Saturday, March 11, 2006

Language: Bangkok!

Alright, it wouldn't surprise me if someone told me the Thai phrase for "I need to go eat curry" would be 10,000 syllables. Thai is HARD!

But this sure beats it... Bangkok's full ceremonial name is the longest name of a place, as recorded by the Guinness Book of Records.

When spoken in Thai, it literally translates into:

The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarn.

(กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยามหาดิลก ภพนพรัตน์ ราชธานีบุรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์ มหาสถาน อมรพิมาน อวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยะ วิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์)

- wikipedia.org

Being curious and all, I asked our tour guide - Mei, to recite the name in Thai. Click on the picture below to see a video of how it's said in full!

20 seconds to recite the whole name of a city ~ now THAT is a mouthful!

p.s: You might need the DivX CODEC for viewing the video.

1 Comments:

At March 11, 2006 12:07 PM, Blogger A world that i've seen said...

it's fun n interesting to pick up other languages tho...
always be bit tough from starting point..

 

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