Goldmine Gutted

Aspect

2008-08-19T21:49:41Z

For my own sake, I summarized some of the chapter on aspect. It's one of the more complicated aspects (hah!) of Thai.
Mostly it's a rundown on all the aspectual auxiliories.
I'll be using two example verbs.
กิน = eat, a transitive verb.
งง = confused, an adjective/stative verb
My translations are loose.

Perfective:

_แล้ว
"Indicates that one event is completed before another." Doesn't work with stative verbs.
กินแล้ววิ่ง
>I ate, then I ran.

Imperfective:

_อยู่
Your catch-all for continuous aspect.
กินอยู่
>>I'm eating.

อยู่ has two important adverb friends:

กำลัง _ อยู่
"Emphasises a continuous situation"
กำลังกินอยู่
>I'm eating.

ยัง _ อยู่
"Indicates no change in a situation."
ยังกินอยู่
>I'm still eating.
ยังงงอยู่
>I'm still confused.

นั่ง _ อยู่
This is used with either stative or "low-energy" verbs and must have a human subject.
นั่งงงอยู่
>I'm currently confused.

_ไป
ไป is a very common verb, but here it's used as a "continuative" auxilery which implies more deliberate continuation.
กินไป
>I'm eating. (with determined commitment)

กำลังจะ _ อยู่
Inceptive. Requires animate subject.
กำลังจะกินอยู่
>I'm about to eat.
จวนจะ _
This is similar but "can be used for a less intentional event with inanimate subjects."

_ จบ
These terminatives are neat.
กินจบ
>I've finished eating.
_ เสร็จ
กินเสร็จ
>I'm done eating.

Perfect/Anterior

_ แล้ว
Didn't we just see this? Well this time it's the perfect/anterior แล้ว.
กินแล้ว
>I ate already.
With a stative:
งงแล้ว
>I'm confused (having reached a state of confusion).

_ มา
"in some cases emphasizes the fact that a situation has been continuing up to the reference time."
กินมา
"Eat" is a bad example, but I think this is too subtle to translate.

_ ไป
Used with "destruction or disappearance" verbs. Emphasizes the destruction or disappearance.
กินไป
>I ate (it), and it's totally gone now.

_ (ไป)เสีย
Indicates an irreversible result.
กินเสีย
>I ate (it), and that is that.

_ ไว้
"Indicates a completed event which is considered beneficial in the future."
กินไว้
>I ate it for later, because I'm a... chipmunk?

เพิ่ง(จะ) _
An action that has just begun, or just ended.
เพิ่งกิน
>I just ate. Or I just started eating. (huh?)

เคย_
Having ever been done, ever.
เคยกิน
>I've eaten before.

Inchoactive

ได้ _
Basically, "get to do", just like Thai 101 said.
ได้กิน
I got to eat.

The next two are pretty cool. They basically mean "raise" and "lower", respectively.
_ ขึ้น
งงขึ้น
>I'm getting more confused.
_ ลง
งงลง
>My confusion is decreasing.

victory's sweet even deep in the cheap seats

2008-08-18T01:46:45Z

I was going to complain that I was wasting the summer, but this weekend has been really nice. Lots of exposure to solar photons and lots of having actual conversations with people. And I'm not counting creepy guy.

Lots of mosquito bites.

Anyway I'm now marathoning Weeds. The first two eps didn't do much for me but it gets pretty hillarious and fucked up pretty quick.

Been scrounging for Thai listening resources. Making a folder of VOA newscasts. They're short but there's a lot of them. Found a Thai music podcast that contains some nice stuff. Anything helps.

"I hate california girls..."

2008-08-16T15:33:24Z

The Associated Press promotes Barack Obama by declaring him to be a Christian (despite his Muslim name) and disparaging a critic of Obama as somehow being a "bigot".

Conservapedia, you are simply awesome.

In other news, the new ~~Bright Eyes~~ Conor Oberst sounds a lot like Cassadaga and I'm Wide Awake It's Morning. It's good, but I still wish he'd cut the goddamn country.

yes it's 2am.

