Linguistic Fun In Thai BL - Pronouns & Honorifics
Pronouns & Honorifics between Thai BL Couples
Couples that use polite pronouns with each other…
I = Pom (the younger male) or own name, Phi or P (the older person)
You = name (older to younger), P+name (younger to older) or just P (younger to older less formal)
P’ is technically an honorific but it can also function as a pronoun.
Note that all the above pictured couples have an age difference? That encourages a certain amount of politeness. You can see our two baby brats (Team & Duen) for exceptions to this. I’ll talk about them at the end.
Dean drops his honorifics a lot, but with everyone not just Pharm. His character is linguistically quite curt.
Also there is a slight variant in Solo & Gui. Solo adopts the pet name “Guitar” instead of using P’Gui or just P (for you). But he does this only after obtaining permission. So I’m still listing them under the polite-couple heading.
(Incidentally, Tan & Bunn in Manner of Death use the grown-up polite pronoun khun - you - with each other. Yet another way MoD is not BL.)
Couples that use rude informal pronouns with each other…
Note that these couples are all the same age as each other? (Just FYI if you travel to Thailand as a tourist, please don’t use these pronouns.)
Couples that use mixed pronouns with each other…
Ae uses rude pronouns (guu/mueng), Pete uses VERY polite pronouns (he’s the only character I know who uses rao - old fashioned, cute, formal - for I/me as well as pom). They are the same age so honorifics don’t really come into play. Pete never defaults to rude pronouns even as a form of affection.
This linguistic difference is used by the narrative to stress the class and income gap between Pete and Ae. Also, Pete’s way of speaking showcases his shyness, stiffness, childishness, and loneliness. Finally, you can also see Pete use formality of address to extract himself from sticky social situations - he is very good with his wai.
Rome uses polite pronouns and honorifics. Pick uses rude pronouns. Which is somewhat okay given Pick is older than Rome, but still amusing as it emphasizes their personality differences. Also it’s one way in which we can see Rome given confidence in Pick’s affection since Pick doesn’t bother to maintain formality but drops to guu relatively quickly.
Tutor uses polite pronouns and honorifics with Fighter. Sometimes he uses them as if they were weapons to maintain distance. Fighter uses impolite pronouns with Tutor. Again this is a bit more okay because he is older, but also it shows a level of flirtatious interest and allowance.
Sib uses polite formal adult pronouns with Gene in Lovely Writer (kind of like how you might talk to you parent’s friend, or in an office workplace). You can spot this specifically with his use of khun for you. Gene uses polite-pronouns at first, but they have discussions several times about what is going on, because Gene is confused as to why Sib doesn’t just use P’Gene with him. Gene eventually gets annoyed enough to drop to rude pronouns. Sib states that he intends to eventually call Gene something else and continues to use khun. The extreme variant in their resulting registers is kinda hilarious.
Sky & Sun in Golden Blood I think are meant to be the same age (or Sun maybe older?) but Sky uses informal pronouns (as if he were older) while Sun uses formal pom etc… This is because of the class difference and the fact that Sun is household employee. Interestingly, when Sky is imagining talking to Sun in a romantic way he uses P’Sun, but not in person.
The Linguistic Brats of Thai BL…
Linguistically Team and Win are adorably aberrant.
Team drops the honorific P’ with Win almost immediately. While he maintains the use of polite pronouns, he usually calls Win hia. That’s brother as used by some Thai speakers who have Chinese heritage and is less formal than P’Win. It carries with it a certain quality of household intimacy. It is… erm… somewhat cheeky.
Win, on the other hand, uses rude pronouns, but then he does that with lots of people.
Win also applies emphasis to polite pronouns to make them seem sarcastic, e.g. nooong Pharm.
Bohn and Duen are a fascinating pair because they actually discuss honorifics and pronouns as a plot device in their story arc.
