Originally Posted by
Bangyai
The use of ' ma ' has been talked about before on TD.
I can understand where Patrick and ST are coming from and the translation of Thai is never easy on account of there being no punctuation marks to clarify where one sentance ends and another begins.
Just to throw more light on the use of ma when it doesn't necessarily mean come , here is a little copy and paste from TV.
The following is from "A Reference Grammar of Thai," Shoichi Iwasaki and Preeya Ingkaphirom, Cambridge University Press, 2005. In Chapter 12, para. 12.3, the authors deal, inter alia, with the word มา used as a grammar marker:
"12.3 Perfect/anterior aspect
"Perfect/anterior aspect concerns the 'relevance' of a particular situation with respect to the current situation (e.g. 'I have just finished reading the news'). 'Perfect' is the traditional name for this aspect, but also 'anterior' is sometimes used; 'perfect/anterior' is used in this book. There are two general markers of perfect/anterior, แล้ว and มา, and five other more specific markers.
* * * * *
"(12) มา (<'to come'): Because the source of this auxiliary is the verb 'to come,' the sentence involving this auxiliary has a very strong sense of direction. That is, when perfect/anterior มา appears with activity verbs, the interpretation of 'doing something somewhere else and coming back here' is strong.
ไปไหนมาครับ
[examples]
"The expression with มา in some cases emphasized the fact that a situation has been continuing up to the reference time. This is particularly true when มา occurs with a stative verb. In this case, the expression of the duration such as นาน, 'for a long time' is often attached.
เขาอยู่เมืองไทยมานาน
[examples]
"The two perfect/anterior auxiliaries, มา and แล้ว, may appear together in this order in one sentance ...... '