Monkey trousers

 

Over three decades into the Thai language, I never stop learning.

Last night, my neighbour came over at my request to make sense of what I took to be a couple of risqué sentences in Yan-yong Tulyanit’s ‘The identity card’. He left disappointed, if amused: the relevant passage wasn’t that salacious after all. As it turned out, I had a dirtier mind than the author’s, for lack of knowing what ling tua noi meant.

Mind you, I had the excuse of the context:
‘The trousers released from his legs, she threw them to one side. He didn’t care where they fell because her hand was swinging his core member back and forth until it strained in arousal. Then she slowly root ling tua noi hai…’
And the sentence ending seemingly with ‘his legs went to lie in a heap on the floor’ had me utterly mystified.
There was more:
‘He used his hands to hitch up her skirt, inserted a finger khorp ling tua jiu khong theur…’ followed by a couple more lines of impenetrable prose.

Once my neighbour had explained that ling tua noi and ling tua jiu were references to กางเกงลิง (kangkeing ling), which in spoken Thai does not mean ‘monkey trousers’ but ‘briefs’ or ‘pants’, the sentences took instantly a different slant from what I had libidinously (mis)construed.

Here they are:
‘The trousers released from his legs, she threw them to one side. He didn’t care where they fell because her hand was swinging his core member back and forth until it strained in arousal. Then she slowly slid his briefs down his legs to have them slip to the floor in a heap … He used his hands to hitch up her skirt, inserted a finger under her skimpy pants and pulled down. She crooked one leg to free the pants from the other leg, which then stretched to have them join his briefs.’

A Google search tells me that the ‘strictly spoken Thai’ expression กางเกงลิง, defined as ‘body-hugging, legless underwear for women or men’, probably comes from the French word ‘lingerie’ (ลิงเจอรี). You don’t say.