The Body and What Hurts (bpùat, jèp, mêuay)

You have the body word and you have the word for hurt, and you are still going to say the wrong thing, because Thai does not have one word for hurt. It has three, they are not degrees of the same thing, and the one you pick tells the person in front of you what kind of problem you have before you say anything else. Choose wrong and you have not spoken badly. You have reported a different complaint, and the examination goes looking in the wrong place. That is what this lesson is for. It teaches you how to name the part and describe the sensation, which is language and not medicine: nothing here tells you what is wrong with you or what to do about it, and the answer to every question of that kind is to ask a pharmacist or a doctor. Start with the sentence shape, because it is short and you will use it unchanged all day. Thai puts the hurt verb first and the body part straight after it, with nothing in between. No preposition, no "my", no subject. ปวดหัว (bpùat hǔa) is not three words waiting for a fourth. It is a finished sentence meaning "I have a headache", and putting ผม (phǒm) or ฉัน (chǎn) in front of it only makes it heavier. Add the politeness and you are done: ปวดหัวครับ (bpùat hǔa khráp). The negative is ไม่ (mâi) in front of the verb, ไม่ปวด (mâi bpùat), ไม่เจ็บ (mâi jèp), and to deny the body part rather than the verb you need ไม่ใช่ (mâi châi) instead, which is why "it is my back, not my stomach" comes out as ปวดหลังครับ ไม่ใช่ท้อง (bpùat lǎng khráp, mâi châi tháwng). The full logic of those two negatives is in saying no: the negatives. Now the three verbs. ปวด (bpùat) is the deep one. It is under the surface, it has no edge you could draw round, it beats or presses or grinds on its own without anybody touching it, and it is the word for the aches that get people out of bed at three in the morning: ปวดหัว a headache, ปวดท้อง (bpùat tháwng) a stomach ache, ปวดฟัน (bpùat fan) toothache, ปวดหลัง (bpùat lǎng) a bad back. If you were asked to point at it you would spread a hand over an area rather than put a fingertip on a spot. เจ็บ (jèp) is the sharp one, and it is the word for anything with a surface. A cut, a graze, a burn, a sting, a bite, a place that has been hit. It is also the word for pain that arrives when something touches you or when you move a particular way, which is why a doctor pressing your abdomen asks กดตรงนี้เจ็บไหม (gòt dtrong-níi jèp mǎi) and not กดตรงนี้ปวดไหม. If you can cover it with one fingertip, and pressing it makes it worse, it is เจ็บ. เมื่อย (mêuay) is the muscle one. It is what a body part feels like after it has been used: a day at a desk, four hours on a bike, an hour in a dentist's chair with your mouth held open. It is tiredness in the meat of the thing rather than damage to it, and the test that separates it from the other two is what a firm thumb would do. Pressing a เจ็บ is unbearable. Pressing a เมื่อย is the reason massage shops exist. เมื่อย is in fact the massage word. A shop opens with ปวดตรงไหนเป็นพิเศษไหม (bpùat dtrong nǎi bpen phí-sèet mǎi), is anywhere hurting in particular, and shortens it to เมื่อยตรงไหน (mêuay dtrong nǎi); the phrases for that hour are on salon and massage. So the test you can run in the moment has three questions and you take them in order. Can you cover the spot with one fingertip, and would pressing it make it worse? Then เจ็บ. Is it under the surface, spread out, with no edge, throbbing on its own while nothing touches it? Then ปวด. Did it come from using that part, and would a firm thumb on it feel good rather than terrible? Then เมื่อย. Anything with a wound, a burn or a bite is เจ็บ whatever else it feels like, because the surface is broken and that settles it. One place the line genuinely blurs is the belly: ปวดท้อง and เจ็บท้อง (jèp tháwng) are both ordinary and nobody will correct you. The pair that does not blur, and the one worth drilling, is ปวดคอ against เจ็บคอ. Four more words fill the gaps the three verbs leave. ตุบๆ (dtùp-dtùp) is the throb, and ปวดตุบๆ (bpùat dtùp-dtùp) is the pain that keeps you awake; the dentist page has it whole as ปวดตุบๆทั้งคืนเลยครับ, throbbing all night. ร้าว (ráao) is pain that travels, which is