Hokkien words in Thai

[xng]

From what I heard from that friend and from Thai people in Bangkok during my business trips, "beautiful" sounds not exactly like "sui" but more to "suai". "Suai" can mean unlucky (sue1 in Hokkien), with different tone. Btw "beautiful" in Teochew (at least my Tanjung Pinang friends' variant) is not "sui" but something like "sua" (suah/suak?).

1. You can't expect a borrowed word to sound exactly the same as the original. As long as the sound is close and the meaning is correct, there is a possibility it is a borrowed word. But whether Thai borrowed from Minnan or Minnan borrowed from Thai is a question mark.

Eg. cantonese pronounce Bus as Pa Si, so the sound is also off a little. It depends on the limitation of the borrowed tongue.

2. Onto another point, if you claim that those words are borrowed from Teochiu instead of hokkien, then why is it that it is pronounced as Kue (zhangzhou, xiamen) instead of Ke (Quanzhou) ? Can somebody tell me what's the exact pronounciation for Teociu ?


3. As for the numerals, it is obvious that they are sinitic in origin. But I would say it is closer to cantonese than minnan.

Eg.

6 (huk) - close to standard cantonese - Luk
10 (sip) - close to Taishan cantonese - Sip and standard cantonese - Sap.

[xng]

It's not just minnan that thai borrow words from. There are some cantonese words too...

Kai - Chicken
T'aan - Charcoal

[Ah-bin]

2. Onto another point, if you claim that those words are borrowed from Teochiu instead of hokkien, then why is it that it is pronounced as Kue (zhangzhou, xiamen) instead of Ke (Quanzhou) ? Can somebody tell me what's the exact pronounciation for Teociu ?

I have no idea, but Chiang-chiu was originally the big major port for trade with the South before Choan-chiu was, so maybe that is the reason.
It should be kui in Teochiu.....but if you want to make a point about "exact pronunciation " and try to pin down an exact location, then I have to quote you:

You can't expect a borrowed word to sound exactly the same as the original. As long as the sound is close and the meaning is correct,

3. As for the numerals, it is obvious that they are sinitic in origin. But I would say it is closer to cantonese than minnan.

They do look close, but they were borrowed at least 1500 years ago, at a time before anything like what we call Hokkien/Cantonese etc. even existed.

[niuc]

1. You can't expect a borrowed word to sound exactly the same as the original.

I never said loanwords must sound exactly the same. Please don't read your ideas into other people's comment!

2. Onto another point, if you claim that those words are borrowed from Teochiu instead of hokkien, then why is it that it is pronounced as Kue (zhangzhou, xiamen) instead of Ke (Quanzhou) ? Can somebody tell me what's the exact pronounciation for Teociu ?

In Teochew, 粿 is 'kue' e.g. 粿條 kuetiau, 粿汁 kuecap.

10 (sip) - close to Taishan cantonese - Sip and standard cantonese - Sap.

十 (拾) is 'sip8' in Minnan literary pronunciation, also 'sip' in Hakka, not only Taishan. Anyway Taishan has some pronunciations that sounds somewhere between Minnan and Cantonese (and may be Hakka), e.g. 驚 'kiang' instead of Cantonese 'keng'. 六 (陸) is liok8 in Minnan literary pronunciation, just in case you don't know yet.

[niuc]

They are "native" only because they've been there so long that no other words exist. But some other related Kam-Tai languages have different "native" numerals like Lhoi which counts "u, hlau, tshu, tsho, pa". The "five" in Thai/Lao looks like it is a native leftover when compared with pa in Hloi.

Thanks for the info, I think that probably is the case.

I am not 100% sure, but it seems that suggesting that Thai is not a Sino-Tibetan language is still taboo in PRC publications. The official position seem to be that Tai languages belong to the Sino-Tibetan family,I've met PRC academics who scoff at the idea as ignorant and old-fashioned, but then again I haven't seen a thorough argument against it in a published work. Outside the PRC Kam-Tai has been considered an independent family for about fifty years.

Personally I am quite ignorant about the criteria for those classifications. Actually I didn't mean to say that Thai was Sino-Tibetan, just intriqued by many similarities. Compared to Austronesians such as Malay, Thai indeed seems much closer to Chinese. Having say that, I know Thai is also too different to be Sinitic. I don't know much about Tibetan, so I can't comment further. Btw, elephant in Thai is 'chang', which I think is somehow related to Chinese 象 "siang, siong, chio~, chiu~, ...", also ink in Thai is "mək" -> 墨 "mo, mok, bek, bik, bak, ...". Don't you think that languages from different families can be related somehow? Is it only through loanwords, or can be something more fundamental?

[xng]

Btw, elephant in Thai is 'chang', which I think is somehow related to Chinese 象 "siang, siong, chio~, chiu~, ...", also ink in Thai is "mək" -> 墨 "mo, mok, bek, bik, bak, ...". Don't you think that languages from different families can be related somehow? Is it only through loanwords, or can be something more fundamental?

It's truly intriguing that so many basic sinitic words are in Thai. 'Liau' is certainly basic enough.

As I learn more and more thai words, I'll try to list other which are similar.

The long and short vowel distinction in Thai only exist in cantonese.

[Ah-bin]

The long and short vowel distinction in Thai only exist in cantonese.

Yes, that's supposed to be one of the Tai influences in Cantonese too.

[Ah-bin]

Don't you think that languages from different families can be related somehow? Is it only through loanwords, or can be something more fundamental?

I wrote a whole long reply to this, but the system logged me out and now I'm too tired....sorry.

Basically I think what it boils down to is that Tai and Sinitic-speaking peoples mixed and lived with each other for so long and so closely that they picked up many features of each others' speech. There are Tai words in Hokkien and Cantonese, and Sinitc words in Tai languages, and then there are some words in all of them for which no-one can determine the direction of borrowing.

[Ah-bin]

Oh, and I think "elephant" was supposed to be borrowed from Tai into Sinitic, which makes sense when you think that elephants were more common in the south where the tai-speakers lived.

[SimL]

Basically I think what it boils down to is that Tai and Sinitic-speaking peoples mixed and lived with each other for so long and so closely that they picked up many features of each others' speech. There are Tai words in Hokkien and Cantonese, and Sinitc words in Tai languages, and then there are some words in all of them for which no-one can determine the direction of borrowing.

This is a known phenomenon in linguistics called "Sprachbund" (not that I need to tell Ah-bin this). The Wikipedia article describes it better than I can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprachbund. It even mentions Thai in this context.