I’m pretty sure that ไมไปกินปลา doesn’t actually mean anything. “ไม” should be “ไม่” in the position in the sentence that it is in. ไม่ไปกินปลา this would mean “Not go eat fish.” Or you could put it at the end in the form of “ไหม” or ไปกินปลาไหม meaning “Do you go eat fish?” The use of “ไม” here may be slang, but it would definitely put the sentence in the negative form.

Don’t confuse him please. The sentence he meant was ไปกินปลา. I don’t generally get into tone marks in the first 1 hour lesson. There is a well-honed process at work here.

Sorry, not trying to confuse. Maybe ไม is just the subject and she goes to eat fish? Keep up the studying Colin, at least that would make one of us.

You beat me to it Lawrence…I thought I was missing something for a minute.

Just testing out the ‘comments’ facility here, as you asked me to Colin. Seems to work fine now

Keep up the lessons, not sure why the phrase ไปกินปลา was used, still, I’m sure the well-honed process will reveal all in the end I found that words like ปลา confused me at first as most people seem to leave out the ‘ล’ when they say it.

As I said on your FB page ไปกินข้าว is something you’ll hear much more often.

Anyway, it’s just the first of many hours of fun with the Thai language!

Enjoy!

Cheers Biff, must be my WP playing up a little. I have been changing a few things in the CSS over the last few days!

As you say this is just the very beginning of a long long road!

Wow you guys jumped on that like a bunch of Thai grammar nazis, I’m impressed at your knowledge. This is totally new and alien to me so pointing out mistakes is good, that’s the whole point of the post.

Colin,

Yeah, go for it. I’m starting down the same path in my efforts to learn a bit of Thai before returning to BKK in September. The advice I kept getting was to learn to read Thai before trying to speak it. Based on another suggestion, I’m slowly working my way through the children’s story, Manee and Friends, and it’s been a challenge and quite fun as well. I now understand how to pronounce simple Thai words whose transliteration into English left much to be desired. I can now read my girlfriend’s name in Thai Her name is: นงนุช

I’ll be reading along as you learn.

Thanks for the comment David, I’ll be keen to start reading some comics or the like when I get to Thailand.
So far in learnig Thai I’ve got as far being able to pronounce นง in your girlfriends name but the other half (นุช) is alien to me. Early days I guess!

Well it’s a little strange but it goes like this. Her name is Nongnut. The first part, “nong”, is fairly straightforward. The second syllable again begins with “n” (naa) but also contains a vowel marker that indicates an “uu” sound. The last character, ช (cha-chaang), when appearing at the end of a syllable takes a “t” sound, hence: nut

It’s all pretty logical as well as interesting but one wonders, considering that I’ve been speaking nothing but English for 68 years, if it is really possible to become conversant in a new language. I’m hopeful but at the same time a bit doubtful. I’m committing myself to the challenge it because I think Thailand, and my girlfriend, are very cool.

I wish you all the best of luck in your endeavors.

Didn’t mean to jump down your throat Colin…it’s just as a new learner I doubt myself, often. So it was reassuring (to me that there was an error. Must be good to know that people are reading you blog though! Biff is right, you will hear ไปกินข้าว a lot and ไปไหน (go where?) even more.

Keep chipping away at it from all angles and most of all, enjoy learning Thai.
Cheers
Snap

I love how nosy Thai’s are when you are going somewhere. They always ask ไบไหน (Where going?). Now I just respond with ผมไปนรก เอาไปด้วยกันไหม (I’m going to hell, want to go together?). That always shuts them up, but my girlfriend says I speak no good.

This is why I hate reading Thai phonetically. Nongnut I would pronounce just like it looks, Nong Nut. But the Nut like Pea”Nut” is not actually pronounced that way in the word นุช, I would write it more as a double “oo” sound as you would find in “Scooter” except shorter as ุ is a short vowel. Much like the sound a monkey makes “o o o”. But in due time I’m sure Brett will teach you that and it will all make sense.

The hidden vowel could also be an “a’, could n’t it ?
as in ‘sanuk’ (fun) สนุก spelled as s-n-ook, pronounced as sa-nook

It could be but I haven’t got that far at the moment. I’m just going with Brett’s method, there are a few things that are confusing me at the moment regarding pronunciation but it’s still early days in the lessons.

How long have you been reading Thai?

I’ve been * learning* to read thai for ages …but every time I come back home to Oz I forget most of it !! Its a case of 2 steps forward, one step back for now, but in 10 months I should be living there and hopefully making real progress ? Although I don’t know how I’ll go writing Thai…my handwriting is bad enough in english, it’s going to be hard getting all those Thai squiggles exactly right !
The hidden “A”s was one of the first things I learnt, because my GF’s name is full of As when written in English but only half the length when written in thai !
Anyway, I am following your blog with great interest, knowing that i should be following you next year, although I will be heading to BKK (to go to language school) for a while then Ubon…..Chiang Mai is too cold in the cool season and too smoky during the burning off season for me.
Chok Dee Khrap

@Lawrence, you are quite right. The second syllable of her name is not pronounced Nut as in peanut but more like Nuudt, which is the shortened name she uses with her friends. I have a helluva time trying to write out that sound in English, which gets us right back to one of the main reasons to learn to read Thai. The English transliterations of Thai words are inexact at best, and woefully wrong much of the time.

Brett is a great guy. I’m glad to hear that you are taking lessons from him. Cheers!