January is MOCKARAA-COM มกราคม
After the expensive month of Christmas presents and New Year partying, all one can usually afford to eat in January is MACARONI.
(The -com or -yon endings refer to whether the month as 31 or 30 days respectively, so it’s not something one needs to put any effort into remembering.)
Okay, so this mnemonic is a bit imprecise I admit. But I chose this to illustrate a point: even a convoluted suggestion is usually enough to help you remember something… if it’s bizarre enough!
See if you still remember this tomorrow and next week…
As I said, you might not get “mockaraa-com” precisely. It might have been better to try a mnemonic involving “mocha” (e.g. my New Year’s Resolution is to reduce my caffeine intake by drinking mocha instead of coffee).
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Important: Pronounce “ck” the same way as the “k” in “sky” – the air is kept inside your mouth, not expelled as a puff.
The word for January consists of two syllables: มก and รา. The first syllable has the invisible vowel “o” (“mock”). It’s difficult for Thais to run these two syllables together, so they add the spacer sound “a” as a bridge. That’s why you get “mock-a-raa” (and not “mokraa”). |
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Can you read the modern fonts? I cover these in the workshop, but I can also send you a handout that shows you how to do it easily.
3 มกรา มาดู proud ขวัญเวียง … ฟรี 3 Jan come look … khwanwiyang … free! ขวัญเวียง is just the name of the moobaan, but it’s an interesting name. ขวัญ means “the spirit inside you” (possibly the same as “soul”?). So ของขวัญ is a (nice) thing for your soul, or a “gift”. เวียง means a walled city, like the old city in Chiang Mai. And a moobaan is, after all, a private, protected area for your soul (or peace-of-mind). Nice name…! |