Goldenland Polyglot

Ramblings On Languages From Suvarnabhumi, Suvarnadvipa, the Goldenland and สุวรรณภูมิ.


September 20, 2010

Studying Thai Through Poetry / Ram’s Official Song

Filed under: TH256 Thai Poetry ร้อยกรอง — Luke Cassady-Dorion @ 04:43

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My Thai Poetry exam is coming up in two weeks and part of the exam involves analyzing a piece of poetry written by the professor. I’ve heard rumors that he often picks Ram’s official song for us to analyze, which would make sense as he talked about it many times in class.

Ram’s official song is written in poetic form by Professor Pratip (อาจารย์ประทิป) and is based around our official tree which was designated by the crown princess (สมเด็จพระเทพฯ) in 1999 (๒๕๔๒). If you’re paying attention, you might wonder why the school received an official tree 11 years ago, but was founded 39 years ago … not sure what the exact answer is to that, but yes there was a period of 20-odd years where the school didn’t have an official tree.

สุพรรณิการ์
งามล้ำเลอค่าสง่าสม
พรรณไม้พระราชทานแสนชื่นชม
รามฯ นิยมคงอยู่คู่ขวัญรามฯ
สีเหลืองทองวาววามในความสว่าง
ให้ชาวรามฯ เอ่ยอ้างน่าเกรงขาม
สุพรรณิการ์สวยสดแสนงดงาม
ดุจชาวรามฯ คงความรู้คู่ความดี
จากแดนไทยใต้เหนือทุกที่ถิ่น
จบแล้วเจ้าโบยบินทุกถิ่นที่
ทนแห้งแล้วแรงราชั่วตาปี
ฝ้ายคำมีน้ำอดน้ำทนจริง
มุ่งสร้างสรรค์ชาติรังสรรค์สังคมสมชื่อรามฯ
ไม่เกรงขามแท้ท้อต่อทุกสิ่ง
ให้เลื่องลือชื่อรามฯ ความเป็นจริง
ไม่ละทิ้ง ไม่ระย่อต่อสิ่งใด
สุพรรณิการ์
งามล้ำเลอค่าสง่าใส
ซึ้งพระมหากรุณาอ่าอำไพ
สุพรรณิการ์สถิตในหัวใจรามฯ

So the official tree is สุพรรณิการ์ or ฝ้ายคำ as it is called in the North, which according to my dictionary is

[n.] (suphannikā) EN: Silk cotton tree ; Yellow cotton tree

or whatever else you might refer to this as

OK … so here’s the song again, with my notes after some lines. Many of the lines are just different ways to talk about how pretty the tree is using poetic language, I’ll leave those lines for you to figure out. The lines that I pulled out are the meat of the poem in that they compare the tree to the student body. If he ends up putting this poem on the exam, these are the lines that I will highlight.

สุพรรณิการ์
งามล้ำเลอค่าสง่าสม

Here’s he’s saying that the tree is very pretty

พรรณไม้พระราชทานแสนชื่นชม
รามฯ นิยมคงอยู่คู่ขวัญรามฯ

Basically this says that the tree is a gift of royal origin (พระราชทาน is Thai royal language for ให้) and it is much admired

สีเหลืองทองวาววามในความสว่าง
ให้ชาวรามฯ เอ่ยอ้างน่าเกรงขาม

One of the reasons that the tree was picked is that it flowers in yellow which is Ram’s official color. In these two lines he first references the color of the tree (I guess he assumes that we know it is Ram’s official color) and then says that the student body is in awe of it.

สุพรรณิการ์สวยสดแสนงดงาม
ดุจชาวรามฯ คงความรู้คู่ความดี
จากแดนไทยใต้เหนือทุกที่ถิ่น
จบแล้วเจ้าโบยบินทุกถิ่นที่

These two lines are quite important. First he says that the tree grows in in every part of the country (rare as the climates are varied), but what he means is that Ram draws students from all of the country (also rare for a Thai university). The next line is more direct in that he talks about the students being able to go to any part of the country and work upon graduating (being direct in this second line makes it even clearer that the first line was about students in addition to the tree).