2008-08-15T05:50:10Z

Wow. I just picked up that Doraemon manga for the first time in a while. I can read a surprising amount- maybe 75% of the speach bubbles- fairly confidently. I'm not shitting you, I can just read the Thai right off the page.

เป็นวันของฤดูใบไม้ร่วงที่อากาศดีจริงๆ
Basically "It's a truly beautiful day today."

เปโรของฉันตางเมื่อเช้านี้เอง
"My dog died this morning."

Simple stuff, but still, I can read Thai, motherfuckers.

Still wish I could write English competently. (ETA: Such as spelling "speech" correctly.)

เพลงต้างๆ

2008-08-13T22:26:43Z

I can't believe Conor Oberst put out an album and I missed it.
I mean seriously.

Thai grammar study is going well. The book is nice and direct and very comprehensive. The example sentences (many taken from actual transcribed conversations) are usually within my grasp.
Since Thai doesn't have cases or tenses, I've avoided much rote memorization. I really need to sit down and memorize the classifiers, days of the week, the crazy 12 hour clock, restricted modifiers, particles, etc.

In other news, work is driving me mad but oh whatever.

I have to catch up on the daily show, shit.

fan-friggin-tastic

2008-08-11T01:06:50Z

Dude this is so neat: Thai contains infixes. Well actually they're Khmer infixes that were carried over in Khmer loanwords. Still, infixes!

กำเนิด (birth) = เกิด (to be born) + อำน (very roughly: gumnert = gert + umn)

สำเนียง (accent)= เสียง (tone) + อำน

Also, I now know that จะ marks "challengeability", which makes so much sense. It's used as a future tense marker because the future is challengeable.

quantum suicide is painless

2008-08-08T20:45:38Z

I bought "Thai Beat A Go-Go" on iTunes. It's a cash-in novelty disc but the music is actually pretty awesome. Scratchy Thai surf rock. One song consists of weird beatnik jazz and a guy shouting/screaming ผมรักคุณจริงๆ ("Really, I love you") over and over in increasing desperation.

Also my A Reference Grammar of Thai came! and I am extremely excited to dig into it. It's technical but it doesn't expect you to already know the lingustic jargon. More later!

In other news, I hope I leave the apartment sometime this weekend.

Oh also there was a murder in the apartments across the river. I probably could have heard the gunshot if I'd been outside. What the hell.

he's not arrogant because he's right?

2008-08-06T21:52:23Z

Richard Dawkins talks about Darwin and then berates some school children. It's fun!

"The evidence of fossils would help Darwin develop a theory of life on earth far more wonderful and far more moving than any religious story of creation."

That would so not fly in the states.

nature

2008-08-05T20:07:41Z

At work there was a baby bird out front and it was cute and fuzzy and helpless and it couldn't fly and I tried to feed it pop tarts and SOMEBODY SQUISHED IT WITH THEIR CAR AND ITS FUCKING DEAD IN THE PARKING LOT NOW.

อะไรวะ

2008-08-03T18:56:34Z

ภาษาไทย

ภาษาไทยเป็นภาษาประจำชาติของประเทศไทยและเป็นภาษาราชการ ภาษาไทยเป็นภาษาที่เก่าแก่มีมาช้านาน เป็นภาษาที่มีสียงสูงต่ำ แต่ละพยางค์มีระดับเสียงของตนเอง มีทั้งหมดห้าระดับเสียงด้วยกันคือ เสียงสามัญ เสียงเอก เสียงโท เสียงตรีและเสี่ยงจัตวา การออกเสียงสำหรับแต่ละพยางค์ผิดพลาดอาจจะทำให้ไมสามารถเข้าใจคำนั้นๆได้
ภาษาไทยอยู่ในกลุมภาษาที่มีพยางค์เดียวซึ่งคล้ายกับภาษาจีน มีการยืมคำจากภาษาอื่นมากมายโดยเฉพาะภาษาบาลี สันสกฤตและภาษาของประเทศเพื่อนบ้านอื่นๆ
อักษรไทยมีขึ้นในสมัยที่กรุงสุโขทัย พ่อขุนรามคำแหงมหาราชเป็นผู้ประดิษฐ์อักษรไทยขึ้นเมื่อปีพศ ๑๘๒๖ หรือปีคศ ๑๒๘๓ อักษรไทยมีการวิวัฒนาการมาเรื่อยๆ ปัจจุบันมีพยัญชนะทั้งสิ้น ๔๔ ตัวและสระ ๓๒ รูป

