Info for writer in Thai series fandom: More language thingy
Swear words and metaphor
*Some words may have more meaning than what I mention.
ไอ้ Ai and อี ee = words to be added in front of other words (a name or swear word), showing contempt or closeness (in a rude way).
Ai is masculine and ee is feminine, but nobody actually cares at this point.
เหี้ย hia or เชี่ย shia = Varanus salvator
These two words are the same. Hia is an original, and shia is a word that is born from distorting the voice in order to reduce vulgarity. It's kind of like referring to an f-word with any other word starting with f. We also used many other words that mean "Varanus salvator" as a sensor version of the "hia" swear word. little crocodile or chicken eater, for example.
They can also be used to empathize by adding to the end one or two times, for example, "super cool" would be "cool hia hia".
Tbh, whenever I read in English and see the word "hia," I always think of this word before a word that means "older brother." And to make it worse, the placement of both of them in the sentence can be exactly the same. Sometimes it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize the writer intended it to be an older brother.
เปรต pret=The hungry ghost, frequently described as a very tall monster with a needle-sized mouth. = tall(negative meaning) or a bad person
อ้อย oi=suger cane=อ่อย oi=attempt to entice something or someone to be caught (typically used by a woman seducing a man).
For example, a cane truck has overturned here.=Someone here is trying really hard to seduce someone.
งิ้ว ngiw=bombax anceps (thorn-covered tree)
In the story, when sinners go to hell, the adulterer must climb this tree naked.
Mark from Love Mechanics asks on Facebook how hurtful it would be to climb a ngiw tree after having sex with Vee, implying that he is at least interested in someone who is not single.
Gold fish=short memory
Tiger=flirtatious person who is good at getting who they want (typically a guy)
A tiger with faded stripes=old tiger=someone who used to be flirtatious but is no longer.
Dog can be alot of things depent on the context but usually a bad things.
"Dog with a rotten head" means someone nobody wants to get close to or interact with.
If someone looks just like a dog, that means their current state is bad. Too drunk = like a dog. Crying too much = like a dog.
Giving someone dog food means making someone, usually your friends, a dog. Used when you complain about your love life to someone, ask them for advice and they tell you to leave your current partner since the partner is being awful to you, you say so! Then you turn around and reconcile with your partner. So now your friend is a bad guy whom your partner won't want you to associate with anymore because they incite you to be at odd witn your partner.
Temple's dog = low status, usually used for a low-status man who likes a high-status woman who would be called ดอกฟ้า(dokfha) which translates directly to "sky flower." Use something like, "You are a temple's dog yet want to pluck a sky flower, you should know your place!"
A dog that serves someone means someone who only cares about serving their boss (who is a bad person) and nothing else, like morals or other people. A lackey
Bird(quite a new slang) = Can't get what you want, typically means someone you want as a lover.
Phonix = immortal bird = repeatedly failing to get what you want *We do use phonix as a poetic expression too, not just for this meaning.
Buffalo = idiot/fool.
You can say A is putting horns on B when A is cheating on B; this means A makes B an idiot for believing in A.
When you fail your exam, you might say that these days you eat grass instead of rice (like a buffalo).
There is a saying that goes like this: "One who remembers when they get hurt (and leaves or does something to not get hurt again) is a human; one who is willing to endure it is a buffalo." If you put up with something you shouldn't, you are a buffalo.
Pig
fat
weak/easy to win against
Fox
Cunning
Sedusing
catfish,termite=ugly
rhinoceros=Someone who tries to steal someone else's lover or just acts inappropriately in general according to the traditional feminine standard. Originally, it was only used to call women, but it is no longer the case.
barking deer=gay man
gibbon=woman
It was originally used by trans women to refer to cis women. can be seen as rude, but like many other words, many people don't actually take offense if it is used playfully. These two words, "barking deer" and "gibbon," are usually used together.
The reason why a character does not always know information stated in the subtitle
Gender of someone
The Thai language, for the most part, is gender-neutral. The she or he in the English subtitle usually has to be chosen by the translator.
Who/what the speaker is talking to/about
Many times, sentence structures in spoken language won't require a subject or object. I guess when that gets translated, it looks weird, so the translator has to pick something to add in. In a lot of situations where I am not sure how to address my interlocutor, I can simply avoid doing it, but when I'm writing in English like this, I have to pick something, right?
When
There are no tenses in Thai the way there are in English. We have words for determining whether something happened in the past, present, or future, but you can say something without using any of those and it will be just fine.
Rice
When someone asks if someone has eaten rice(ข้าว-khao) yet, the word rice usually means meal/food and not strictly rice. The word rice can mean food in general a lot of the time.
Polite words
There are a lot of words that mean the exact same thing but have a different degree of politeness. You may already have noticed it with the way there are so many words that mean you or I. You may also notice it when you watch alot of any Thai series. Like, how when a character says "eat" in the subtitle, there are some varied sounds, such as daek(แดก-rude), kin(กิน-common), than(ทาน-a bit more polite-shorten from rapprathan), rapprathan(รับประทาน-polite).
Meaning of polysyllabic words
Some polysyllabic words, when each syllable is separated, still have a meaning, but their meaning may not be consistent with the meaning of that polysyllabic word. So even when you recognize the meaning of each syllable, the meaning of the polysyllabic word you deduce from it may not be correct. I mean, if we look deeper, we should be able to make it make sense, but yeah.
