ศาลาชุมนุม

[nakriian]

มันขี้ [mān˧ kʰîː˥˩]

ມັນຂີ້ [mán˥ kʰ᷆ıː˧˩]

(For those who can’t read IPA), it sounds like someone is saying the English word “monkey” (this is just to give you an idea and I am not saying it sounds exactly like this word).


I heard some Thai teenagers use this phrase while playing a video football game at a game kiosk in the airport. I heard it more than one time, so I got a pretty good idea of the tone and the spelling (but I could be wrong, so don't assume my spelling or phonetic interpretation is correct). This is a slang phrase and I wasn’t able to find it in a Thai dictionary (probably because it's slang). I have a general idea as to what it means (possibly), but I want to hear from native speakers on this.


If you are a ไทย or ລາວ speaker, then please give your interpretation on this phrase. Please no Google, copy, paste on this one. Answer with your own knowledge. There are no wrong answers because you are just telling me what you think it means to you.


I did try asking asking some locals, but because it contains profanity, they gave me the usual “มันขี้ไม่มีความหมาย” (“man khi” has no meaning) (this is code for it has meaning, but I am not telling you because it’s awkward to explain. This is kind of like when you ask a Thai about the phrase ฝรั่งขี้นก (bird sh%$ foreigner) and they play dumb like they never heard of this phrase before).


I do have my own interpretation of the phrase “man khi”, but I don’t want to type it here because I don’t want to unnecessarily influence the answers. I want to get interpretations from others first.

[pi_choen]

l THINK yOU HEARD
มันเขี้ยว

[nakriian]

Definitely not มันเขี้ยว, but thanks for replying though.

[tod-daniels]

How many forums did you post this same question on, because I think I just read it somewhere else ...

As was pointed out by a native thai speaker on another forum; (even though you disagreed with them ) there is no meaning to the phrase. I'm of the opinion that you mis-heard it too, but I rarely believe what foreigner say they heard in thai because they're usually so far off the mark of what's really been said.

Now it totally could be new ภาษาวัยรุ่น and might just be an expletive like f-ck, sh-t, damn, etc, used when gaming . I dunno because I ain't a วัยรุ่น, (I'm nearly 55) so I don't waste much time learning how to speak like a teenaged thai because it looks and sounds totally out of place to almost every thai you'd talk to.

Your comment that locals (which by that I think you mean "these people" or "the thais") will tell you a phrase or word has no meaning but that secretly there is some meaning they won't relate to you is really taking the paranoia to the n-th degree! (I'd double up on the meds! ).

I've asks these people TONS of meanings of thai words; profanity, sexual, derisive, put downs, etc and never had someone say there's no meaning to what I was asking about.

Now perhaps they didn't understand you, didn't know the context of where you heard it (because as you know context is everything in meaning here). I've asked about phrases before and had to explain a lengthy back story to the thais so that they knew the context, the relationship of the people conversing, etc before they were dialed in enough to give me the answer to my question. Still I've gotten answers from them.

Why the no Google copy and paste request? Google a term in thai and you'll find TONZ of forums populated and used exclusively by thais with a reference to it.. Surprisingly using Google I was unable to come up with even a single reference to what you think you heard... That leads me to believe your ears are playin' tricks on you..

Just as an aside;
What's up with the Lao script there dude? The two languages are not mutually interchangeable.. Seeing as there're only about 6 million Lao speakers in the world there doesn't appear to be a high "bang-4-the-baht" knowing Lao (other than for impressing people ). Sheesh, there's more Isaan speakers in Thailand than all the Laotians in Lao! Then again, it's just my opinion.. Every Laotian I've ever interacted with could speak/understand Thai just fine even in the middle of no where Lao!

Still good luck, keep at it, you'll get there...

[Natapol]

I'm native Thai, and I've never heard of that word, or even any similarities in slang words to express those kind of feeling.

Google does contain all Thai slang words. It should return some result like your ฝรั่งขี้นก word that returns ton of matched results.

[nakriian]

tod-daniels, thank you for your reply.

I heard it correctly and it is มันขี้ [mān˧ kʰîː˥˩]. I was able to find a native Thai speaker that explained the meaning to me. มันขี้ is an expletive used to express emotion or sentiment. Gamers will often use it during the course of a game.

There are 20-25 million speakers of Lao and Isan combined. Laos has a rich cultural heritage and I encourage anyone who hasn’t visited Laos, to do so. I enjoy visiting Laos and enjoy practicing my Lao with Lao people.

