My favourite is a this baffling sms message I received from a business in Royal Garden :

 

Quote

Your grss finish or lady

Took me a while to work out.

Any guesses? 

Your glass is finished already ??

 

Or lady is probably already. Grss can mean glass, but its a weird thing to ask through sms. Knowing what kind of business is it might help. 

'your garments done already', message from tailor, laundry or dry cleaner ?

So close, Josh and spoon.

She was telling me the glasses  (spectacles) I had ordered were ready to be picked up.

The "or lady" bit confused me. Being a gay tourist I have nothing to do with ladies.

On 5/25/2019 at 10:03 PM, colmx said:

My friend you(aka your friend) 

I find this one often confusing. Doesn't Thai make this distinction? Is this another context dependent item?

50 minutes ago, JimmyJoe said:

I find this one often confusing. Doesn't Thai make this distinction? Is this another context dependent item?

I believe is is just two words mixed up. My friend is the phrase used for friend. You refer to "your" possessvie. Also the order used for adjective/possive is after the noun, not before like english. Similar in malay, beautiful lady is perempuan cantik, perempuan (lady), cantik (beautiful). So your friend = my friend you. 

'My friend you' is certainly a more commonly heard saying.

3 hours ago, spoon said:

I believe is is just two words mixed up. My friend is the phrase used for friend. You refer to "your" possessvie. Also the order used for adjective/possive is after the noun, not before like english. Similar in malay, beautiful lady is perempuan cantik, perempuan (lady), cantik (beautiful). So your friend = my friend you. 

Yes. That makes sense. But what confuses me is sometimes I hear "my friend you" and I realize they mean "your friend". I guess they just mix up the possessive pronouns mine and yours sometimes. But of course, I'm always grateful when they speak English at all. And I have to confess I melt when I hear their pronunciation difficulties. A boy recently said to me: We go together send box mangoes to sister me. Several pitfalls for him.

8 minutes ago, JimmyJoe said:

And I have to confess I melt

Me too. I am not laughing at the lovely Thai people. As an ex-linguist I am fascinated how totally different Thai is from European languages. It must be extremely difficult to learn English.

"Open internet" he said yesterday, meaning "Switch on hot spot" To me this is clear communication.

Thank you to Anddy. The 'ng' in Singing is the right way to get the ng sound in Thai for snake, money etc. BF says I've nailed it now.

 

 

My Thai friend speaks English well enough to have moved beyond the sort of Thai-based constructions mentioned above. But he just cannot pronounce the letter V.

I've tried to convince him that there are simple methods to learn consonants that don't occur in Thai (e.g. put your upper teeth on your lower lip...) but as is often the case he just doesn't believe me. So I get wacation and wery and wisa. And Wolwo.

Ten years ago I told him if he could say Volvo I'd buy him one. We're still driving the same old Honda.

 

 

 

And another one. Somol talk a.k.a Small talk. Earphones apparently.