English/Thai Pun Sighting



Thought this was cute... spotted on a bag of potato chips. This is a variation on the Lays potato-chip logo:

This version is modified for Thailand. At a glance it appears to say something like "Lay." But if you ignore the big "L" the other two letters are the Thai symbols:

ลย

These are Thai letters corresponding to L-Y. So the Thai version of the brand name is hidden inside the English.



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Serge,

I was interested in applying your Marilyn Method and Heisig's book to memorize Chinese characters. However, I came across an old book by Soothill on Chinese characters on Google Books. Soothill's book lists the 214 official radicals and then 888 "phonetics." The book then lists roughly 4,000 characters that are combinations of the radicals and phonetics. I was wondering if you think that applying your Marilyn Method might be easier with Soothill's book than with Heisig's book. Heisig's book has 3,000 characters and each one has a keyword that must be memorized. With Soothill's book, you would just need roughly 1,100 keywords for the 214 radicals and 888 phonetics, and then use those 1,100 keywords in combinations to memorize the roughly 4,000 total characters. Do you think this would be easier, or would you recommend the Heisig book?

Anonymous said...

I just came across a book today online that is similar to your Heisig + Marilyn Method:

https://books.google.com/books?id=KQ8dBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Tuttle+Learning+Chinese+Characters:+(HSK+Levels+1+-3)+A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwil_KeWoOLYAhVV3WMKHVucAAMQ6AEIXzAJ#v=onepage&q&f=false

It uses Heisig like stories for the meanings and pronunciations. However, unlike the Marilyn Method, it seems to use random images for the pronunciations. For example, the image of a jeep for a character that is pronounced "ji". And for the tones, it uses the same 4 images, a giant, fairy, teddy bear, and dwarf for the first, second, third, and fourth tones, respectively. What do you think of this approach?

Anonymous said...

What would you recommend for someone interested in learning both Chinese and Japanese? That would mean memorizing the character's meaning in English, the Chinese pronunciation, and the Japanese on-yomi and kun-yomi pronunciations. So 4 pieces of information for each character. Do you think the Remembering the Hanzi and Remembering the Kanji books with their Chinese and Japanese readings should both be studied separately, or would that be confusing? Or do you think the set of characters should be studied once with both the Chinese and Japanese readings encoded at the same time?

Anonymous said...

After looking over Soothill's book more carefully, I think your method is superior. Soothill's book doesn't break down the phonetics into elements. While your method relates the pronunciation and meaning with a small number of elements that are combined.