Jia Kom: Learn Kham Mueang from Five Lanna Funny Tales

Jia kom (เจ้ยฯก้อฯม, Kham Mueang reading chia kom) are the short funny tales of the Lanna people, told around the dinner tray, at festivals or among friends, and ending with a punchline that makes the listeners laugh. Jia kom are excellent Kham Mueang (Northern Thai) exercises, because most of the jokes are hidden in words: if you don't know what the word means, you won't laugh.

This article invites you to learn Kham Mueang from five jia kom that scholars have collected and published. All five were chosen because they are clean, since the dictionary itself says plainly that many jia kom are "double entendres".

What is jia kom?

The name comes from two words: jia (เจ้ยฯ), which the dictionary explains as "miscellaneous tales, humorous anecdotes, stories", and telling one is called lao jia (เลั่าเจ้ยฯ); and kom (ก้อฯม), which means short, as in tiao kom (shorts, short trousers). So jia kom literally means a short story. In some areas it is called jia phua (เจ้ยฯระฯพ฿วฯะ).

Aphisara Phonnarat (อาภิสรา พลนรัตน์) of Chiang Rai Rajabhat University defines jia kom as "short stories or tales, mostly humorous and slightly bawdy". She used the tales in the Encyclopedia of Thai Culture: Northern Region, volume 4 (1999), which collects 354 of them, while the thesis of Hathaiwan Chaiyakun (หทัยวรรณ ไชยะกุล) at Chiang Mai University (1996) collected as many as 740.

How is jia kom different from kham ba kao?

Lanna has another kind of short saying, kham ba kao, proverbs and words of advice. Both are short and easy to remember, but they do different jobs.

Tale 1, the lost buffalo: "It's not a pregnant buffalo, sir"

This tale comes from the Encyclopedia of Thai Culture: Northern Region, volume 4. A villager goes to report that his buffalo is missing, and meets the deputy district officer, who has come from Bangkok and speaks central Thai. So in every line of the conversation, each hears a different meaning.

The joke lies in three pairs of homophones, as Aphisara Phonnarat analyses them:

• The officer's praman ("about") is heard by the villager as man (มานฯ), which in Kham Mueang means pregnant, so he quickly corrects him that his buffalo is a pu (พู้), a male.
• Nae non ("for sure") is understood by the villager as non ("to lie down"), so he answers that he was not lying down but sitting and pho (watching).
• The officer's ngo ("idiot") is heard by the villager as a word that the researcher explains means cow in the Northern dialect (the Moradok Lanna dictionary writes the word for cow as ngua). So the final punchline becomes the villager correcting the officer: it's not a cow, it's a buffalo.

Notice the villager's polite words too: wai sa chao (ไห้วฯสาเจั้า) is the opening greeting before addressing an elder or superior, and chao at the end of a sentence works rather like "sir" or "madam" (central Thai khrap/kha).

Tale 2: nam phik ha, nam phik khing

Another tale from the same encyclopedia. At rice-harvest time, villagers come to help one another in the fields. When they break for lunch, two young men unwrap their own rice parcels. One says, "This is nam phik ha" and the other says, "This is nam phik khing". A third man walking by doesn't hear clearly, so he says:

"น้ำพริกฮา น้ำพริกคิง ก็กินตวยกันก่าบ่า" (น้ำพริกข้า น้ำพริกเอ็ง ก็กินด้วยกันซีวะ) — Encyclopedia of Thai Culture: Northern Region, volume 4, cited in Aphisara Phonnarat

In English: "My chilli dip, your chilli dip, let's just eat them together, then!"

Sounds that differ only in tone (ha/ha) or in the first consonant (khing/khing) turn "fermented-fish chilli dip and ginger chilli dip" into "my chilli dip and yours". The word tuai (ทวฯยฯ) means with, together.

Tale 3: the word for "beautiful" that isn't beautiful

This tale was collected by Hathaiwan Chaiyakun in her thesis (1996) under the title Khon Thai Tai Bo Ru Kham Nuea ("A Thai from down south who didn't know Northern words"). A young man from central Thailand wants to go aeo sao (visit and court a girl in the evening), so he asks a Khon Mueang friend how to say "beautiful" in the Northern language. His friend wants to tease him, so he tells him "sueng thueng".

The dictionary writes this word as sueng tueng (สึ่งฯทึงฯ), meaning dim-witted, dull, not all there. The word the young man should have used is ngam (งา, beautiful). The word khiat or kiat (คยฯด) means angry.

Thirayu Babat (ถิรายุส์ บาบัด, 2024) explains that this group of jia kom arose in the period when central Thai came into Lanna as the official language, so speakers of central Thai who didn't know Kham Mueang were often the butt of the joke.

Tale 4, thaem bued: showing off with Thai words

This tale is the reverse of tale 3. Hathaiwan Chaiyakun records that Chanta, a Northern girl who went to work in Bangkok, comes back home to visit, dressed in the latest fashion and speaking only central Thai, refusing to u kam mueang (อู้คำฯเมิอฯง, speak Kham Mueang) at all. Before going back to Bangkok, she goes shopping at the kat (market) and meets an old friend who is a market vendor.

The joke is in the last word: the girl who has announced that she has forgotten Kham Mueang answers, without realising it, with a pure Kham Mueang word. The dictionary writes it as thaem bued (แถมฯบึดฯ), meaning in a moment, in a little while.

Tale 5, Siang Miang: "I haven't lied yet"

Siang Miang is the clever trickster of jia kom, rather like Si Thanonchai in central Thai tales (Lao tales also have a character called Xieng Mieng). The researcher retells several episodes of his long story, some of them bawdy, so here we tell only the first two, from the version recorded by Hathaiwan Chaiyakun.