Duen drops the honorific and uses rude pronouns instantly with Bohn, even after realizing Bohn is older than him. This is SO RUDE. It’s difficult to articulate how extremely impolite this is. I think it’s one of the reasons Bohn likes Duen (obviously boy is attracted to brats).
Duen is the only younger character I have ever seen do this in a Thai drama. (I gasped more at Duen’s pronoun use than the punch that preceded it.)
This is why Thara is so confused when he encounters them in the clinic. Duen is throwing mueng and guu at Bohn like there is no tomorrow, but Thara knows Bohn is older.
When Thara asks if they are friends he means intimate close friends of long acquaintance, since it is so unusual to use rude pronouns across an age gap.
Thai Pronouns & Honorifics when Seme/Uke is Age Flipped
So this concerns personal pronouns in Thai when the uke/seme dynamic is age flipped. So the older boy (who normally carries the linguistic power/dominance) is the uke (or romantic submissive character). In other words, we are talking about a conflict between linguistic D/s and relationship D/s.
MingKit - 2 Moons franchise
This involves delving into the fact that when Kong and Arthit speak to each other, despite the fact that he is older, Arthit uses pom for I when we expect him to use phi.
On the other hand, Gui usually use phi with his seme under similar age dynamics and relationship circumstances. So Gui is linguistically acting like a polite seme (Dean in UWMA, for example). Kit uses rude pronouns, so he is linguistically acting like a rude seme (Pick in Puppy Honey, for example).
I could only check SOTUS S as SOTUS is off Netflix in my territory and hasn’t been uploaded back to GMMTV’s YouTube. So I’m not sure if this holds during KongArthit’s initial meeting and warring romance.
In the opening sequence of SOTUS S (them waking up together and getting ready for work) Arthit used:
pom and (of all things) káo.
I want to say I’m wrong on the káo because that is very odd for Arthit’s character (lovey-dovey and mostly quite girly/cutsie). He also used khun for you at Kong which is super formal, although he mostly just calls Kong by name, and in an annoyed tone. So he’s kinda all over the place.
Kong stuck with phi & P'Arthit for you, and pom for I. Which is normal for a younger polite uke character (like Pharm). So Kong is sticking to polite age language rules (and not letting seme influence him).
I think the fact that they both use pom is more an aspect that despite their flipped power dynamic across the age barrier, Arthit is way more agro and tsundere than Gui. (But why not just drop to rude pronouns then, like tsundere Kit?) One would be tempted to say Arthit should push the phi under those circumstances but I think Arthit’s attitude is more: I don’t even need the phi. It is odd though, you’re right. Maybe there’s a bit of Arthit still holding Kong at arms length by not using guu/mung with him (which he does use with his friends)? Guu/mung carries with it a certain amount of invited informality that might be seen as encouragement by a younger seme. It’s interesting.
I’ve described Kong and Arthit as coming off as somewhat ace and I think maybe their linguistics are a bit that way too?
Solo/Gui are also skewed tho. Gui refers to himself as phi but pretty much everyone knows that the power dynamic is actually the opposite. Solo makes that clear regularly because he uses the pet name Guitar without honorifics (once he attains permission) constantly, which a younger boy would normally get swatted for as disrespectful. And the way Solo says that pet name is like it’s this gift he’s been given by Gui. It’s clear Solo knows to value the fact that he has been handed the romantic power, and the ability to drop honorifics. But he sticks to pom for I and never crosses that line.
These two are just way more comfortable and settled into their roles and dynamics from the get go. Also Gui is a VERY caring and polite but also occasionally parental and strict for a uke, for all he’s a total softie he does act older with Solo regularly. So for all that this is a pretty firm seme/uke dynamic there’s flexibility to it around acts of service. Stil Gui’s use of phi for I with Solo probably ties to the fact that he may be uke but he still feels older and wiser than Solo.