why the doctor asks เจ็บร้าวไปตรงไหนไหม (jèp ráao bpai dtrong nǎi mǎi) — answer with where it goes, not where it starts. ตึง (dteung) is tight rather than painful, and ตึงๆแต่ไม่เจ็บ (dteung-dteung dtàe mâi jèp) is the answer that stops a therapist or a dentist pressing harder. ชา (chaa) is numb, and it is not a kind of hurt at all: ชาตรงนี้ครับ (chaa dtrong-níi khráp). The same ชา sits inside ยาชา (yaa-chaa), the numbing injection, which is a word you are likely to meet before you need the adjective. Here is what to fix before anything else. These three are not a scale. เจ็บ is not "worse than" ปวด and ปวด is not "worse than" เมื่อย. They describe the character of the sensation, not the amount of it, and how bad it is gets said separately with its own words. A learner who reaches for เจ็บ because it hurts a great deal, or ปวด because it only hurts a little, has told the doctor something false about the nature of the problem and nothing at all about its severity. The cleanest proof of how much work these verbs do is คอ (khaw). คอ is both the neck and the throat, one word for both, and in a clinic the pain verb is what separates them. ปวดคอ (bpùat khaw) is a stiff neck. เจ็บคอ (jèp khaw) is a sore throat. Same body word, two complaints that have nothing to do with each other, and the only thing separating them is which verb sits in front. Get this pair the wrong way round at a pharmacy and at best you will be asked to say it again, because the two send her to different shelves. ฟัน (fan) does the same trick with three verbs. ปวดฟัน is the toothache that keeps you awake, coming from inside the tooth. เจ็บ is what you report when they press it, or when biting on that side hurts. And there is a third word that belongs to teeth in particular, เสียว (sǐao), the short electric zing you get from something cold, which is neither an ache nor a sharp hurt and has no single English word. Keep เสียว attached to its body part as เสียวฟัน (sǐao fan); the dentist page explains why the bare word is not one to leave loose, along with ซี่ (sîi), the classifier you need in order to say which tooth: at the dentist. Saying where is the other half of the job, and Thai does it with the body word plus a finger. ตรงนี้ (dtrong-níi) means "right here" and it is the most useful two syllables in a consulting room: เจ็บตรงนี้ with a finger on the spot, or ปวดตรงนี้ for the deeper kind. The question that comes back at you is ตรงไหน (dtrong nǎi), which spot, in เจ็บตรงไหน or ปวดตรงไหน or the softer ไม่สบายตรงไหน (mâi sà-baai dtrong nǎi). Pointing while you speak is not a failure of Thai. Thai patients do it too, and it is more accurate than any vocabulary you could bring with you. When you need to narrow it further, ข้างซ้าย (khâang-sáai) and ข้างขวา (khâang-khwǎa) are the left and right sides, ข้างบน (khâang-bon) and ข้างล่าง (khâang-lâang) are upper and lower, ข้างใน (khâang-nai) is inside, and ข้างนี้ (khâang-níi) is this side of me. ข้าง is also the classifier for one of a paired part, so ขาข้างซ้าย (khǎa khâang-sáai) is the left leg and ตาข้างขวา (dtaa khâang-khwǎa) is the right eye. How bad and how long come next, and both are formulaic enough to learn whole. Intensity sits after the verb: ปวดนิดหน่อย (bpùat nít-nàwy) is a bit, ปวดมาก (bpùat mâak) is a lot, and when it has gone past what you can put up with, ทนไม่ไหว (thon mâi wǎi), "I cannot stand it". That last one says you have reached your limit, and the machinery behind ไหว (wǎi), which is about capacity rather than permission, is in the three ways to say "can". For change over time you want ดีขึ้น (dii khêun) better, แย่ลง (yâe long) worse and ปวดน้อยลง (bpùat náwy long) hurting less, all of which sit in comparing things. The end of it is หาย (hǎai), to be cured: หายแล้วครับ (hǎai láew khráp) it has cleared up, ยังไม่หายครับ (yang mâi hǎai khráp) not yet, and หายไวๆนะคะ (hǎai wai-wai ná khá) is what staff send you off with. Duration runs on one frame you will use at every visit: the symptom, then มา (maa), then a number, then a time word, then แล้ว (láew). ปวดหัวมาสามวันแล้ว (bpùat hǔa maa sǎam wan láew), three days now. For a starting point rather than a stretch, use ตั้งแต่ (dtâng-dtàe): ตั้งแต่เมื่อคืน (dtâng-dtàe mêua-kheun) since