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Nick Walker

Derived from the Kradai language group, with  origins in the misty valleys of southwest China, Thai is a tonal language with more than 65million speakers.
It is also a remarkably lyrical tongue,  full of evocative idiomatic expressions and proverbs that  illuminate the point the speaker or writer is trying to make.
'Many of these are drawn from  tropical trees or flowers or animals. However most have close or exact equivalents in English,' Discovery Bay resident Sunee Khongharoenthin, who hails from the central Thai city of Ayuttaya, explains.
Khongharoenthin is now surnamed Price, on account of being married to an English property executive.
Their Thai friends have been known to talk of Mark and Sunee as 'ging tong by yok', which transliterates as 'the gold branch with a jade leaf', and implies the union of a perfect couple, and who enjoy a high degree of security.
Sunee's  friends, Jinda Yimyong, from the southern province of Suratthani, and Pinyaa Chochuan, from Khon Kaen city in the northeast,  chuckle at the use of this famously respectful expression.
Chochuan then comes up with another one - 'narm khuen hai reeb thug', which literally means, 'when the waters of the river are full, be quick to fetch some water into your bucket'. In other words, seize the opportunity quickly, lest you lose it.
In the realm of romance there's 'Rak chan tong rak maa chan duay'. It literally means 'love me, love my dog', meaning 'if you choose to love me, you'd better be ready to love me with all my faults'.
There are Thai proverbs and idioms for all realms of life.  Here are a few for the office. When your colleague is using a spreadsheet to make a simple  calculation, or your boss convenes an hour-long meeting to explain the new paper-clips policy, few could blame you for muttering under your breath 'kee chang jahb thak-a-thaen',   meaning there's 'no need to ride an elephant to catch a grasshopper'. Or, don't make a straightforward or easy task needlessly difficult.
The saying a bad workman blames his tools has an almost exact counterpart in Thai. 'Rarm mai dee, tose phee tose klong' means 'those who dance poorly are apt to blame the musicians', in essence, those who blame others for their own shortcomings or failures.
The term 'multitasking' enjoys wide currency in  Hong Kong,  but  pragmatic Thais see the futility of doing many jobs  at the same time. Their idiom 'jahb plaa song mue' refers to the folly of trying to  'simultaneously catch a fish in each hand'.
If you're in a  jam and in attempting to escape you only find yourself in another, then you've 'nee sua pa' jorakeh' - 'escaped from a tiger to be eaten by a crocodile'. The English-language version of this is 'Out of the frying pan, into the fire'.
Crocodiles also feature in the  idiom 'son jarakeh wai-naam', which explains the futility of teaching a crocodile to swim and  means 'don't teach an expert', and presumably don't teach an expert who could bite your arm off.
Like crocodiles, elephants crop up frequently in  Thai idioms and one of the most common is 'chang tie tung tua ow bai buor phid mai mid'.
This translates as 'a dead elephant cannot be covered by a lotus leaf'. This means there's no point in trying to hide a problem that is too big to be concealed.
The humble frog also crops up from time to time, as in this wonderful little saying, 'khob nai ka la' - 'the frog in a coconut shell'. Basically someone who is insular and ignorant.
While an American might say 'you've never heard of Paris Hilton, what planet have you been on for the past five years?' A Thai might say 'you've never heard of Athiwara Khongmalai  [lead singer of  Thai rock band Bodyslam]? What are you? Some kind of frog who has spent a lifetime in a coconut shell'?
Domesticated beasts also feature in the lexicon of Thai proverbs. 'Wua hai lorm korg', literally means 'building an ox's pen after the beast has been stolen', which is echoed by the English language expression, 'no point in closing the gate after the horse has bolted.'
Both sayings posit that taking a preventative approach is always best.
The language also contains a sprinkling of expressions pertaining to Buddhism, a faith that pervades almost every aspect of Thai life. One of the best known is 'phid thong lhang phra', which means 'cover the back of an image of Buddha with gold leaf.' It refers to those who help others without drawing attention to themselves, humility being an eminently Buddhist virtue.



Why 'ride an elephant  to catch a grasshopper'?