Kit uses rude informal with Ming in 2 Moons 2. Ming uses pom for I and phi for you, as if he were younger uke, during his attempts at courting. When they are cuddling or confessing later on in the series (Ep 9 for example), Ming drops the P’ and just calls him Kit, no honorific, while still using pom for himself. So that’s mixed informality and more what I would expect from a younger seme.
I guess there is at lot of linguistic meat to be had around younger seme’s coupled to older ukes in Thai BL, because there is a clear honorific struggle resulting.
I mean Lovely Writer has a whole series of scripted chats about this. Since Sib is clearly an extremely dominant seme what he calls Gene is of deep concern to him. He refuses to use P'Gene (when they meet as adults) mostly because it’s too submissive for what Sib wants from Gene. So he defaults to adult very formal Khun in order to cover his ultimate desire (and linguistic conundrum). This also makes Gene seem a whole generation older than Sib, though. And people around them find it weird, especially as Sib doesn’t do this with an other older boys - only gene.
They jump through a ton of pronoun hoops and honorifics during the course of their relationship as a result. They settle into the same pattern as MingKit in the end, with Gene using rude informal guu/mueng and Sib using Gene’s name with no honorific and pom for I.
Fluke (Pharm) calls Ohm (Dean) P'Ohm even though Fluke is a year older. The actors decided to do this between themselves, presumably partly based on personality and partly placed on the roles they played in Until We Meet Again. They found it easier to keep that dynamic on the promo circuit and have continued since.
Thus strict adherence to phi/nong based exclusively on age is not mandated IRL. Friends/lovers/coworkers/etc.. can alter language for social/cultural or interpersonal reasons. You can hear Santa & Earth on the Studio Wabi Sabi YouTube channel monkey around with this a lot. Earth is much older than Santa, but they very rarely use phi/nong.
That said, both Earth (LBC) and Fluke (UWMA) are out, so that could also come into play linguistically. Argh, so complicated.
More about the “I” first person pronoun in Thai.
More about the “you” second person pronoun in Thai.
More about the 3rd person in Thai, and the propensity to omit pronouns altogether.
Third Person Singular = Gender Neutral
Something Thai BL fans don’t often understand early on is that third person singular pronouns are often genderless (it’s rarely she/he her/him, it’s more like singular they/them).
In other words, Thai speakers self gender and direct gender others in conversation. (”I” and “you” carry gender, politeness, and other cultural connotations.) But Thai speakers do not usually gender others when talking about them in third person (see káo). Despite what you’re taught in remedial Thai.
Also, many nouns that would carry gender in English don’t in Thai. For example, the word faen is usually translated as boyfriend/girlfriend, but it’s actually genderless and more weighted, like lover+special someone.
This is why, for example, Dean has to explain to his grandmother that he is dating a man in Until We Meet Again. This is also why translators find it difficult to do justice to the scene at the end of Love Sick 2 when Phun comes out to his dad (or does he?).
Maybe: “And your lover is serious about this relationship?”
Final note, I have made an extremely complicated subject as simple as I can for the purposes of greater BL understanding. And my own amusement. Read the articles linked above if you want something more nuanced and professional.
~ Armchair amateur dilettante signing off.
Updated to say the the TharnType Wedding Special finally hired a subber who used the Singular They!
(Incidentally all of this relates to the fact that Thai has registers which are based on many social factors, it’s really fun stuff. BL plays around with them too.)
Others in this series: Explaining Thai to the Bl Watcher, what you might want to know to understand the story and culture.
Also because the flipped power dynamic of a younger seme with an older uke complicates Thai pronouns and honorifics, I go deep into that because of a question about Kong & Arthit. Also talks about MingKit, MarkKit, SoloGui, and SibGene.
Explaining Thai to the Casual BL Watcher - It Has Registers
Linguistic Fun In Thai BL - Pronouns & Honorifics
Thai Pronouns & Honorifics when Seme/Uke is Age Flipped
Thai Honorifics Between Ages in BL and real life
(Original post is kept updated here.)
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