ID me

[The Snark]

 

[Wolfram1]

Tirumala sp. ?

 

[DomGom TheFather]

Butterfly.

 

[SpookySpooder]

Tirumala limniace? They're a migratory species in Asia called the Blue Tiger.

Blue Tiger Butterflies (Genus Tirumala)

Tirumala is a genus of brush-footed butterflies. Its species are distributed in Africa, Asia, and Australia. (Source: Wikipedia, '', http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirumala_(genus), CC BY-SA 3.0 . Photo: (c) Martin Mandák, all rights reserved, uploaded by Martin Mandák)

inaturalist.ala.org.au

 

[The Snark]

S̄eụ̄x s̄īn̂ảngein

Tirumala limniace? They're a migratory species in Asia called the Blue Tiger.

That's it. Nieces and nephews found it on the side of the road. Of course, it's 'go ask khun rung' (khoon rooung), their uncle. And of course it has to be one of the most unpronouncable words Thai has ever cranked out. เสือสีน้ำเงิน transliterated as S̄eụ̄x s̄īn̂ảngein. Blue is close to the name Sue, but tiger has one of those N sounds that demands a native speaker. Try saying ng with a Y like push instead of an 'en' sound and the ein is more inferred than pronounced. So roughly Sue Sin (between Uh and EeW) yng oo in(g). Took me 10 years to comprehensibly say tam ngang - go work.

 

[SpookySpooder]

I can imagine. I knew a Filipino girl in HS who tried to teach me Tagalog... I could only pronounce the sounds. Didn't understand the language at all... I can speak English, Vietnamese, Spanish conversationally, and enough French, German, Korean, Japanese, to get around, but I literally cannot wrap my head around sanskrit asian languages for some reason.

 

[The Snark]

I can imagine. I knew a Filipino girl in HS who tried to teach me Tagalog... I could only pronounce the sounds. Didn't understand the language at all... I can speak English, Vietnamese, Spanish conversationally, and enough French, German, Korean, Japanese, to get around, but I literally cannot wrap my head around sanskrit asian languages for some reason.

About the same here. Sanskrit, usually watered down and simplified in Pali as it traveled east, turned into incomprehensible gibberish to non natives born and raised pronouncing the tonal inflections. Beware any language with 50 or more letters. What drives me bats is in Thai the end of a word is crucial. But if it's not a superlative, they drop it completely. For example, Mitsubishi is universally pronounced Mitsoo. As for tonal inflections, say the word 'cow'. Seven different tonal inflections plus intonation variations with seven very different meanings.

Comic note, my physician couple, Chinese, raised in Thailamd, schooled formally in China, keeps a vast selection of herbs and such in several huge cabinets. Each drawer has five labels, Chinese, Thai formal- Sanskrit based, Thai informal, English and a transliteration. Don't get them mixed up. Your insomnia cure could cause an abortion.

 

[SpookySpooder]

Sounds about right. In Vietnamese (next door to Laos, Cambodia, Thailand) there are many single syllable words that change based on context or a small fluctuation in tone, despite having half the alphabet... Drives my caucasian friends crazy trying to pronounce simple sentences and I'm correcting them with throat noises on a single vowel.

 

[The Snark]

Drives my caucasian friends crazy trying to pronounce simple sentences and I'm correcting them with throat noises on a single vowel.

Me: "Pai geen kow?" (Go eat rice?)
Blank stares. He wants to eat a mountain?

 

[SpookySpooder]

đi ang gạo - go farming rice
đi ang gao - go abroad

đi trồng lúa - go farm rice
đi ăn cơm - go eat rice
đi ăn hạt gạo - go eat rice grains

There's sooo many, many more. Certain verbs or nouns have different words depending on the context. There are at least 3 ways to say 'rice.'

The entire language is a clusterbomb and a confusing mess for any non-native speaker.

Anytime my friends try to impress me with a sentence, I'm throw out something random like "YOU WANT TO DO WHAT TO THE DOG?" just to mess with them.

But in honesty. I have no clue what they mean when they say "they want to wash the duck wheels."

 

[The Snark]

@SpookySpooder Just curious and way off the subject, Thai is closely a bastardized form of Pali with two divisions, India proper and Sri Lanka derivations. And I see quite a few similarities between Thai and Vietnamese, what influences has that language been subjected to? I'm suspecting some Khmer influence, a stronger version of Pali, that Thai's, due to their extreme hatred of the Khmer, have avoided adopting. The Khmer did rule Cambodia for many decades and their presence is still strong there but I know ziilch of the Kampuchea language.

(Rather ridiculous but very real. Even to this day there is extreme friction between Thailand and Cambodia with border altercations being quite common. Well over 100 years after the Cambodian Khmer were driven out of Thailand.)

 

[SpookySpooder]

I'm not versed in the history of that region, but if you ask my father, his father, and his father's father about Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, they will say something along the lines of "they're all dogs and should die in their jungle"

I do not personally believe this, but I can tell there is much bad blood in that region of the world, same as in many other places. Some of the things I have heard Asians say about other Asians makes my head spin.

Both my mother and father have some horrific stories of fleeing the Vietnam war through those countries. Let's just say if their recounts are true, their army murdered refugees for giggles.

I have never verified the integrity of their stories, but far be it for me to discount and challenge what they tell me, especially when I heard it from other elders as well.

Search up how many Vietnamese refugees were murdered by Thai pirates during the exodus. Many of the elders that made that journey have recounted to me ships flying the Thai flag sunk their refugee boats for sport.

Take all this with a grain of salt... in the meantime, let's stop this train going off the rails.

 

[The Snark]

Both my mother and father have some horrific stories of fleeing the Vietnam war through those countries. Let's just say if their recounts are true, their army murdered refugees for giggles.

Actually, it was far worse. Look up Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, and Cambodian Extermination. Second only to Hitler's holocaust.

 

[SpookySpooder]

Actually, it was far worse. Look up Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, and Cambodian Extermination. Second only to Hitler's holocaust.

Yeah I did a short reading into the Khmer field massacres. They have whole murals depicting the bloody history "Lest we forget" all over public buildings in Vietnam. It was sad that I never learned about this part of history in my formal US education, only mention of the killing fields in a short paragraph on dictators of the world.

Again, there is so much bad blood in that region, rightfully so. I'm very glad the generation they seeded overseas can leave that behind. Though for my elders, I understand if they cannot forgive them in this lifetime.

 

[Introvertebrate]

Sounds about right. In Vietnamese (next door to Laos, Cambodia, Thailand) there are many single syllable words that change based on context or a small fluctuation in tone, despite having half the alphabet... Drives my caucasian friends crazy trying to pronounce simple sentences and I'm correcting them with throat noises on a single vowel.

I remember the parental units saying that about their days in Bangkok. Just minor changes in tone, changes the meaning of the word.

 

[SpookySpooder]

I remember the parental units saying that about their days in Bangkok. Just minor changes in tone, changes the meaning of the word.

My mom used to joke with me and say "tone deaf kids get drowned in the river"

It was because the words for help and hay are a vowel tone apart.