Squid Brand Fish Sauce

[khiemtran]

Making dinner on Wednesday night, I was using a bottle of Squid Brand Fish Sauce when I suddenly realised I could read the label. Well, almost...




The first word is
ปลา

ป is a low class consonant with a "bp" sound, ล is an "l" and า is a vowel with a long "ah" sound. Low class, live syllable gives a mid-tone. So, we have bplah, in a level tone, meaning "fish".

Next comes
หมึก

This is a bit trickier. The first consonant is normally a "h" but, in this case, a leading ห in front of another consonant is a modifier which turns the next consonant into a high class one. The next consonant would normally be a low class "m" and the syllable would be meuk with a rising turn (low class, dead syllable, short vowel). But thanks to the modifier, now it's a high class dead syllable, which means it's a low tone.

หมึก means "ink", so put together with ปลา, we get bplah meuk or "ink fish", i.e "Squid". So, after all that, we now know that the label on the bottle of Squid Brand Fish Sauce reads "Squid". I'm sure you're relieved.

On to the next line now. The first word is
น้ำ

This is nahm with a low consonant, but with a marker that turns a low consonant into a high tone. Normally, this means "water", but in this case it's going to mean something like sauce.

Next comes a word we've already seen:
ปลา

Remember this one? It's Bplah meaning "fish". So, "fish" + "water" gives us "fish sauce" in English.

Finally, there's one more bit at the end.
แท้

Low class, tair sound, but with the same marker we saw in น้ำ which turns it into a high sound. (This took me a while to figure out because it looks different from the previous marker on the label.) This means "authentic".

So, altogether, that gives us Bplah meuk ("ink fish") meaning "squid" on the top row and Nahm bplah tair meaning "authentic fish sauce" underneath.

"What are you writing about?" asks Hsiu Lin.
"I'm translating the label on the fish sauce," I reply. "Do you know what it means? Squid Fish Sauce!"
"NOOO!!!"

And, in case you're wondering, no, there is no squid in Squid Brand Fish Sauce.

Comments

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

"ink fish"... I like that. :D

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

At least that way, if you can remember the word for "squid", you'll always know the word for "ink".

I does feel kind of strange that we've been buying Squid brand fish sauce for years, and I've only just worked out how to read the label. (They do also sell an English labelled version, but not in the stores we go to.)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The first consonant is normally a "h" but, in this case, a leading ห in front of another consonant is a modifier which turns the next consonant into a high class one. The next consonant would normally be a low class "m" and the syllable would be meuk with a rising turn (low class, dead syllable, short vowel). But thanks to the modifier, now it's a high class dead syllable, which means it's a low tone.

O_o

Oh yeah. Clear as mud.

... Actually, I called the ninja girl over, both to show her Thai letters broken down into their components and to show her HOW COMPLICATED the rules for pronouncing and reading Thai are, but, remarkably, in picking this as an example and working through it phrase by phrase, I found I could understand it better. And then she added to my sense of analogical understanding by saying, "Maybe it's not much worse than English, where we might say, "Here is the word 'shares.' It starts with an s, which is normally pronounced 'ssss' but when you follow it with an 'h,' then the h becomes silent and the s becomes pronounced 'shhhhhhhh' And then at the end of the word, an s can often be pronounced 'z,' as is the case with this word." I realized that sounds ridiculously complicated, and yet people learn how to pronounce and read English--so it must be the same for Thai. Well, analogically the same, anyway. Thai still seems pretty complicated.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

It's actually not that hard as long as you give yourself time to learn each rule one by one. You could probably compress all the rules onto a single system card (which, come to think of it, I should have done). And once you start actually reading, you can always use words you know to deduce how to pronounce new words.

At the moment, I'm still reading very slowly and there are lots of letters I get wrong. I guess my learning is going to accelerate soon though - I'm taking a taxi to the airport in a hour.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

"Ink fish" I see that the Thai people have the same approach to naming things as the Welsh. :)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Wait till you see their approach to placenames!

Hint: I'm leaving today for a place called กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุทธยา มหาดิลกภพ นพรัตนราชธานีบุรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์มหาสถาน อมรพิมานอวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยะวิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์.