Sometimes I just don't know the Thai word for something. I had some car trouble the other day when I left my headlights on while I went to visit a friend. When I came back the battery was dead and the car wouldn't start. I needed 'jumper cables'. I knew the Thai word for cable, 'sai'. So, using that word and lots of hand gestures I tried to explain to my friend what I needed. 'Oh', my friend said in Thai, "you need 'sai jump'." I should have known.

     The Thai language borrows words freely from Chinese, Cambodian, Sanskrit, Pali, and of course English. You're in luck. You are already familiar with hundreds of Thai words and you probably didn't know it.

     If you find yourself like I was, searching for a Thai word you just don't know, one trick is to simply use an English word. Words as diverse as virus, vitamin, and visa work. So do cartoon, clutch, and coupon. But it is important to note that when an English word is borrowed into Thai it becomes a Thai word, with a tone, a stress, and a pronunciation all its own.

     Thus, the English word "virus" becomes the Thai word wai-rut, vitamin = wee-ta-min, and visa = wee-saa. (Bold indicates a falling or high tone or more simply a stressed syllable.) Also there is, cartoon = gar-toon, clutch = crutch, and coupon = que-pawn.

     The topic of loan words is a favourite for beginning linguists but most of us aren't linguistic students so here are a few simple rules for changing English into Thai.

     A final 'l' becomes an 'n', apple = appen. A final 'v' becomes 'f', serve = serf. A final 's' sound becomes't', office = off-it. An English 'v' becomes a 'w', video = wid-ee-oh. 'sh' sounds are turned into 'ch' sounds, shopping = chopping. Also, many 3 syllable words get a nice accent or falling tone on their last syllable, computer = com-pew-der.

     Occasionally though the loan word gets changed a little more severely. Some get shortened like car-bu from carburetor and sometimes syllables are confused as in au-tow-no-mat, modified from the English automatic. Where would you think the Thai word "hay-chivy" comes from? Would you have guessed it comes from "HIV"? These loan words take a little more work to master.

     You really have no excuse not to speak Thai now that you know so many words. You can speak Thai at work in your off-it while you surf the in-ter-net while you speak on your mo-bye phone or with the girls who serf you at a restaurant while you eat cake choc-o-lat, or a san-wit or a ham-ber-ger. You can speak Thai at home when you are watching a dee-wee-dee on your tee-wee or out on the street driving your ess-you-wee or riding your mo-tor-sai.

     Recently I needed to buy a new reader for the card in my digital camera, a "card reader". I went to a camera store and thought about how to explain what I needed. I tried my trick. "Do you have a caad-ree-der?" I asked. "Yes, I have one right here." He pulled out exactly what I was looking for. I had learned a new word.

     English does its own share of borrowing. Tamil gives us catamaran, Italian gives us mafia, Yiddish gives us schlong, and French gives us décolletage (although when I looked the last up in a dictionary it was illustrated with a picture of a very American Marilyn Monroe wearing a low cut gown). But except for 'pot-tai', the only English-from-Thai word I have found that is in daily use is the word bong, defined as "a type of hookah or water pipe for smoking marijuana or other drugs." This Thai word itself has its origins in the Hindi word 'bhang' and that came from the Sanskrit word 'bhanga' meaning hemp. And that is probably all the Sanskrit you will ever need to know.