mai pen rai
Feb 6th, 2006 by Lillian
I was at an expat friends place the other day, and she asked me how to say .. it doesn’t matter in thai. You say mai pen rai. Farangs have written books about this and it does take some time to really understand what it mean. It’s what you say when your maid accidently waters your stereo and wrecks it, its what you say when a child is crying at the top of its lungs after taking a bad fall. It’s what you say when someone accidently drove into your car. It’s what you say to the gardener after he cut up the hose in 3 places.
It doesn’t mean you don’t care. The attitude is more, well, we can’t change the situation now and it too late now.
I have to say, its made me alot softer and maybe alot more gracious learning about mai pen rai. Accidents happen, we come late, we are treated unfairly in life.. A little mai pen rai can only make me a nicer person.
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that’s a really nice take on the phrase.
Yes. I wish we had a phrase like that. “No worries” is about the closest I can get but it doesn’t have that graceful acceptance of fate to it. Maybe we should all just take it up, say “Mai pen rai” and pass it on. It could become global
True…but only a healthy dosis of it. I find that a lot of Thai is overusing ‘mai pen rai’ eventhough you obviously CAN do something about it. Sometimes, they just become too laxed about things that it’s just not good anymore. Thais need to learn to moderate their use on ‘mai pen rai’. And this is coming from a Thai person….
I’m with Sarah on this … in fact I’m posting it in my notebook tonight … as a constant reminder.
There’s a beautiful (and really sad) Thai song by that name…wish I could remember who sings it…maybe Tata Young
nice entry! greetings from freeezing switzerland…
I agree with Sarah. ‘No Worries’ is the closest to it in English.
This sounds similar to the Japanese expression “sho ga nai”-which basically means it can’t be helped and is used in examples like you listed in your post -literally it means “I have no ginger.” It is one of my favoirte expressions in Japanese.
A very useful phrase, no doubt. It seems similar to the Malay “tida’ apa”, which also means “it doesn’t matter” - but also means so much more than just that.