Two Short Notes One of Which Wanders to a Third

I posted a brief irreverent video of RG's 20 second history of Alaska earlier today, but took it down at the request of the 'historian.' As you can imagine, any good history of Alaska would have to mention Ted Stevens. Although the reference was brief and not disrespectful, this week of memorials is probably not the best time to post it. I should have thought more carefully about this in the first place.

I would also like to point out a relatively new Alaskan website - Alpenglo. The blogger is someone I know, but that's not enough reason to mention it here. My reason is that she is traveling south on the Alcan and has posted some น่าดู photos.

น่าดู is Thai meaning "Good to look at." Thai has this easy way to turn a verb into an adjective meaning "good to ____".  Fill in the blank - eat, play, see, hear, etc.  You add the word น่า (Na - falling tone) in front of the word. In this case ดู (do) means "to look at." So น่าดู means "good to look at" or "worth looking at." Less literally translated, it could be 'attractive."

My mention of this is not totally off-the-wall because the new blogger was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand and I think that probably made me think to use น่าดู when I couldn't find exactly the right word in English. 


น = n, the little mark ่ on top (น่) is a tone mark and in this case makes it a falling tone
า = a as in "ah".  So น่า = na with a falling tone.  You can hear the tone at Thai2English.
ด =  d
  ู =  u, and is always under the consonant so ดู = 'do'

You can listen to all five Thai tones at Thailanguage.com.