48 Pali and Sanskrit Root Words in Thai to Give you even More Thai Language Super Powers

Take a look at the following words in English and see if you can work out what they all have in common: pedestrian, podiatrist, pedestal, pedicure, pedal, path.

FEET! If you're a native speaker of English, even if you don't speak fluent Latin or Greek, you will still twig when you see a word starting with 'ped-' or 'pod-' that it might well have something to do with 'feet'.

In fact, let's look at the word 'foot' - if you think of the 'f' sound as a 'p' with 'friction' and realise that very often as language changes across geography and time, f's turn into p's and vice-versa, you realise that the Germanic word 'foot' is indeed a cognate with the Latin 'ped' and Greek 'pod'.  Wait a minute - someone's missing from the party here.  Sanskrit is another cousin of Latin and Greek and the Sanskrit word for 'foot' is 'pada' पादद which in Thai is rendered as บาท 'baht'.  Yes - the Thai unit of currency is the 'Foot' aka Thai Baht.  I find that the more of these links that can be made, the more colourful the stories become in your head as you're learning vocabulary and the easier it is to remember new words.

If you haven't checked out my earlier post on the top 20 Pali / Sanskrit prefixes in Thai to boost your vocab, you can read it here.

A Note on 3 Important Sanskrit Terms

Sandhi

Say the following sentence in a normal speaking voice at normal speaking speed:

*** House of Cards ***

Did you pronounce each word distinctly? If you're a native English speaker, chances are you pronounced it:
*** haʊ səv kʰa:dz ***
Notice how the 's' attaches itself to the next word, the 'o' in 'of' usually drops to a 'schwa - ə' sound, and even though the final letter in 'cards' is an 's', it becomes a 'z' sound.  These 'sound shifts' that naturally happen when certain sounds follow eachother is called 'Sandhi', or in Thai we call it สนธิ 'sonthi'.  It's important to note that sometimes you might not see roots spelled exactly the same in different words.  In Sanskrit, spelling follows the SOUND of speech, so depending on what other sounds are surrounding a given word, its spelling may change.  That means that even though the individual words may be 'House' 'of' 'Cards', if this were Sanskrit, written in a sentence, it would be written hau sev kadz. The complete rules of Sandhi transformations are beyond the scope of this article, but I highly recommend digging deeper into the subject - it will let you understand both Thai better, as well as how your own mouth functions.

Guna गुण คุณ 'Khun'

The smallest unit of word / meaning in Sanskrit is a root or 'Dhatu' (ธาตุ 'That' in Thai).  Think of these as little 'meaning seeds' that haven't yet been inflated.  They will often be composed of only 2 or 3 clustered syllables without vowels present to 'inflate' them. If you speak Arabic, the concept of 'roots' will be very familiar to you.  While the way roots in Sanskrit and Arabic work very different, it's a helpful initial comparison to make.

The 'Guna' form of a root is where it is 'strengthened' or 'inflated'.  In Sanskrit, this is called the secondary form of a root. The mouth extends the sound, and the spelling subsequently changes.

Vrddhi  वृद्धि, วฤทธิ์ 'warit'

'Vrddhi' means to 'increase', and it is when the 'guna' form of a root is 'lengthened' again into its 2nd state.

That means that for any root, you may see the spelling change depending on what sounds are around it and what 'version' of the word is being used.  Here are the vowel changes that happens between the Root -> Guna -> Vrddhi versions of a root:

If a word ends with one of the following vowels in the 'root' form, strengthening it to the next 'guna' or 2nd 'vrddhi' levels will see the vowel change according to this table.

So the word 'pi' in simple root form would be 'pe' in Guna and 'pai' in Vrddhi form.  You don't need to master these by any means to start enjoying the benefit of understanding Sanskrit roots in Thai, however understanding that you will see different permutations of spelling in words helps you apply 'fuzzy logic' and see meanings where you may have missed them otherwise.

I have kept the roots written in the Thai script so that they can be recognised  when seen in Thai words. The meanings have been loosely translated into  English. The meanings are not comprehensive Sanskrit and Pali influences in Thai are many. These influences may come in the  form of affixes, concepts or words built from ‘root words’ (/that/) –  ธาตุ which entered the language via Pali, Sanskrit,  Khmer or other languages. A word that is build from such roots, is called  ‘khamkit’ (คำกิตก์).

When looking at the following list, you may be curious as to what the ‘dot’  means below a letter. The Thai script is derived from the Indic scripts which  have their origins in the Brahmi script and beyond. Traditionally, each  consonant has an inherent vowel sound. Originally, this sound was the short /a/  sound as in /cut/. In the Devanagari script, as with many of the other Brahmi  derived scripts, each consonant was pronounced with an ‘a’ sound after it if it  was found in its full form by itself. When consonant clusters occurred – e.g.  kw, kr, pr, prs etc – i.e. When the /a/ or other vowel sounds were not to be  put between consonants, the original shapes would be cut or morphed in one way  or another and fused together according to a set pattern. If the final letter  in Sanskrit was to be left as the consonant sound rather than an /a/ following  the consonant sound (e.g. ‘jan’ as opposed to ‘jana’), a stroke called a  ‘Virama Stroke’ was placed below the final consonant to indicate this. Without  this stroke, given that there was no other vowel symbol, the final inherent  sound would be /a/.

In Thai, consonant clusters and the Virama Stroke are represented by a dot  กรฺ. This would be pronounced ‘kar’ rather than ‘kara’. Even  though the Thai sound system doesn’t allow for a wide range of consonant  clusters (in theory many are written in, but in everyday speech the subsequent  letters in the cluster are in many cases lost. It normally takes a conscious  effort for a native Thai speaker to produce these clusters. Come to the  Cracking Thai Fundamentals workshop for a more complete explanation!).

The above list has been adapted from the list presented in Ch. 10 of  ภาษาไทยปริทัศน์ – คู่มือภาษาไทย สำหรับนักเรียน นักศึกษา และผู้สนใจ by เอื้อน เล่งเจริญ .

Let me know in the comments section what words that you have been able to decipher.  Next time you're at a party, see how many people's names you can work out meanings for.

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