Thai Sayings and Proverbs

Thailand is located in the tropics, with long summers and no winters. People generally like coolness and hate heat, so "heat" is often used to describe bad things. For example, in Thai, "hot" is used to express pain; "to avoid heat and rely on coolness" means "to avoid disaster and seek happiness". The climate in Thailand is not only hot, but also humid and rainy. Rain is closely related to the daily life of Thai people. In their long-term productive labor and daily life, Thai people have created some common sayings related to "rain", which have rich metaphorical and cultural meanings and reflect some universal truths of real life. For example, "buying an umbrella in the rainy season" means that because If you fail to plan ahead, you will have to spend high prices to buy rain gear when the rainy season comes. This sentence is equivalent to "cramming" in Chinese, which is a metaphor for a hasty response or untimely behavior. Another example: "It rains heavily but unevenly" means that the blessings of rain do not benefit all parties, which means treating people or doing things more favorably than others, and failing to treat everyone equally.

Thailand is known as the "Land of Everything". As the national treasure of Thailand and the patron saint of Thai people, elephants are closely related to the lives of Thai people, so people often use it as a metaphor. For example, Chinese people often use "killing chickens with a bull's knife" to describe spending great efforts to do small things, while Thai people say "riding an elephant to catch grasshoppers"; Chinese says "Look at the mother first before looking at the son, and look at the general before looking at the soldier", and the Thai saying is "When looking at a girl, look at the mother, and when looking at an elephant, look at the tail"; Chinese says "Kill the chicken to get the eggs", Thai says "Kill the elephant to get the ivory"; Chinese says "One arrow is easy to break, but ten arrows are hard to break" or "When everyone gathers firewood, the flames are high" "We are stronger together," and in Thai it is said, "A bag full of arrows is constantly trampled by an elephant" or "We are stronger than an elephant when we are united." In addition to elephants, crocodiles are also common animals in Thailand. In Chinese, there is a saying that "reject tigers at the front door and wolves at the back door." In Thai, it is "escape from the tiger and meet the crocodile again" (or "escape from the tiger's mouth and enter the crocodile's mouth again"); Chinese says "it's unnecessary", while Thai says "teaching a crocodile to swim".

Thailand is a traditional rice producing country. Rice is an indispensable daily food for Thai people. Thai people have a special respect for rice and often use it to metaphor every detail of life. For example, "rice is rare and betel nuts are expensive" to describe poor economic conditions; "Stinky" means that the couple is bored after living together for a long time. In addition, Thai people like to eat pungent condiments, such as chili peppers, onions, garlic, ginger, etc. There is a popular saying that "it is not a dish without chili peppers".

Thailand is known to the world as the "Yellow Robe Buddha Country", and the vast majority of the country's population believes in Buddhism. There is a custom among believers when worshiping Buddha. They like to stick a small piece of gold foil on the Buddha statue to show their piety and respect. Therefore, there is an idiom in Thai, "Gold foil on the back of the Buddha statue", which means that you have done good deeds but are not praised. No work.

Thai people generally believe that "all things have animism". On the third day after the baby is born, the family will give the baby a "three-day baby ritual", which is called "three-day soul summoning" in Thai; when the baby is one month old, a "full moon ritual" is required, which is called "full moon soul summoning" in Thai; the baby is small and cannot bear the fright. It is called "weak soul"; when a child is frightened, it is said to be "lost and soulless"; and to be frightened is called "soul hanging up". These proverbs objectively record the folk customs of Thai people’s soul belief.