I can now type in Thai faster than I can type in Qwerty.

I've been trying to perfect my pronunciation- especially getting the vowels and tones right. Watching Thai movies in Netflix and watching some of these. The tones can be so subtle but the constant repetition is very helpful. Still can't tell high from mid.
So I'm focused a little on phonology right now. Watching Thai movies, I'm surprised how much stuff I can pick up on- for instance, the use of วะ, an impolite particle, which I'd never heard in context before. อะไรวะ
One of the movies I saw was about a Japanese man living in Bangkok; it contained both Japanese and Thai dialogue, with some English as a lingua franca. At one point the protagonist is harrased by a Thai man on a bus showing off his bad Japanese. We also get to hear a Japanese -> Thai lesson tape playing.

I can't wait for my new grammar to come. 418 pages of orgasm.

science

2008-08-01T01:34:03Z

Dude the Dresden Codex is pretty cool and here is a 95mb PDF of it.
I am really pissed at those fucking conquistadors.

I've restarted my Netflix account.

Schroedinger's Kittens gets pretty good around the fourth chapter. The author has a really nice dismissive attitude towards the Copenhagen school.
Here are his four Principal Puzzles of Quantum:

Spooky quantum links seem to imply either faster-than-light signals or that local events do not promptly proceed in an unambiguous way to each end of the link.

Spooky quantum links seem to imply either faster-that-light signals or that quantum events are truly random.

Why does the universe seem to waste such a colossal amount of effort investigating might-have-beens, things that could have happened but didn't?

Why does reality appear to be the world in a single specific patern, when the guide waves should be weaving an ever more tangled multiplicity of patters?

Note: I'm not sure why he's discussing pilot/guide waves.

I would want to move past popsci but I assume the learning curve will get too steep. I can't do math.

movin' on up

2008-07-30T23:29:23Z

Okay instead of stupid drama how about:
I got a raise!
Okay, not really, it's just my 3 month propation period ending.
But still, yay cash money bling bling.

Started reading: Schroedinger's Rabbits: Because They Won't Publish This Unless I Put "Schroedinger's" in the Title. It advocates the multi-universe interpretation. We'll see!

In other news, I think I'm in the market for a cheap digital camera.

roll out the map and mark it with a pin

2008-07-27T23:52:38Z

I'm pissed I didn't think of this first.

In other news, I just spent $110 on a Thai reference grammar. I think it will be worth the investment. Maybe I'll figure out ก็.

This has been one waste of a weekend. However, I did discover This American Life. Twelve years of archives online? Holy shit.

ลอยลอยกระทง

2008-07-26T15:00:53Z

เพลงวันลอยกระทง

วันเพ็ญเดือนสิบสอง
น้ำก็นองเต็มตลิ่ง
เราทั้งหลายชายหญิง
สนุกกันจริง
วันลอยกระทง
ลอยลอยกระทง
ลอยกระทงกันแลัว
ขอเชิญน้องแก้ว
ออกมารำวง
รำวงวันลอยกระทง
บุญจะส่งให้เราสุขใจ

this is probably going to blow up

2008-07-24T21:10:11Z

PZ Myers has desecrated his communion wafer.

By the way, I didn't want to single out just the cracker, so I nailed it to a few ripped-out pages from the Qur'an and The God Delusion. They are just paper. Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet. You are all human beings who must make your way through your life by thinking and learning, and you have the job of advancing humanities' knowledge by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality. You will not find wisdom in rituals and sacraments and dogma, which build only self-satisfied ignorance, but you can find truth by looking at your world with fresh eyes and a questioning mind.

