From Booksmart Studios, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.
I'm John McWhorter,
and today I want to look at something that is a tasty little factoid and what it can teach us about how to look at languages and their relationships,
how languages change.
And so, here's something to know.
In Thai, of Thailand.
The word for fire is phai.
The word for die is dai.
The word for rim is rim.
So, phai, dai, rim.
They're words for fire, dai, and rim.
What do you make of that?
Is there a reason?
Why are those three words so similar to ours?
And you can know that there are more.
But those three are particularly striking.
What's going on there?
Well, when you look at something like that, it's easy to think, well,
that means there's some secret relationship between English and Thai,
something that went on a long time ago.