[Thomas]

มันขี้ [mān˧ kʰîː˥˩]

ມັນຂີ້ [mán˥ kʰ᷆ıː˧˩]

(For those who can’t read IPA), it sounds like someone is saying the English word “monkey”

I'm interested in Lao tone rules. Therefore my question:

I can read Lao letters a little bit, do not know, however, which or whose tone rules to apply, can read a little bit IPA, but not the IPA used by you - so:

In the Thai term's IPA, the line upon the /a/ does not mean it is long but เสียงเสมอ? The same information is repeated by the sign behind the /n/? The top upon the /i/ means เสียงโท (as indicated also by the mai tho). And the no ngu like sign at the very end is for repeating the information as to เสียงโท?

If I interprete your IPA correctly, why the "Lao IPA" (of a term using the same letters like the Thai term) differs? This may be true if the tone rules to apply are actually different.

But in effect you are saying that the Thai and Lao pronunciations of the English term 'monkey' differ by tone?

[Richard Wordingham]

If I interprete your IPA correctly, why the "Lao IPA" (of a term using the same letters like the Thai term) differs? This may be true if the tone rules to apply are actually different.

Tone rules do differ from place to place quite a bit. Take a look at the different sets of Lao tones reported at the SEAsite. For variations in Thailand, see http://thaiarc.tu.ac.th/dialect/ - click on the map for verbal descriptions. (For the latter site, you may have to tell your browser the character encoding - it's in the Thai 8-bit encoding.)

What does tend to vary more slowly is the pattern of contrasts. For example, the mid class mai tho having the same tone as the low class mai tho is a characteristic Lao feature.

[tod-daniels]

Just so we're clear there "nakriian"; not surprising the thais in the north east speak Isaan Thai, possibly because the area they live in is coincidentally called Isaan.

They sure ain't speaking Lao nor are they speaking Central Thai; even though the "version of Thai" they do speak is spelled 100% using Thai alphabetic characters.

I'd venture to bet that every Laotian in the world would take offense at you saying the Thais in Isaan speak "Lao "; mostly because those thais don't speak Lao .

There are what, 5 or 6 different Isaan Dialects and not all are mutually intelligible. People from Surin would be hard pressed indeed to speak to people from Korat if they were both speaking their local version of Isaan Thai.

Thankfully (mostly for the thais ), everyone in the country can speak the government approved version of Thai which, last time I checked was Central Thai ภาษากลาง.

As I surmised in my post the phrase you heard was just ภาษาวัยรุ่น.. Kids are gonna be kids and make up phrases as they go along, just like every language in the world. Still I'd bet dollars to durian NO adult Thai would have the slightest clue what you were saying if you used the phrase..

Knowing your audience is a BIG part of the equation. Try to use "age appropriate slang" as in; if you're old try usin' the slang grown up Thais would use , not that "kiddy chat-speak thai slang".

So lets get this straight once and for all there are at most 6.6 million native Lao speakers. The rest speak either bastardized Lao or bastardized Thai, depending on what side of the border you're on.

Good Luck there.. Keep at it..

[nakriian]

r2d2, thank you for your reply. Let me answer your question.

Yes, the Thai and Lao pronunciations have different tones as they both have their own set of tone rules. I will just explain the entire IPA string for both so you can have a better understanding for comparison.

มันขี้ [mān˧ kʰîː˥˩] (m = bilabial nasal) (a = low front unrounded vowel) ( ˉ = macron, indicates mid tone) ( n = alveolar nasal) (˧ mid tone bar, indicates a mid tone) ( kʰ = aspirated voiceless velar plosive) ( i = high front unrounded vowel) ( ˆ circumflex, indicates a falling tone) ( ː= triangular colon, indicates a long vowel) ( ˥˩ = falling tone bar combination, indicates a falling tone)

ມັນຂີ້ [mán˥ kʰ᷆ıː˧˩] (m = bilabial nasal) (a = low front unrounded vowel) ( ˊ = acute accent, indicates high tone) ( n = alveolar nasal) ( ˥ high tone bar, indicates a high tone) ( kʰ = aspirated voiceless velar plosive) ( i = high front unrounded vowel) ( ᷆ combining macron-grave, indicates a low falling tone) (ː= triangular colon, indicates a long vowel) ( ˧˩ = low falling tone bar combination, indicates a low falling tone)

I include both the phonetic tone diacritics and the Chao tone letters (bars) just to give an additional indication of tone as some people may confuse the phonetic tone diacritics with the 拼音 (pīnyīn) diacritics which are not the same. For example, a ˉ macron can be used to indicate a mid tone in IPA, but indicates a high tone in 拼音.

Look over these descriptions and reply back if you still need me to explain further.