tiếng Việt

I have decided to start learning Vietnamese.

This is mainly for pragmatic reasons. My study of Thai was precipitated by a visit to Thailand. I continued studying basically for the hell of it- I enjoyed it. But Vermont is a long ways from Thailand, and I don't currently have the means to return there. Basically, my Thai is useless for the time being. After a long period of consideration, I've decided to take a stab at Vietnamese. I like Vermont, and Vietnamese is spoken in my area by a considerable minority. It's simply more practical in the short term than Thai. If I have to "force" myself to study a 2nd language, it is the obvious choice. There will be more opportunity in learning it and more opportunity for using it. Also, it's geographically close to Thai, and shares many traits, like being tonal and analytic/isolating. I should have some familiarity with most of the grammatical concepts, although they are used differently.

I'm going to try and approach Vietnamese differently from Thai. Perhaps I can learn from my mistakes? I'm going to try and emphasize the spoken language. With Thai, my reading far outstrips my listening. I don't want to repeat this imbalance. I also will look in to formal instruction, and adopt a more structured (and more social) study regimen.

I plan to continue my Thai study as a serious hobby (this blog will still be titled ฝรั่งงง) but I'm going to attempt, for the time being, to put the majority of my effort into tiếng Việt.

Well, hello there.

After some dabbling, I've decided to "launch" this silly blog. I'm going to shoot for the modest goal of three posts per week. Topics will include: me babbling about Thai; me babbling about Vietnamese; and maybe me babbling about other language-related stuff. I have no authority or qualifications, and will not be attempting to "teach" anything. The focus will be on the process and progress of my personal language study, and anything interesting that comes out of it.

Coming up, I plan on doing some contrasting and comparing between the Thai and Vietnamese languages, as I take my first steps into the later.

In search of 一番

I am rather ashamed to admit I bought a shirt at a thrift store which had a "Chinese character" blazed across the front. I first felt guilty for not knowing the meaning of the character, but then I became worried it was just fake. How does one go about looking up Chinese characters? Or could it be Kanji? I have very little knowledge of either Chinese or Japanese. I only know the basics of the structure in Chinese- each character is (usually? always?) one morpheme and one syllable. I also know that characters are broken down in to "radicals" for collation purposes.

Searching with the radical 由 plus 5-7 strokes, I found 番. The definition given is "take turns, repeat." A Kanji search gives ばん as the Hiragana form. It means "many". But wait- this character, 番, isn't correct- my shirt has a horizontal line above it.

Breakthrough! The character for "one" is a horizontal line (in both Chinese and Japanese, apparently.) If stacked vertically, 一番 is my character. In Japanese, it means "first, top, best", written in Hiragana as いちばん and pronounced "ichiban". The same two characters don't seem to form a word or phrase in Chinese. (Perhaps it just means "one turn"- but that's a wild guess.)

So in conclusion, my shirt apparently says "Number One" in Japanese on it. Also: logographic writing systems are scary, but apparently not impossible to figure out.

For the record, "first" in Thai is ที่หนื่ง or แรก.

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.

เก้าสิบสองคำ

I'm so crap with vocab, but I did some work recently.
As I read the 2nd to last story in my comic, I jotted down every word I had to look up (something that obviously I should always do, but until recently it would have been a slog). There were "only" ~92, which worked out to 4.5 per page. Which is a meaningless number without the numbers of words to a page, but I don't even know how you'd go about counting words in Thai. Is ใจจดใจจ่อ four words, or one? Or two?

The definitions are taken from my SE-ED pocket dictionary, (I was offline at the time.) I tried to write down the applicable definitions, and only the applicable definitions. One of my rules is to not attempt to memorize words I don't have a context for.