ทนแห้งแล้วแรงราชั่วตาปี
ฝ้ายคำมีน้ำอดน้ำทนจริง

These two lines are also important, he’s saying that the tree is really durable and can handle any type of weather. He is talking directly about the tree, but comparing it to Ram’s student body who have a reputation for being able to stand up well in the workplace. In the second line, he refers to the tree by it’s northern name (ฝ้ายคำ) which in addition to being poetic, again makes reference to the student body coming from all over the country.

มุ่งสร้างสรรค์ชาติรังสรรค์สังคมสมชื่อรามฯ
ไม่เกรงขามแท้ท้อต่อทุกสิ่ง
ให้เลื่องลือชื่อรามฯ ความเป็นจริง
ไม่ละทิ้ง ไม่ระย่อต่อสิ่งใด
สุพรรณิการ์
งามล้ำเลอค่าสง่าใส
ซึ้งพระมหากรุณาอ่าอำไพ
สุพรรณิการ์สถิตในหัวใจรามฯ



August 19, 2010

Burmese Challenge: Day 9

Filed under: Burmese Challenge,MM101 / Burmese — Luke Cassady-Dorion @ 07:35

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Wednesday August 19th

  • 12:00-14:00: Hanging out in *bucks reviewing old flashcards (lessons 1-18)
  • 20:00-21:00: Home working on lessons 18, 19

So today I decided to stop bitching about the lack of grammar notes in L-Lingo and start looking things up in my books (Burmese for Beginners Book and CDs Combo by Gene Mesher which is excellent and also my school textbooks). L-Lingo is great in that it’s this interactive computer program which uses progressively difficult grammar to test you and that you can click on an word or phrase over-and-over until you are hearing it properly … but without the grammar notes it’s not complete (from what I understand Thai and Mandarin grammar notes are either out now or out soon).

I love how languages are like puzzles, one day a sentence baffles me and then the next day when I have all the pieces down the sentence finally makes sense. These ahh-ha! moments are one of the things that makes language learning so much fun, conversations which used to be gibberish slowly unfold to reveal themselves to us once we grok a certain percentage of the vocabulary and grammar. The reason that I wrote “certain percentage” and not “all” is that I don’t think that it’s necessary to understand every word that a person says in order to understand him. Just today I read an article in the New Yorker and encountered two English words that I didn’t know, but I still understood what was being said. The same thing happens to me with Thai when I’m in a situation where some sort of industry-specific vocabulary is being used.



Burmese Challenge: Week 2 – Day 6, 7, 8

Filed under: Burmese Challenge,MM101 / Burmese — Luke Cassady-Dorion @ 04:09

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Monday August 17th

  • 14:00-14:45: New material from chapters 14, 15 (Burmese->English with the computer)
  • 16:30-17:15: New material from chapters 14,15 (English->Burmese with paper flashcards), plus some older flashcards

Tuesday August 18th

Busy studying for exams today, only managed to put in

  • 14:00-15:00: Review of paper flashcards

Wednesday August 19th

  • 14:30- 15:20: Review of lesson 12, starting in on lessons 16, 17
  • 16:55-:17:55: Review of lessons 16, 17, starting in on lessons 18, 19

The reason that I write down the time of day that I do my studying is to show that I’m breaking up the sessions as much as possible. Everything that I have read about memory says that the brain starts to slow down after about 45 minutes and that we are more effective if we do a quick burst of studying (45-60 min), then get up and stretch, do something physical, walk around, etc … and come back to it. Since I am also studying for some exams at Ram this weekend, I have been breaking up my Burmese study sessions with studying for my government and culture exams as they (probably?) tax the brain differently.

It’s becoming more obvious how grammar notes would help me out (they are working on it). I’m memorizing lots of sentences which I could readily use, however if I didn’t have a year of Burmese classes from my university, I would have no idea what was going on. Burmese (like Japanese) marks the subject, object and verb of the sentence with particles. While not really possible to translate into English (or Thai), they are essential when building sentences. The example sentences that they give just throw these particles out there, but don’t explain them. Additionally, while giving sentences which use negation (“The boss is not standing”), they don’t explain that “ma …. bhuu” needs to be wrapped around a verb in order to negate it.

One last final complaint is that they have started using the Burmese words for he, she, they, I, you and everyone without actually telling us what they were. Again, I was able to look them up in my textbooks, but have a feeling that people who are new at language study might be hung-up.



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