Thai Slang You Will Actually Hear (ngong, sâep, bpang)

Textbook Thai is the Thai you use with officials, and it will carry you through a visa run, a hospital and a lease. It will not get you through a lunch break. The Thai people actually speak to each other is faster, shorter and full of words no course teaches, and the gap is wide, because Thai marks the relationship between two speakers where English leaves it unsaid because Thai marks the relationship between two speakers in almost every sentence. Slang is not decoration on top of that system; it is one of the places the system is doing its work. Using a friend's word with a stranger is not a small stylistic slip, it is a claim about closeness that the other person has to react to. That is why the useful question about any slang word is not what it means but where it came from, because the source tells you most of what you need to know about the audience. Four sources between them cover most of what you will hear. English loans reshaped by Thai phonology are the safest: they carry no regional marking and no rudeness in them. What they do carry is age: they are young, urban, school-English words. Isaan words that went national are warm and informal, fine with friends and colleagues, occasionally a little cheeky depending on what you are describing. Wordplay on ordinary Thai — a taro root for a nosy person, a bird for being turned down — is where most of the fun lives, and most of it is safe — though wordplay is also where a good deal of the sexual slang sits. And then there is the rough vocabulary, which is genuinely rough, and which foreigners get wrong more often than any other kind because they hear it constantly and conclude it is casual. It is not casual. It is intimate, which is a different thing. Start with the single most useful word on this page: งง (ngong), confused, my brain has stopped. It is not rude, it has no register problem at all, you can say it to your landlord or to your boss, and it describes the state a learner is in several times a day. งงมาก (ngong mâak) is completely lost. Thais use it about themselves constantly, so saying it about your own Thai lands as honest rather than as an apology, and it almost always gets you the sentence again more slowly. The English loans are the group to reach for first. ชิลๆ (chin chin) is chill, and it works as an answer to what are you doing, as a description of a bar, and as a way of telling someone to calm down; it is also written ชิว and said chiw, and you will hear both. ฟิน (fin) is the blissed-out feeling of the first mouthful or the aircon after the street; it is usually explained as a clipping of ฟินาเล่, finale, though that is an account rather than a proof. อิน (in) is being deeply into something, a song, a series, a cause, and อินมาก (in mâak) is really feeling it. เว่อร์ (wôe), from over, is over the top, said of a story, an outfit or a person. ดราม่า (draa-mâa) is a public row, usually online. Notice what happens to the sounds: Thai has no final l, so chill becomes chin, and the loan is reshaped rather than borrowed intact. Say it the English way and you will usually still be understood, but you have said an English word rather than the Thai one. แซ่บ (sâep) is the best example of the second group. It is the Isaan word for the sharp, spicy-sour kind of delicious, it came to Bangkok with Isaan migration, Isaan food and Isaan music, and it is now national. About food it is safe with anybody. About a person it means hot, and that is a friends-only use. เด้อ (dôe) is a common Isaan sentence-final particle, warm and countryside-friendly, and using it in the north-east usually gets you a delighted reaction; using it in a Bangkok office is a joke rather than ordinary speech, which may be exactly what you want. The wordplay group is where most of the fun lives. เผือก (phèuak) is taro, and it means nosy — it stands in for เสือก (sèuak), the coarse word for butting into other people's business, the same dodge as เชี่ย for เหี้ย: เผือกมาก (phèuak mâak), so nosy, is teasing rather than an insult. เนียน (nian) is smooth of texture, and it describes someone slipping something past you — quietly jumping a queue, quietly leaving early. นก (nók) is bird, and to นก is to be turned down after asking someone out. โดนเท (doon thee) is literally to be poured away, and it means stood up or ditched. ติ่ง (dtìng) is a superfan; said of yourself it is fond and self-deprecating, said of someone else it has a light sneer in it. ปัง (bpang) is the sound of a bang and means stunning, said of an outfit or a performance. ตัวแม่ (dtua-mâe) is the queen, the one who sets the standard. เก๋ (gěe) is chic — older slang that never went away, used of a bag, a café or a haircut. Two reactions are worth having ready because you will need them within a week. จริงดิ (jing dì) is seriously?, and its gentler cousin is จริงเหรอ (jing rǒe). ว่าไง (wâa ngai), literally say what, is what's up, and it goes sideways or downwards, between friends or from someone senior to someone junior — never up, and bare at a stranger, a vendor or anyone older it is close to rude. เฮ้ย (hóei) is oi or whoa, a shout of surprise or a way of grabbing a friend's attention; the same word aimed at a stranger is a provocation. Now the rough vocabulary, honestly. เหี้ย (hîa) is a water monitor lizard and one of the strongest swear words in Thai, and you will hear it every day: in traffic, on building sites, between friends who mean it affectionately. That last use is what misleads foreigners. ควย (khuay) is anatomical and just as strong. แม่ง (mâeng) is a rough intensifier, roughly bloody, milder than the other two but out of place at work. Thais soften these in writing and in speech, and เชี่ย (chîa) is the commonest dodge for the first of them, still rough but less so. The rule that actually protects you is not about the words. It is that a foreigner swearing in Thai is heard completely differently from a Thai doing it — as aggression or as a performance, rarely as fluency — and the cost of getting it wrong is much higher than anything you gain. Learn them so you know what has just been said about the traffic. Leave them there. One structural point that saves you from a whole class of mistake. Thai slang rarely works by taking a polite word and making it ruder. It works on the machinery around the words: ครับ and ค่ะ get dropped or softened to คับ and ฮะ, and ผม and คุณ give way to กู and มึง. Between friends the particles ครับ (khráp) and ค่ะ (khâ) disappear, the pronouns disappear, and what is left is short. That absence is information. If you keep the particles and add slang vocabulary you will sound odd rather than rude, which is a good place for a learner to be. Nothing in the rough group is rescued by a ครับ on the end. If you drop the particles with someone you do not know well, the vocabulary will not save you. Add slang words first and drop politeness last, in that order, and let the other person go first. Finally, proverbs. They are not slang and belong to a different, older register, but Thais quote them the way English speakers quote proverbs — in the middle of ordinary conversation, usually the first half only, expecting you to know the rest. They are worth recognising for the same reason as the swearing: not so you can produce them, but so a sentence about a buffalo listening to a fiddle does not stop you dead. There is a short list at the end.