For example, the word "witch" in Thai is mae mod(แม่มด). Mae means mother or something you can used to indicate that a word it is in refers to a woman and Mod means ant when it's a separate word, but when combined, they mean witch. Or for the word whose meaning is more similar to the words used to create it, the word khun nhu(คุณหนู), which means "young master/mistress." used for address the child of the boss, when sperate khun is a prefix to show politeness or respect, and nhu means mice or a word used for calling children. You can see that while some of the single-syllabic words are arguably related to the meaning of the polysyllabic word, some aint so much.
I hope this explanation doesn't make you more confused.😅 But if it is, do tell me. I will try to do better.
Thai alphabet
Our letters are named after words they used to spell. Like, both letters ญ and ย sound the same(yor), but the word woman (หญิง-ying) uses letter ญ and the word giant (ยักษ์-yak) uses letter ย, so letter ญ is named yor ying and letter ย is named yor yak.
Eastern religions are no stranger to demons, ghosts, and the like, no matter how little we may hear about them overseas- most breakouts from things like Hinduism or Buddhism are the gods and concepts, but unique ideas for monsters also spread like wildfire throughout any belief system. Bad karma reaps worse dividends, after all, and sometimes people need something to point at as an example to not be a bad person in one’s own selfish interest, or even just as a boogeyman to punish naughty children. Today’s demon of the day rests in that first camp, however- the eternally starving specter of a selfish soul, Preta.
Interestingly, Preta, directly translated to ‘hungry ghost,’ is a concept seen throughout multiple religions originating in Southeast Asia. While most famous for appearing in Hinduism, the idea of a Preta can actually be seen in Buddhism, Taoism, and even several folk religions in China as well. This idea has had several different names, but they all fit the general ‘hungry ghost’ idea- words like ပြိတ္တာ, 餓鬼, or เปรต each roughly meaning the same idea, that being of an undead, corrupted spirit tainted by greed in a past life. The reason for this is due to the spread of Buddhism- even as the other religions broke away from Buddhism, they kept the idea of the hungry ghost.
A Preta isn’t exactly as evil as I painted earlier, though- for the most part, it was actually used as a term to notate a person’s with low karma’s soul in-between the realms of life and death, wherein the deceased’s family must go through a series of rituals to help guide their soul into the next life. If a person’s family doesn’t do these things, however, their soul shall be stuck as that of a Preta for all eternity, suffering and starving. The connotation between a Preta and being a corrupted human is down to the fact that, typically, those who would form into Pretas were people who were uncared for by society, and demeaned as evil as a result of that fact. The lack of caring for these people, combined with their already low karma needed to form into a preta, is what causes them to be cursed into this state of half-death.
Once reanimated into a Preta, the soul would be cursed to be forever hungry, typically feeling a hankering for something repugnant or bizarre- things like corpses, feces, mud, and random still-living animals, just to name a few. While a preta, on top of this, the person would have their senses utterly corrupted- a river of water would become a river of pollution, trees would turn into filth, and people themselves would look inhumane, emaciated, or broken apart.
A majority of the time, a Preta is depicted as an emaciated human with a protruding belly and a slender neck, a visual metaphor for their inflicted mindset. A good amount of the time, artwork depicting a Preta displays it in mind-numbing pain, starving and curled up into balls, bawling their eyes out. Some of this artwork also depicts them spewing out flames, connected to a common legend regarding them, that being that any food that enters their mouth would be burned in seconds to cinders, rendering it uneatable. On top of this, their punishment worsens in the form of every temperature being incredibly intense, as the moon barely shining on them in summer feels like the fires of hell while the brightest sun in winter feels like being exposed to liquid nitrogen.
In most Buddhist traditions, preta are beings to be pitied- as people who weren’t capable of achieving good enough karma to pass on peacefully, and as inherently pathetic and sad creatures, some even leave offerings to help encourage the restless wandering spirits to try for better karma in their next life. In Hindu traditions, however, they are far less sympathetic, even if treated with pity as well.
A variety of rituals are undertaken to guarantee that a person doesn’t become a preta upon passing in Hindu tradition. Over the course of a mourning period, rice balls are granted to a symbolic representation of the passed-on person, typically in the form of a clay mound, each rice ball representing a different aspect of a new person. All the while, during this process, the family both grieves and has to partake in several restrictions to guarantee the person passes on, such as the chief mourner partaking in light fasting, not sleeping in a bed, or cleaning themselves. Avoiding one’s deceased loved one from becoming a preta is a major part of Hindu tradition, even to this day- on the thirteenth day of mourning, a common tradition is to perform a major ceremony titled “Preta Karma,” which outlines everything I’ve said above.
In Buddhism, preta are one of the forms of existence post-reincarnation, encompassing the existence of being a ghost. Their torment has already been explored above, but in short, life sucks as a Preta, and most want to pass on again very soon.
Now, with all of that out of the way, which was a lot, how are Preta depicted in SMT? Their design is perfect, in my opinion- it encompasses most depictions of a preta throughout history, all the while bringing its own spin to the table. It’s an iconic demon design for good reason, being simple and acceptable as an early-game mook, while still fitting the generally accepted idea of what a preta looks like. In the series, they are traditionally very early game demons, mostly appearing in the first few dungeons, if not the very first. This tradition has kept up for almost every game in the series, a surprising first in this series- they’ve appeared in almost every SMT game, and in almost ALL of them, they’re pretty much throwaways.
But, I gotta say, we need to give some props to the little guys. They may be fusion fodder, but they had a special place in my heart, and that’s all you really need at the end of the day. Overall, in spite of how complicated a topic this turned out to be, this multicultural hungry ghost has somehow grown to one of my favorite demons just due to how pathetic it is. I kinda love him.