I would desecrate some religious object of my own, but all I have are a bunch of tracts and a bible... which I've already doodled all over.

Tangentally, I am thinking of getting كافر (kafir; "infidel") tattooed over the scar on my abdomen. Maybe I'll wait until I actually learn Arabic though.
I should probably study a european language. And I should probably fight the pull towards Irish Gaelic. But dude, it's VSO!

the cats are crying at the screen door

2008-07-23T01:55:39Z

Alison Bechdel had a 4-page piece, Compulsory Reading, in Entertainment Weekly. A month ago- I missed it.
Featuring Fun Home crossovers!

As for an actual update? Nothing really to say. Been doing stuff here and there but nothing worth wasting ink over. No drama, except at work, and that's just work.

I'm doing an okay job trying to give a shit.

what you say about his company is what you say about society

2008-07-21T23:10:02Z

Your Fox News headlines of the day:

Preventable Crime? San Francisco triple murder suspect never deported from the sanctuary city.

Radical Imam Promotes Pro-Islamic Ad Campaign to Run on New York Subways

in the rain all your plans will fade; you are left with a jigsaw

2008-07-19T01:32:32Z

oh you can just go to last.fm and seach for tag "Thai" and hey an unlimited stream of ภาษาไทย songs.

The internet is fucking awesome.

คนด่างชาดิ

2008-07-17T03:58:57Z

Recently a friend asked me "so how much Thai do you actually know?" and I didn't really know what to say. It's hard to quantify.

This is an example of one of the more complicated sentence I *get*. I can read it and tell you what it says.
ปัจจุบันนี้มวยไทยเป็นที่นิยมในหมู่คนด่างชาดิทั้งที่เยี่ยมเมึองไทยและที่อยู่ในต่างประเทศ

My take on a literal translation is:
Nowadays Muay Thai is popular in groups of foreigners, both those who visit Thailand and those living in foreign countries.

The smoother translation the book gives is:
Today, Muay Thai is popular among foreigners, both visitors and those overseas.

A word-for word translation is suprisingly difficult, and probably not very helpful, but it'll give you an idea of the structure. Since many Thai words are compounds, it's somewhat arbitrary how I define "word". For instance, "foreigner" is really "person-other-nation".

ปัจจุบันนี้ มวย ไทย
Nowadays Muay Thai
เป็น ที่ นิยม
is that(which is) popular
ใน หมู่ คนด่างชาดิ
in(with) group foreigners
ทั้ง ที่ เยี่ยม เมึองไทย
both who visit Thailand
และ ที่ อยู่ ใน ต่าง ประเทศ
and who live in other countries.

(Yes, the word order is similar to english- SVO, and similarly, word order affects the grammar.)

It was fun struggling through this sentence because it all fell into place when I realized ทั้ง could also mean something like "both". It was like this time I read a sentence which has previously stumped me... and totally got it because I'd learned that the word สำหรับ could be used to topicalize the sentence. Yeah it was awesome you had to be there.

Currently, I'm reading through the Advanced Thai book, dictionary at hand, and working out every sentence until I understand the grammar. It's going surprisingly smoothly. I do need to work on certain usages of ได้ and เป็น.

brokeback

2008-07-17T01:43:55Z

Repressed Christian homosexuals are kinda sad.

I feel sorry for his girlfriend.

I should have explained the atheist symbolism of my IPU tat, but I hadn't noticed the jesus fish on his wrist yet.

Yeah it's none of my business but pointless brainwashing pisses me off.

A Public Service Message from the Committee to Remind You That The Copenhagen Interpretation Sucks

2008-07-14T04:08:04Z

Okay my new pet peeve is when people assume the Copenhagen interpretation is the only way to describe quantum weirdness.

This video is goofy but it's an okay introduction to the Double Slit Experiment.

