4.17.2010

Warning: Grammar Content

ใช้- to use. This is with regards to general use of anything, but I noticed in the dictionary that it's also the word to use regarding money and time, whereas we would use a different verb: spend. There are apparently other words for spend, but ใช้ can be used either by itself or with a few other words specifically to describe use of money or time.

French is kind of notorious for having specific verbs for specific things [I don’t speak French; an example I’ve heard is for ‘grow.’ While trees, kids, animals and love can all grow in English, a good friend and fluent French speaker says all these would be different verbs in French.] I’m interested to see how versatile Thai verbs are (or aren’t), but I get the impression it’s far more like Chinese, being able to get tons of mileage out of the uses for one single word.

2. ของ - of, belonging to, etc. It’s a possessive marker, like the in Chinese. Does the exact same thing, except it comes before the possessor. So where in Chinese, the word for you, 你, would combine with the possessive to make 你的, your or yours, ของ would come before the possessor. The second person pronoun in Thai, คุณ, would come after the possessive marker in Thai, making ของคุณ. This might make more sense when one looks at the other two definitions of ของ. One is things, goods, meaning we could look at ของคุณ literally as things of you or thing(s) of John. The third definition is to belong, is the property of, meaning we could look at it as saying [thing] belonging to you. I like this the most, because oftentimes there will be an object thrown in there as well, which will come even before our other two words, meaning the word order with such a phrase as your car will be exactly opposite from English. It would be, literally car thing you, or รถของคุณ.

This breaks down to รถ (car) ของ (of; belong to) คุณ (you).

Again, we could look at this more clearly as the car belonging to you. A good little word that goes a long way in Thai.

(Its also the first of the words of the day that Ive already known, but not known how to write/spell. More of these will be showing up).

That turned into a full blown grammar lesson.

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