Is Farang an f word?

[stilljustbrowsing]

Nice post eggmend, and whilst I am not Thai, I am happy to call you friend, even if we have the occassional differences of oppinion.
education and true learning is based on debate, as is happening within this topic in particular and other topics in general.
I have learnt a lot here based on the multitude of opposing veiws expressed by the posters here.
a name, afterall is just a name and bears no resemblance to the person.
It is 'generalisations of persons' that cause the problems, not the individuals themselves that may be caught up in a general catagorisation.

[ccng2009]

Edited out unnecessary mention of monarch. Mod 1

Farang is derived from the word "Francais" where most Thais came into contact with them a long time ago. It's not a fruit nor is it derogatory, it just simply the term used a long time ago and have become a common daily word.

Why don't you spend your energy doing something more constructive like maybe teaching your daughter to learn the Farang language where she will be at an advantage in the future to come. Seriously!

[Hanuman]

So after 16 years of living in Thailand, Eggmeng has only come so far as to complain about a word he doesn't understand.
And he actually proves he doesn't understand it by comparing it with so-called equivalents in English, a language he doesn't quite master, as he doesn't even know the difference between transliteration and translation.

Get over it, Eggmeng and friends, farang is just farang. Don't go all paranoid in your PC'ness.

Maybe you could use all your anger and angst to actually learn the language instead of refusing to accept the meaning of some Thai words.

And to clear up a general misunderstanding : farang is NOT derived from Frenchman... it is derived from the word farangi.

Proud to be called farang.

[Hanuman]

And let's not call women "women" either. let's call them "they're not men nor ladyboys either" That will make life a lot easier !
Then you can stick a sign at the designated toilets "they're not men nor ladyboys either ONLY" and at the men's toilet a sign "the other ones ONLY"
And don't call me foreigner please - that would be an assumption as long as you haven't seen my passport and birth certificate. And don't call me caucasian, as that would be based upon my appearance - something like calling me "Sir" : which would be an assumption as long as you haven't seen me naked.

[Hanuman]

I'm not a historian, but many Thai friends have told me that the first majority of Caucasians in formal relationships or contact with Thailand were from France, which in Thai is "Farangsait = ฝรั่งเศส, hence the beginning of referring to all Caucasians as "farang", which without other explicatives, carries no derogatory or negative meaning whatsoever. It's just part of the Thai style use of their own language. This is quite different from the Hong Kong Chinese term "fwan gwailo" which literally translates as "white ghost".

I think most Westerners who've lived here for more than a few years are familiar with the origins of the f word, but thanks all the same. I believe the first French were probably called farang because the color of their skin resembled the inside of the fruit. I don't think these facts make the constant modern use of the word to lump all whites together any less objectionable.

Hereby proving that
1. you don't know the origin of the word, which was Persian. Wouldn't be a big deal that you don't know the origin, be it that you give so much importance to your own PERCEIVED meaning.
2. you have a strange kind of logic : first you say that the word is derived from "french" then you say it's derived from the fruit...
3. why use the word Westerner ? Why lump us all together ? I find this very objectionable


The whole thing is : you project your own feelings. You see things where there aren't. You - as a farang - are telling Thai people that they're wrong about THEIR language, and that this word doesn't have the meaning for which Thai people use it. So maybe you could be a contributor for Thai dictionaries. It's quite colonial and condescending to teachThai how they should speak their own language, just because for some reason you are not capable of translating a word correctly. And you shouldn't even need to try to translate every word, you can't find a proper English equivalent for every Thai word - and while forcing youself to try to find one at all costs, you make mistakes like this.

In fact, the translation isn't something like "westerner" or "white foreigner" or so, it would be more like "westerner, but without any racial or derogatory connotation" - but that wouldn't be easy to use in everyday speech. It's easier to just use the word "farang" then.

[Somchai Jones, Jr.]

Let's say farang is offensive. The question is how to educate Thais to this faux pas? The problem is they have no frame of reference. If a Thai travels to the US, UK, etc. there's really nothing a farang (oops!) can slander them with. As some readers have pointed out, the Thais may catch some various Asian epithets such as "gook", "chink", "nip", etc., but there really is nothing insulting about this per se to an average Thai person. I'd imagine most Americans/Brits/Euros probably can't distinguish a Thai person anyhow. Thais do not have the paler skin, and narrower eyes of the Japanese, Chinese and Koreans who are the Asians most Americans come into contact with. I'd hazard to say Thais would be confused with Fillipinos (well at least for the US West coast, which has a huge Fillipino population, plus our former Navy bases in the Phillipines), or maybe even someone from South/Central America. Also, Thailand has never had a real war with any Western power, so there wasn't any reason for the West to create some derogatory name for them. The only thing I can think of, is that the Burmese or Cambodians must have some insulting name for the Thais, but I have never heard it. Anyone know? One note, I spoke to a Burmese friend, and asked what the equivalent of "farang" is in Burmese. It turns out they call white foriegners "in-ge-lan" (or "in-gel-lan-lu"), which is the word for Englishman. Same logic as farang I expect, the English were the first white men the Burmese encountered. Great thread BTW, some good discussion here.

[Jason McDonald]

Let's be quite clear here some Thai people use Farang as a Thai racist slur some do not. But it is a racist word end of story. Despite whether I thing that the Thais I interact with don't know this and use it freely is a matter of education. When I was young we use to used to sing "eeni meeni minee mo cagtch a n**gger by the toe" to pick someone to join a team event. It5 wasw only later in life that I realise that it was a white racist word and stopped using it. Farang is used exactly the same by Thais. It is a Thai racist word but they don't yet know it. But some Thai do know that it is racist and use it as an insult.