Episode 1, the pan on his head. As a child, Siang Miang was known as a khi chu, someone who loves to tell lies. One day a man came walking along with a mo khang (หํมฯอฯขางฯ, a wok-like pan) over his head and asked, "Why aren't you telling lies today?" Siang Miang answered "bo chu thuea, pen cha dai bo ru ta-wan ok song kaen", meaning "I haven't lied yet. I don't know what's happened, but two suns have come up." The man believed him, looked up at the sky, and the pan fell and broke.

Episode 2, can't cross. A merchant carrying miang (ห้มฯยฯง, fermented tea leaves) on a shoulder pole comes to the water's edge and asks Siang Miang whether the stream can be crossed. Siang Miang challenges him: if he can cross, Siang Miang will carry his miang for him; if he can't, he must hand the miang over. The merchant wades across, and Siang Miang shouts, "You can't cross, you can't! To cross you have to step over." That is, to cross (kham) you must lift your feet and step across, but the merchant waded through the water, so he lost and had to hand over his miang. And the tale says, "and so he got the name Siang Miang from then on."

Splitting the name by the dictionary, siang (ส้ยฯง) means all gone, used up, so the name can be heard as "miang all gone", which fits the story of the merchant losing his miang.

How jia kom makes people laugh with language

From the tales above, you can see the techniques that scholars find again and again in jia kom:

• Homophones: Aphisara Phonnarat found this to be one of the main techniques, as in praman/man, ha/ha and khing/khing in tales 1 and 2.
• One word, several meanings: such as kham (to cross), which Siang Miang interprets as meaning only to step over.
• Implied meaning: a character says one thing but means another. The researcher also notes that jia kom dialogue often rhymes, as in "nam phik ha, nam phik khing".
• Kham Mueang and Thai: Thirayu Babat divides jia kom into a traditional era (with characters such as the chao phraya, the lord of the city) and the era after the administrative reforms (with district chiefs, deputy district officers and police). In the later era, the difference between Kham Mueang and central Thai became an important source of jokes, as in tales 1, 3 and 4.

Summary

• Jia kom are short Lanna funny tales; the name comes from jia (story) + kom (short).
• The jokes of jia kom are often hidden in words, such as man (pregnant), ha (fermented fish) and ha (I), sueng tueng (dim-witted) and thaem bued (in a little while).
• Scholars have collected hundreds of jia kom, in the Encyclopedia of Thai Culture: Northern Region and in a Chiang Mai University thesis.
• Many tales reflect the time when Kham Mueang met central Thai, so listening to jia kom gives you both laughter and language history.

Look up more words from jia kom in the Moradok Lanna dictionary (in Thai), read Lanna proverbs at Kham Ba Kao, and practise market Kham Mueang at Going to the Kat Like a Khon Mueang.

More in this series: Kham U Bao U Sao · Khao Ham Son Ying, or see the whole series at Kham Mueang through songs and literature (in Thai).

Sources

• Moradok Lanna dictionary (dict2, in Thai): jia kom, jia, kom and every word in this article
• อาภิสรา พลนรัตน์ [Aphisara Phonnarat]. การใช้ภาษาเพื่อสร้างอารมณ์ขันในนิทานพื้นบ้านขนาดสั้น "เจี้ยก้อม" [The use of language to create humour in the short folk tales "jia kom"]. Fa Nuea Journal, Faculty of Humanities, Chiang Rai Rajabhat University, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 63–84 (tales 1 and 2 cited from the Encyclopedia of Thai Culture: Northern Region, vol. 4, 1999, pp. 1,660 and 1,687). In Thai.
• ถิรายุส์ บาบัด [Thirayu Babat]. (2024). การวิเคราะห์นัยยะแฝงทางการเมืองการปกครองของล้านนาผ่าน "เจี้ยก้อม" [An analysis of the hidden political and administrative meanings of Lanna through "jia kom"]. Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Loei Rajabhat University, vol. 6, no. 2 (tales 3–5 cited from Hathaiwan Chaiyakun, 1996, pp. 532, 534 and 550). In Thai.
• หทัยวรรณ ไชยะกุล [Hathaiwan Chaiyakun]. (1996). การสร้างมุขตลกในเรื่องขำขันล้านนา [The creation of jokes in Lanna humorous stories]. Master's thesis, Chiang Mai University (cited via Thirayu Babat). In Thai.
• มูลนิธิสารานุกรมวัฒนธรรมไทย ธนาคารไทยพาณิชย์ [Thai Cultural Encyclopedia Foundation, Siam Commercial Bank]. (1999). สารานุกรมวัฒนธรรมไทย ภาคเหนือ [Encyclopedia of Thai Culture: Northern Region], vol. 4 (cited via Aphisara Phonnarat). In Thai.
• อุดม รุ่งเรืองศรี [Udom Rungrueangsri]. (1985). เจี้ยก้อม: เรื่องขำขันล้านนา [Jia kom: Lanna funny stories]. Faculty of Humanities, Chiang Mai University. In Thai.
• คลังข้อมูลมหาวิทยาลัยมหิดล [Mahidol University repository]. นิทานพื้นบ้านลาว "เซียงเหมี้ยง" [The Lao folk tale "Xieng Mieng"]. In Thai.

Jia kom are oral literature, passed on by word of mouth, so titles, characters and wording vary with the teller and the locality. The dialogue in this article is quoted in the spelling of the published versions, while readings and meanings follow the Moradok Lanna dictionary.