Over the Rainbow in Kham Mueang: Rainbow, Sky, Dreams

Over the Rainbow is the song from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, sung by Judy Garland as the girl Dorothy. It is the song of someone dreaming of a faraway land beyond the rainbow. In this article we ask how a Northerner (khon mueang) would say the song's ideas, and learn Kham Mueang (Northern Thai) words for sky, clouds, dreams and colours along the way.

The rainbow in Kham Mueang is ngueak hung เงิอฯกรุง (Kham Mueang reading ngueak hung). The dictionary describes it as a seven-coloured arc in the sky, made when sunlight passes through drops of water in the air.

The song is still under copyright, so we do not translate it line by line, and we quote only two short phrases. What we take from it is its ideas, and then we try saying those ideas in Kham Mueang, as we did with My Way.

Where Over the Rainbow comes from

The music is by Harold Arlen and the words by E. Y. "Yip" Harburg, the pair hired to write all the songs for this MGM film. A Library of Congress essay by Walter Rimler, Arlen's biographer, says Arlen struggled for a long time to find the tune. Then one day, being driven past Schwab's Drug Store on Sunset Boulevard, the melody came to him; he had his wife pull over and wrote it down on the spot.

Harburg liked the tune but worried it was too grand for a farm girl from Kansas, until Ira Gershwin asked Arlen to play it with a little more rhythm. Played simply and with a beat, Harburg agreed it suited a child. As for the rainbow, Harburg recalled that the original Oz book never mentions one, but it does say Kansas was arid, so he reasoned that the only colourful thing in this girl's life would be a rainbow (as Rimler and Wikipedia both tell it).

The song was nearly cut from the film. Rimler says MGM's producers thought it slowed things down and took it out twice, until Arthur Freed, who had hired Arlen and Harburg, issued an ultimatum: "Rainbow stays or I go." Wikipedia says the film's producer and director insisted it stay, so the sources differ a little on the details. Garland recorded it for the film on 7 October 1938, at the age of 16.

The song went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song, and in 2004 the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked it number one among 100 songs from American films. Garland's recording was added to the US National Recording Registry; the Library of Congress essay itself gives two years, 2016 in its heading and 29 March 2017 in its text.

Watch from the official channel

You can watch the song's scene from the film on the official channel of Warner Bros. Classics, which holds the rights to the film.

▶

Ngueak hung: a land beyond the rainbow

The first idea of the song is in the opening phrase everyone remembers, "Somewhere over the rainbow" (E. Y. Harburg, "Over the Rainbow", 1939): some place up beyond the rainbow. Rimler says Harburg at first could not find two syllables to put before "over the rainbow", until his wife-to-be, Edelaine Roden, suggested "somewhere".

In Kham Mueang the rainbow has several names. Besides ngueak hung, it is also called i hung อี่รุง or phi i hung ผีอี่รุง. A name that starts with phi (spirit) does not mean the rainbow is a ghost; read more about words like this in Ghost and spirit words in Kham Mueang.

Kham Mueang also has words for distance. Pun พุ้ร means over there, yonder, farther away; kai ไกลฯ means far; kham ข้ามฯ means to cross from one side to the other; and sung สูง means high, above the usual level.

Kham Mueang rendering by MoradokLanna: ปุ๊น ข้ามเงือกฮุงไป สูงแล้วก็ไก๋ ("over there, across the rainbow, high and far")

Fa and fa: the sky and the clouds

The second idea is a bright sky and clouds. The song paints a picture where troubles are left far below while the singer floats high above the clouds. In Kham Mueang fa ฟ้า (falling tone) is the sky, the part above that covers the land. A word learners often don't know is fa ฝ้า (ฝ้า, with a different tone), whose first dictionary sense is cloud, a mass of cloud (the word mek เมฆฯฯ, cloud, is in the dictionary too).

Other words for this idea are tuk ทุก์ขฯ, suffering, hardship, and loi ลอฯยฯ, to float in the air.

Kham Mueang rendering by MoradokLanna: ลอยขึ้นเหนือฝ้า ตุ๊กข์ก็อยู่ไก๋ ("float up above the clouds, and troubles stay far away")

Dreams that come true

The third idea is the belief that dreams you dare to dream can come true. In Kham Mueang fan ฝันฯ has two senses: seeing a story while asleep, and longing to be or to have something. The dictionary's own example fits this song strangely well: "dreaming of being a bird to fly circling in the sky". Fan han ฝันฯ means to dream of, to see in a dream.

To make a wish in Kham Mueang you use kho ขํอฯ (to ask for) with hue หื้ (to let, to give), and "true" is tae แท้ (genuine, true).

Kham Mueang rendering by MoradokLanna: ขอหื้อสิ่งตี้ฝันไว้ เป๋นแต๊ ("may what I have dreamed come true")

Nok pue pik: birds fly over the rainbow, so why not us?