It is like Australians calling aboriginals, aboes. Or English people poms. Or Thai people monkeys.

On the other topic I can assure you that Asian people can not tell other asians apart either. My Thai wife was assumed to be Vietnamese when we were in Vietnam and Chinese when we were in Singapore. Even though I said she was Thai and couldn;t understand they still cntinued to talk to her in Vietnamese and Chinese.

However,


I like the Thai people I mix with and get on with them very well. I have come to understand that they are the people who use the racist word without any racist overtones.

I am sure that in Nazi Germany before WWII the Germans would have argued that Jew wasn't a racist word.

Thailand seems to be becoming more like Nazi Germany every day. I hope the Thai people can stop this before the PAD turn Thailand into Burma.

Jason

[Hanuman]

Let's be quite clear here some Thai people use Farang as a Thai racist slur some do not. But it is a racist word end of story. Despite whether I thing that the Thais I interact with don't know this and use it freely is a matter of education. When I was young we use to used to sing "eeni meeni minee mo cagtch a n**gger by the toe" to pick someone to join a team event. It5 wasw only later in life that I realise that it was a white racist word and stopped using it. Farang is used exactly the same by Thais. It is a Thai racist word but they don't yet know it. But some Thai do know that it is racist and use it as an insult.


I like the Thai people I mix with and get on with them very well. I have come to understand that they are the people who use the racist word without any racist overtones.

I am sure that in Nazi Germany before WWII the Germans would have argued that Jew wasn't a racist word.

Jason

It is a rascist word end of story ???
It is a Thai racist word but they don't yet know it ?? Well let's educate them dumb Thais about their language then shall we ? As farang we should go lecture at universities and teach them some proper Thai, shouldn't we. Never mind that the majority of farangs residing in Thailand can't even write their name, let alone read a menu.
A word doesn't have an inherent meaning, it gets a meaning by the way people look at it, and with the word farang it certainly shows : instead of learning and using the word within a Thai contextual meaning, farangs here start to "translate" or look for equivalent words in their own language, thereby adding connotations to that word which exist in farang language but not in Thai language, thereby transforming it into a rascist word and trying to convince the Thai to take the farang's mistake for true. And what do you know : if you would try hard enough, and use it like that all the way, and it would gain momentum, then it would BECOME a rascist word, even if it wasn't one to start with. THAT would be the irony of it all, that by sheer paranoia you are able to make a word rascist where it wasn't one to start with. Language is in a constant state of flux, and once enough people start to see a meaning in something that wasn't there, it GETS that meaning. That's why in my own language we have to change words all the time because PC'ers see rascism in every word : we have to be really really careful because even the words "stranger" and "foreigner" are now rascist words in my mother tongue

Jason : "I like the Thai people I mix with and get on with them very well. I have come to understand that they are the people who use the racist word without any racist overtones." ------> maybe it would be easier to just accept that it isn't rascist instead of making up all kind of constructions just to be able to keep on believing that it is rascist.

Another poster stated "Let's say farang is offensive. The question is how to educate Thais to this faux pas? "

well, that's weird... Let's say beer means soda, how to educate beerdrinkers that they're drinking the wrong liquid ?
Why not start trying to educate farang that farang isn't rascist ? How to educate some of the arrogant farang about Thai language ? That would be of more help...

Maybe this thread shouldn't be even be in English, but in Thai. At least then there wouldn't be so many farang participating thinking that farang is rascist.

I can't imagine that a foreigner would come to lecture me about some word in my language, while that same foreigner can hardly (or not even) write his name in my alpabet, isn't capable of having a half-decent conversation about anything except about some very superficial topics, and jumbles up all the sounds so that many words are only understandable within a context of a sentence.

About Jew being a rascist word... are Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist,... also rascist words then ?

[Hanuman]

One note, I spoke to a Burmese friend, and asked what the equivalent of "farang" is in Burmese. It turns out they call white foriegners "in-ge-lan" (or "in-gel-lan-lu"), which is the word for Englishman. Same logic as farang I expect, the English were the first white men the Burmese encountered. Great thread BTW, some good discussion here.

Well, as far as I remember, white foreigner in Burmese is ingalay. But that doesn't change anything of course. I have even heard Belgium being called "Vandaim nain ngan" by some Burmese : Van Damme country. Hope JC Van Damme won't get angry about this "rascist" word. But the Burmese word for white foreigner (derived from "Englishman") stands apart from how it is used in Thai, Khmer, Arabic, Persian, Polynesian, Hindi, Ahmaric etc etc etc.. which all have some variation on the word farang (farangg faranji ferenji barang prang faransi palangi....) the root of which could go back as far as 2000 years ago in nomadic Germanic tribal times
Farang and French have the same origin, they are etymological "cousins", but are not derived form one another : they're indirect cognates.

And once again : projecting the meaning onto the most direct equivalent word in another language is an easy short-cut to learn a language, but by doing so you risk forgetting that you are merely projecting, that you are using an imperfect aid, that you should let go of excessive meanings and connotations of the English "equivalent".
I don't go preaching to native English speakers that they shouldn't use the words "stranger" and "foreigner" too much, because in many cases it is considered rascist in my native language.

[Jason McDonald]

[quote="HanumanMaybe this thread shouldn't be even be in English, but in Thai. At least then there wouldn't be so many farang participating thinking that farang is rascist.

[/quote]

If you want Hanuman.

โอไค ฅนไทย เหยียดผิว ไมได้

But it is in the language and not much you can do about it except change the language just like we did in English.

Jason

Notice I used kor kon!