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- Aug 8, 2005
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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.Tirumala limniace? They're a migratory species in Asia called the Blue Tiger.
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.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.
Me: "Pai geen kow?" (Go eat rice?)Drives my caucasian friends crazy trying to pronounce simple sentences and I'm correcting them with throat noises on a single vowel.
Actually, it was far worse. Look up Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, and Cambodian Extermination. Second only to Hitler's holocaust.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.
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.Actually, it was far worse. Look up Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, and Cambodian Extermination. Second only to Hitler's holocaust.
I remember the parental units saying that about their days in Bangkok. Just minor changes in tone, changes the meaning of the word.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.
My mom used to joke with me and say "tone deaf kids get drowned in the river"I remember the parental units saying that about their days in Bangkok. Just minor changes in tone, changes the meaning of the word.