I’m mostly familiar with the Vietnamese word “nàng” as a feminine prefix for words like fairy (nàng tiên) or mermaid (nàng tiên cá — “fish fairy” lol) Thai has this word for madam/lady, นาง (naang), and as you can see it sounds a LOT like the Viet “nàng” … Follow me on a journey if you will 🧵

Enter the Cham people of central Vietnam. Their towers in places like Quy Nhơn (below) look a lot like what you see at Angkor Wat. That’s because the Cham had a lot of contact with Angkor (Khmer-speaking) civilization, and guess what Old Khmer has? Yes! It’s another “neang” (នាង)

So, through Cham interaction with Vietnamese, you get “nàng.” Thus two totally unrelated languages, Thai and Viet, end up with the SAME Sanskrit-derived word for lady. Dayum. And… like in Viet, both fairy and mermaid start with “naang” in Thai: 🧚 นางฟ้า (naang faa) 🧜‍♀️ นางเงือก (naang ngeuak)

Be careful though! Not all similar sounding words share a root, as tantalizing as it sometimes is to imagine. Today I also came across งา (nga) in Thai, which sounds conspicuously like ngà in Viet, and both happen to mean ivory. However after much research I can say there is NO connection! ❌