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Same in Thai. They ask กินข้าวหรือยัง ("Have you eaten yet?", or literally "Have you eaten rice yet?") as a greeting.



In lowland Scotland one finds 'You'll have had your tea?' which is a semi-polite way by which the enquirer informs the visitor that he'll not be given any tea ( i.e. dinner, food ).

Has entered mainstream as a cliche of Scottish parsimony but does exist in the wild.


Interesting. It's sort of the opposite when Thais ask if you have eaten already because if you answer "not yet" it is common for them to offer you something.


The Scottish response to 'not yet' is usually something like 'well it seems foolish to have ventured out in that case', obviously delivered in the local dialect.

Though I have extracted one dinner from an Edinburgh man who deploys the phrase, but that was probably because his ( English ) wife had put it on to cook earlier!


That reminds me that sometimes in my family we'll jokingly say jeet? It comew from the comedian Jeff Foxworthy who said it's redneck for "Did you eat? "

I'm in Canada and not redneck I wonder if jeet is actually used in the US.


> I wonder if jeet is actually used in the US

Not really. Foxworthy's joke isn't that that is actually a word, which it's not; it's that that is how the phrase "Did you eat?" comes out sounding in the accent of his home, which is a couple states east of mine. (Also apparently in the accent of New Jersey, which suggests to me that this particular trait may be more coastal than specifically Southern.)


My father's native New-Jerseyan uses "jeet jet" for "did you eat yet".

The one bit of that I consistently use is "agnishna", for "air conditioner".


I recently found a list of these for Scottish that were amazing.

E.g.: "space ghettos" (in standard American accent) becomes Scottish "Spice Girls" :D


If you want literal, it's "eat rice already" - Thai does not have conjugation


Actually, if you want it literally it would be "eat rice or not yet" (กิน=eat, ข้าว=rice, หรือยัง=or not yet). Like you said, verbs are not conjugated in Thai but instead verb tenses are accomplished with helper words to indicate past, present or future. Sure is a lot more orderly than English verb conjugation with all its irregularities.




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