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Comment by 082349872349872 | Hacker News Reader

> * น้ำใจ (Nam-jai) (Thai): Literally "water from the heart". Being very nice and helpful without expecting anything back.

"Charity"

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Charity is closer to ใจบุญ (jai-bun) than น้ำใจ (nam-jai).

A mixture of "act of kindness" and "good will" would be a more fitting translation, but the interesting part here is that "sportmanship" is also considered an act of น้ำใจ (น้ำใจนักกีฬา nam-jai nak-kee-la or literally. sportman's nam-jai).

We also have a word เสียน้ำใจ (sia-nam-jai) for when our nam-jai ended up as a waste, or for when the other party is being ungrateful for the kindness that's being given, and also เลี้ยงน้ำใจ (leang-nam-jai) for when you're doing/accepting nam-jai for the sake of not making the other party sia-nam-jai.

In the King James Bible you have lovingkindness but I guess that might be a mistranslation of the Hebrew checed which literally means "covenant loyalty." But I feel like lovingkindness even if it was originally mistranslated has the same connotation as nam-jai.

There are many key differences between the two concepts. 'charity' would be a bad translation of 'น้ำใจ'. GPT-4o explains it well:

https://chatgpt.com/share/e/987705c8-fcb7-4af3-a8bd-9d7dc228...

That "share" link doesn't.

Perhaps I should specify: "charity", as used in "faith, hope, and..."

(although I generally prefer "charity" as in the computer language)

Having lived in Thailand, I am confident that 'น้ำใจ' is still a distinct concept from 'charity' in 'faith, hope, and charity'.

They are probably closer in meaning than the most common definition of 'charity' though.

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