last night, ตั้งแต่เช้า (dtâng-dtàe cháo) since this morning. Duration is the doctor's next question after any symptom, so have the number ready before you sit down, and see past, future and already for what แล้ว is actually doing in there. How the damage happened takes โดน (doon), the everyday passive: โดนแมลงกัด (doon má-laeng gàt) something bit me, โดนน้ำร้อนลวก (doon nám ráwn lûak) scalded, and the rest of that verb is in four verbs that stretch. For the serious end of all this, see hospital and insurance and emergencies and police. Then there is the other family of complaints, the ones that are conditions rather than sensations, and they take เป็น (bpen). เป็นไข้ (bpen khâi) a fever, เป็นหวัด (bpen wàt) a cold, เป็นผื่น (bpen phèun) a rash, เป็นแผล (bpen phlǎe) a wound, เป็นลม (bpen lom) fainted. The logic is set out in the four answers to English "is": เป็น is the verb for having an illness, which is also why เป็นอะไร (bpen à-rai) means "what is wrong with you" rather than "what are you". Two things about this set are worth pinning down. First, fever is said both ways and neither is wrong: เป็นไข้ names the illness, มีไข้ (mii khâi) says the temperature is up, and both are ordinary in a patient's mouth — the clinic page's own line is มีไข้ตั้งแต่เมื่อคืนค่ะ. Staff use มีไข้ from about 37.5 upwards. Second, and this is the exception that catches everyone, ท้องเสีย (tháwng-sǐa) does not take เป็น. It is already a verb phrase, ท้อง plus เสีย, the belly gone bad, so it stands on its own and takes the duration frame directly: ท้องเสียมาสองวันแล้ว (tháwng-sǐa maa sǎwng wan láew). เป็นท้องเสีย is not what people say. And when you cannot name any of it, the fallback that asks no diagnosis of you is ไม่สบาย (mâi sà-baai), unwell, which the pharmacy page calls the default Thai way of saying you are not right and which covers everything from a head cold to food poisoning: ไม่สบายมาสองวันแล้ว, and then point. แพ้ (pháe) deserves its own paragraph, because it is the sentence here that can matter most and it is grammatically the easiest thing in the lesson. แพ้ is a plain verb and it takes its object bare, with no preposition and no "to": แพ้ยา (pháe yaa), allergic to medicine, แพ้อาหารทะเล (pháe aa-hǎan thá-lee), allergic to seafood. The negative is ไม่แพ้ (mâi pháe), and that is the answer to give when you are asked, rather than a shake of the head. Nothing else has to be built. What needs care is which word goes after it, and the pages already carry that: the pharmacy page has the drug side, including the trap that แพ้ยา and ยาแก้แพ้ (yaa gâe pháe), an antihistamine, are opposite things, at at the pharmacy; the clinic page has getting the allergy written onto your record with ขอเขียนไว้ในประวัติ (khǎw khǐan wái nai bprà-wàt) rather than merely said aloud, at at the clinic; and the food side is on ordering food. Two more facts help you hear the word in the wild. แพ้ also means to lose, as in a match, so context is doing real work; and the standing condition of being an allergic person is ภูมิแพ้ (phuum-pháe), which is what a doctor says when the verdict is allergies rather than an infection. Last, learn the questions coming back at you, because the conversation starts with them and not with your prepared sentence. เป็นอะไรมา (bpen à-rai maa) is the first question you will actually hear, and มา here means "came in with", so the answer is the complaint. มีอาการยังไงบ้าง (mii aa-gaan yang-ngai bâang) asks for the list, อาการ (aa-gaan) being the word for symptom. เป็นมากี่วันแล้ว (bpen maa gìi wan láew) is the duration question. มีไข้ไหม (mii khâi mǎi), กินอะไรมา (gin à-rai maa), กินยามาหรือยัง (gin yaa maa rěu yang) and แพ้ยาอะไรไหม (pháe yaa à-rai mǎi) follow close behind. You do not have to produce elegant Thai in reply. You have to recognise which of those was just asked and answer it with a body word, a pain verb, a number and a particle. When it goes past you, พูดช้าๆได้ไหม (phûut cháa-cháa dâi mǎi), or พูดช้าๆอีกทีได้ไหม (phûut cháa-cháa ìik thii dâi mǎi), and เขียนให้หน่อยได้ไหม (khǐan hâi nàwy dâi mǎi) are on the clinic, pharmacy and dentist pages, and using them beats nodding, because the nod is taken as agreement and the instruction is not repeated.