Until they start "explaining" the results. No, the electron doesn't know it's being watched. It didn't "decide to act different." No observer collapsed any wave function. Those are all attempts to explain the mysterious results using the Copenhagen interpretation. Which is old and busted.

Yes, something fucked up happens during the DSE, but there are other, better possible explanations. Which involve infinite branching universes or time travel. They may sound crazy, but they're a great deal more sensible than goddamn Copenhagen seriously I hate that shit.

animal, vegetable, mineral, furniture

2008-07-13T13:11:51Z

For James's birthday yesterday we did a little pub crawl... RJ's(where wings take dream) -> Finnegan's -> Esox(eww) -> Half Lounge(delicious mojjjjito) -> 3 Needs(no lesbians!). It was good times. But this was after Cat had sent James on a scavenger hunt around other local bars. The bartender would hand him a drink and an envelope with a clue to the next bar. How fucking awesome is that.

Anyway I spent like $40 on ethanol-laden beverages. What! I also borrowed a bike and spilled out in front of the Roxy. Which are two good reasons why alcohol is not my drug of choice.

For this plus caving in on FISA, I'm kinda pissed at Barack right now. Still- unless you're an old greedy white guy, you really shouldn't vote for McCain.

หลังจากจบทำงานแล้วไปซื้อบ้องแรก สีน้ำเงิน

สำหรับเจมส์ คิดว่ารักเขานิดหน่อย เสีย

นักงง

2008-07-11T00:08:21Z

Quoth Wikipedia:

The word bong is an adaptation of the Thai word baung (Thai: บ้อง /bɔːŋ/), a cylindrical wooden tube, pipe, or container cut from bamboo, and which also refers to the bong used for smoking.

That's awesome, I had no idea. Also: supposedly popularized by Vietnam veterans.

Ganja is from the Hindi/Sanskrit word गांजा, which I imagine is produced a lot like the Thai กัญชา. Thai has a very complicated relationship with Sanskrit... It's fascinating.

Marijuana: from the Mexican spanish marihuana. IIRC this term was popularized by Anslinger to paint weed as something those dirty mexicans were doing)

Pot: "probably a shortened form of Mexican Sp. potiguaya 'marijuana leaves.' "

Cannabis: from the greek word for hemp: kannabis
This gives us the word canvas, as well.

Hashish: "1598, from Arabic hashish "powdered hemp," lit. "dry herb," from hashsha "it became dry, it dried up."
I'd heard this, but the details are interesting:

Assassin: "1531 (in Anglo-L. from c.1237), via Fr. and It., from Arabic hashishiyyin "hashish-users," pl. of hashishiyy, from hashish(q.v.). A fanatical Ismaili Muslim sect of the time of the Crusades,under leadership of the "Old Man of the Mountains" (translates Arabic shaik-al-jibal,name applied to Hasan ibu-al-Sabbah), with a reputation for murderingopposing leaders after intoxicating themselves by eating hashish. Thepl. suffix -in was mistaken in Europe for part of the word (cf. Bedouin)."

Sources: Wikipedia and this awesome site I'm going to waste a lot of time at.

RU-486 if we suck your fucking dicks

2008-07-10T21:43:25Z

Trauma 911!
I stepped on a pushpin... sort of on the side of my foot. It went all the way in. Which isn't far, but the side of the foot isn't very calloused and it kind of really hurt.

Seriously going to write a post on Thai vowels, but it's turning into a project in itself.

Um... yeah, everything's cool.

this is your brain on religion

2008-07-09T01:16:56Z

IT'S A FUCKING CRACKER.

For a student to disrupt Mass by taking the Body of Christ hostage--regardless of the alleged nature of his grievance--is beyond hate speech. That is why the UCF administration needs to act swiftly and decisively in seeing that justice is done. All options should be on the table, including expulsion.

I want one for myself now.

Oh in related news I found CHICK TRACTS at work. Yes CHICK TRACTS. This is the first time I've ever seen them in real life. I didn't think we had them in Vermont.

In other news it's disgustingly warm out. I should probably be studying Norwegian instead... maybe Eskimoese.