The fourth idea comes from little birds that fly over the rainbow, so the singer asks, "Why, oh why can't I?" (E. Y. Harburg, "Over the Rainbow", 1939). Rimler tells how, at a tribute concert for Arlen at Lincoln Center on 17 November 1968, Garland sang the song with Arlen at the piano; at this line she paused to thank him. It was her last stage appearance in America.

Kham Mueang has nok น฿กฯ (bird) and pik ปีกฯ (wing). We did not find a word for "to fly" in the dictionary, but there is a lovelier one: pue พื, to flap, with the dictionary example nok pue pik, "a bird flaps its wings".

Kham Mueang rendering by MoradokLanna: นกปืปีกข้ามเงือกฮุงได้ แล้วเฮาเล่า ("birds flap their wings across the rainbow, so what about us?")

Stars and home: dreaming far, then going home

The last idea is wishing on a star, and coming home. In the film Dorothy travels all the way to the land of Oz, but at the end she gets back home to Kansas, so a song about faraway places ends up as a story about home.

The Kham Mueang words: dao ดาวฯ (star), pho ผํอฯ (to look, to watch), pik พิกฯ (to return, to go back) and ban บ้าฯนฯ (home, house).

Kham Mueang rendering by MoradokLanna: ผ่อดาวแล้วขอ ไปไก๋ปุ๊น แล้วก็ปิ๊กบ้าน ("look at the stars and wish, go far away, and then come home")

Compared with Kham Mueang colours: the seven colours of the rainbow

Harburg chose a rainbow because it was the only colourful thing in a Kansas girl's life. Kham Mueang has colour names for the whole rainbow. The dictionary lists the seven colours of ngueak hung: violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. Matched with the colour names in Kham Mueang colour words, they are:

The dictionary has no word for indigo as such, so we use si pang (violet-indigo) as the closest match, and say plainly that this pairing is ours. As for lae, the dictionary says it is sometimes used for light blue or green. Open the colour reference below to see these colours with Lanna script and approximate colour values.

Read more about sky, rain and rainbows in everyday Kham Mueang in Nature and weather words in Kham Mueang.

Kham Mueang words from the song's ideas

All these renderings are our own wording built from dictionary words, not the one standard form. Northerners from different places may say the same idea with other words.

Summary

• The rainbow in Kham Mueang is ngueak hung or i hung; don't confuse it with hung (ฮุ้ง, high tone), a hawk.
• Fa (ฝ้า) in Kham Mueang is a cloud, while fa (ฟ้า) is the sky.
• Pun means over there, far off, and kai means far.
• Nok pue pik is a bird flapping its wings, and pik ban is to go home.
• The rainbow's colours in Kham Mueang are daeng, saet, lueang, khiao, lae, si pang and muang.
• The "Kham Mueang rendering by MoradokLanna" lines in this article tell the song's ideas; they are not a translation of the lyrics, and they still await a check by native Kham Mueang speakers.

Look up the words in this article in the Moradok Lanna dictionary (in Thai). More in the same set: My Way · Kham Mueang colour words, or see the whole set at Kham Mueang through songs and literature (in Thai).

Copyright and courtesy

This article was made by Moradok Lanna, a non-profit website, for learning the Lanna language and culture. It is not an adaptation, translation or new version of the song. We quote only a few short lines, with credit, for study, criticism and review, as fair use allows (Thai Copyright Act B.E. 2537, section 32). The Kham Mueang lines are our own wording of the song's ideas, not a translation of its lyrics. Embedded videos come from the rights holders' official channels and remain their property.

With thanks and respect to the songwriters, performers and rights holders. If a rights holder would like anything changed or removed, please write to moradoklanna@gmail.com and we will act promptly.

References

• Moradok Lanna Dictionary (dict2): ngueak hung, i hung, phi i hung, kham, pun, kai, sung, fa (sky), fa (cloud), mek, tuk, loi, fan, fan han, kho, hue, tae, nok, pik (wing), pue, dao, pho, pik (to return), ban, daeng, saet, lueang, khiao, lae, si pang, muang.
• Rimler, W. "Over the Rainbow"—Judy Garland (1939). National Recording Registry, Library of Congress (PDF)
• Brown-Cáceres, N. A. (2025, 8 December). Follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Library. Library of Congress, In the Muse
• Wikipedia. Over the Rainbow and AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs (used as a lead and checked against other sources).
• Filmsite. AFI's 100 Greatest Songs in American Movies
• Warner Bros. Classics (official channel). The Wizard of Oz – Somewhere Over the Rainbow. YouTube
• Moradok Lanna articles Kham Mueang colour words · Nature and weather words · Ghost and spirit words and My Way.