for ไหล is "lhai". This is an over-literal transliteration. The ห [h] is silent; It only lends the syllable its inherent rising tone. Which is normally transliterated with a diacritic. (This youtube video has a great explanation of ห.)

This is why I generally avoid transliteration. I know I should use it on this site, to make it more accessible. But it's simply much easier for me to use อักษรไทย.

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