Thursday, March 12, 2009

Classifiers

This post is for mama, a linguistic anthropologist at heart.

A classifier is used for every noun in the Thai language when describing an amount of the item. Some are the same in the English, for example chaa song gaow (two glasses of tea), or can still be easily understood with my cultural background, for example som song loogk (two peices of fruit that are oranges). Other classifiers put things in categories that are totally beyond me. Here a few:
  • two eyes of eyes
  • two cars of wheeled vehicles
  • two books of thick reading material
  • two magazines of thin reading material
  • two thumbs of fingers
  • two tape rolls of round items
  • caboo-un is the classifier for trains, but also classifies parades and other types of processions

The best, by far, is the classifier for table: do song dua (two tables of animal). Why is the table classified by "animal"? BECAUSE IT HAS LEGS!!!

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