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Explain that Word? Ter

Thai for the casual BL watcher.

So I keep hearing the word ter, it’s a pronoun but it seems to be used multiple different ways in Thai so I finally decided to investigate, here’s what I learned.

We are taught ter as she/her when learning Thai. That would be the formal and polite use but actually it’s rarely spoken that way. It’s not frozen register, it is used, but not often.

When ter shows up in Thai BLs is tends to show up as you, which is again, almost a frozen register use. It enters parlance in songs in particular. Also it’s not gender specific.

So when Tine sings his song to Sarawat at the end of Still 2gether he uses ter for you. In normal conversation, these two characters use the rude mueng for you with each other. In formal situations they tend to use each others names. But in song, Tine uses ter.

The other time we see ter used as you in Bl is in He’s Coming to Me. Thun calls his mother ter over the phone, and Med/Mes thinks Thun is talking to a female lover. Partly because of of ter’s connection to song and poetry, ter as you in speech has an affectionate, old-fashioned component to it.

Imagine picking up the phone or running into someone and saying softly, “Hay, you.”

It’s sweet.

Thun uses ter with his mother instead of maa (the Thai word for mom which sounds harsh to the English ear and bit like mare) because, as his mother explains, maa makes her feel old. This is a bit like giving one’s parent a pet name.

Anyway, so that’s ter when it shows up.

Here’s the post where I talk about some of the basic Thai language things it’s useful to know if you watch Thai BL.

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#thai bl #thaibl #thai language #learning thai #casual thai #coloquial thai #conversational thai #still 2gether #He’s Coming to Me #hctm thun