Comment by fuzzbang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fuzzbang | Hacker News Reader

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You know, you can have a car in other countries as well. In Jakarta you can have a car and driver for less than the cost of a car in the US.

Personally, I think everyone should live in a different country for at least one (1) year. You'll gain a lot of perspective on your own country in the process. Just like learning another language teaches you more about your native tongue, so living in another country teach you about your own culture. Combine the two (new language, new country) for a serious eye opening.

For example, the Thai language has no words for "yes" or "no". There are no yes/no questions in Thai.

Only after being removed from pervasive US media do you recognize how much hollywood movie content is US centric and self-referential.

Honestly, if you love living in the US, go live somewhere else in the world for one year. You'll either love the US more, or you'll decide that you enjoy living somewhere else more than you anticipated. Either way, you'll have gained invaluable life experience.

http://www.into-asia.com/thai_language/phrases/basics.php lists Thai words for "yes" and "no", and describes other ways of saying yes or no to a question.

http://www.thaifocus.com/phrases.htm also lists Thai words for "yes" and "no", and inter alia mentions a couple of yes/no questions in Thai.

http://www.peacecorp.gov/wws/multimedia/language/transcripts... seems to indicate that Thai even has a special word whose presence in a sentence indicates a yes/no question.

http://thailanguagehut.com/blog/blog/thai-question-words-so-... has many, many examples of yes/no questions in Thai, and shows how to answer them.

What is the basis for your claim that "there are no yes/no questions in Thai"?

(It does seem that binary questions aren't treated the same way in Thai as they are in English -- the conventions for how you say yes and no are different in different cases -- but it doesn't look at all as if there are "no yes/no questions". For that matter, even in English there are some binary questions to which "yes" and "no" would be peculiar answers. For instance, questions that implicitly make an offer ("Would you like one of these?") usually have to be answered more politely.)

Actually, I speak fluent Thai, there is no word for Yes or No. There is ไม่ which is a negation word, and ใช่ which basically means "correct"/"right", not "yes". The Thai question format is generally: Q: Hungry? หิวไหม A: Not hungry. ไม่หิว A: Hungry. หิว

There are other question indicator words, but the one you're referring to is for "correct or not" type questions, e.g.

Q: This road, right? สอยนี้ใช่ไหม A: Right. ใช่ A: Not right. ไม่ใช่

Alternatively, for a lot of statements you can just respond with the polite ending words, ครับ for men and ค่ะ for women.

The question, "would you like one of these?" in Thai would be, "เอาไหม่"... literally, "want?". The correct response is then either: ไม่เอาครับ or, เอาครับ ... that is the polite form for "do not want", or "want". There is no other way to respond to that question (except without the polite ending).

Those things you describe are all yes/no questions, so it is not true that there are no yes/no questions in Thai. And what you've described are ways to give (for particular classes of question) answers that mean just the same as "yes" or "no" would for the corresponding questions in English.

It's interesting that English has a category (call it "standard binary questions, answerable with yes or no") that doesn't correspond exactly to anything in Thai. But from what you've said it seems entirely wrong to describe that situation by saying that Thai has no yes/no questions.

My wife is Thai, and I manage to speak thai a bit. I took several months of thai lessons. I confirm what has been said before. There is no yes/no word in thai. Those examples on those sites are just bad translation for beginners.

For example the word "chai" that they give for "yes" is more close to "true" when you agree with what has been said.

"Chai" is just a particular answer that can be given to a particular question. You can't use it as a "yes" answer to all question.

I actually did live in New Zealand for half a year, and yes, I'd highly recommend this to anyone, if only for the perspective it gives you.

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