นพเคราะห็ The 9 planets (they'll have to change this- นพ means nine)
จักรวาล universe
ลดลง decrease
ขยาย enlarge, magnify
ปกคลุม cover, spread
กอง pile/crowd (class.?)
ทันที promptly
ลงมือ start
จัดการ take care of
สมควร appropriate
ห้อมล้อม surround
เด็ด pick (fruit)
ชัก pull
อ่อน soft/young
แสงแดด sunlight
ปลูก to plant
สาร substance
พืช plant
อิสระ freely
สดชื่น fresh/joyful
ผสม mix
พลัง power
จำ remember, memorize
พิลึก strange
สมกับ worthy of, suitable for
ซึม gloomy/unhappy
บัง hide/block view
ใจจดใจจ่อ determined
เดิมที at first/formerly
อดสู ashamed
พฤกษ plant, flora
กล่าว speak/declare
พันธ็ to bind, obligation
วัวฒนากาน evolution
ล้าหลัง old fashioned
พ้อง the same, alike
พวกพ้อง friends
ประสบ meet, encounter
ครอง to rule
โค่น to fell, topple
แย่ง(ชิง) snatch, grab
แถม additionally
สกปรก dirty, obscene
ขืน force, insist
สญสิ้น lost, used up
โหดร้าย heartless, ruthless
ดูดาย indifferent
ช่วยเหลือ help/aid
ด่วน urgent, pressing
หายใจ breath
อาบ bathe
ร่าเริง happy, cheerful
กลาย change/become
ตกใจ frightened
คืน return/bring back
แผนกาน plot/scheme (n)
ขน move, transport
โล้น bald/bare
สิ่ง thing
อำเภอใจ freedom, permission
ขอร้อง ask/beg/plead
อีกไม่นาน soon
นำมือ own hands/skill
ฝ่าย side/faction
โปรด to favor, to like
กรุณา mercy
ชิง snatch
ปกป้อง protect, keep safe
ศัตรู enemy, foe
เกื้อกูล help, assist
ดำรงชีวิต live, subsist
เติบโต grow, flourish
ขนถ่าย transmit
ดูด suck in, absorb
รายงาน report
อารยธรรม civilization
เจริญ grow, prosper
ทึกทัก presume/assume
คัดค้าน oppose/object
กระแส stream, current
จืต mind (n)
พรวดพราด quickly, abruptly
ถอนตัว withdraw from
อวกาศ space
รู่งเรือง brilliant/prosperous
ลำบาก difficult/tough
ปลอดภัย safe, secure
มัว gloomy, dim/engaged
เถลไถล stroll, dilly-dally
ป่านนี้ now, the present
หวุดหวิด nearly, by inches
วอดวาย ruined, destroyed

Rosetta Stone

My dad bought me the Rosetta Stone ไทย Level 1 program for Christmas. I'd heard about Rosetta Stone, of course, but didn't know much about it; I heard it was overpriced but that's all. It's pretty interesting. No English is used, and no romanization. It simply gives you lines of Thai (spoken and written) with corresponding pictures (or vice versa.) It does it in a clever order that lets you infer the meaning of words, and it slowly builds in complexity. The first few lessons are elementary to me, but the structured repetition is just what I need to drill things in to my brain. I think it will help enormously with remembering simple sentence structure (I get confused on placement of กัน, for instance), classifiers, and pronunciation... and no doubt a lot of other things.

While I appreciate the lack of romanization, the program conveys absolutely no phonetic infomation. Since Thai is a tonal language with a complicated orthography and no spaces between words, I think the program would be pretty difficult for someone starting from scratch. Similarly, all the grammar is learned from inference- nothing is explicetly "taught". This is a different approach from what I'm used to- I'm interested to see how I do with it.

RS comes with a headset, which can supposedly be used to record your voice. It shows the waveform and pitch of both the speaker's example and your attempts. Supposedly. I haven't really gotten it to work well.

Verdict? Looks like a great study tool. ขอบคุณพ่อ

คุณผู้ฟังที่รัก

Thai music came. I really love DOObaDOO. Modern Dog is more standard alt-rock but it's defiently listenable.

I obviously can't understand much of the lyrics; it sounds like a babble of vaguely familiar words. The only phrases I've gleamed on early listens is กี่วันกี่คืน ("How many days? How many nights?") and the ubiquitous ฉันรักเทอ ("I love you"). More will come...