Guest Posted February 22, 2004 Report Share Posted February 22, 2004 How would you guage "command of Thai"? Do you mean, knowing a crapload of vocabulary and patterns? Being Thai literate? Understanding more than 60%(basically getting the jist of the conversation topic) of Thais speaking to one another? One can know exactly what to say and even how to say something in a given situation, but the execution is crucial. INO, you can say the right thing, yet the other party is confused to hell! Perhaps you make a miniscule flub on your tones, whoops welcome to "I have no clue what this crazy farang is trying to say and I'm definitely not going to expend energy trying to figure it out". INO... puut pasa thai chat dii khwaa puut pasa thai gaeng. You can know all the words in the Thai dictionary(it's definitely possible) but if you say glay and you mean to say glaay... only thing one would be commanding is frustration. I'm just interjecting this is because I almost always deal with 3 + 1 + 1 conversations. I say something once, twice, three times. Eureka! Then they say exactly what I was saying with the most negligible difference in tones. And then I repeat it... Oh, and most times the other party doesn't figure it out on their own. Basically by saying the same thing multiple times with varying volume and speed(frustration), you somehow make a connect... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.. Posted February 22, 2004 Report Share Posted February 22, 2004 The only problem I have is with th eheavy accents that some non-Central region Thais have. I speak Bangkok (Central) Thai because my family is from there and that is where I learned the majority of my Thai. But sometimes I cannot understand BGs or taxi drivers that have just come to the city. And they equally have trouble with my enuciation. Mai pen rai. And I really find that most Thais are very forgiving when it comes to flubbed tones (my tones are crap -- just ask my wife LOL ) But in business, it works great beause I get compliments in that I speak with a Central region accent . I gain face because they know I did not learn to speak from a bar girl. Not that there is anything wrong with that per se, but not so good in a business situation. Cheers, SD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pescator Posted February 22, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 22, 2004 Hi Rasputin, puut pasa thai chat dii khwaa puut pasa thai gaeng Definitely. Especially since the "geng" term is thrown at one even if one never made it beyond the "sawasdee khrap stage" or if one still is a total beginner. Chat - is next stage. One´s pronounciation is making progress here. Phuut muan khon thai leey - next stage. Now, one is actually starting to make sense. Dtaaai Dtaai! ahn nee man phen farang ruu plaow? Thammai man phuut geng kanard nee wa? Mai chai khon thai rue? Final state, the above coarse exclamation from startled BG after realizing that the guy they have been gossiping about and made snide remarks about has understood every single word they have been saying. Or the girl on the phone just hanging up, never realizing that she had actually been talking to a farang. This is the way the thais I have been dealing with gauge farangs` command of thai. Needless to say, thais are a notorious polite bunch and every so often one will be fed with a compliment that doesn`t necessarily holds true :: Never mind, bring it on, I love it! :: I am a sucker for compliments. Cheers Hua Nguu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 22, 2004 Report Share Posted February 22, 2004 HN, I think that listening and perhaps understanding Thais speak is much easier than speaking it, especially if one's from the west. It's frustrating as heck when you know what's going on and what exactly to say, only to be befuddled by my tone-insensitive mouth... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 22, 2004 Report Share Posted February 22, 2004 suadum, You've nailed on the head what many times I think when some of my acquaintences "show off" their Thai fluency. Some are so freaking oblvious it's not even funny. One guy, a tourist, busts out his 10 pattern Thai every chance he gets. Of course when Khon Tamada asks him if he has a GF from Issarn or some waitress at a resteraunt teases him saying that he must have many GFs(the guy's a rhino), he's gleaming from his percieved Thai language sk33lz. Too bad the poor bastard doesn't realize that they're basically asking in a round-about way if he learned the language from Thai whores. If one is motivated to immerse and empower themselves by learning the Thai language, one should know "the rules"(no matter how reprehensible in your home country) of this place. Meaning perception and the whole status thing... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pescator Posted February 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 Hi Rasputin, What I have noticed about people showing off what they perceive as thai fluency, is that they are usually the ones who don`t really command the language well and thus need to do that to be reassured. The guys I have met who command the language well have no inclination to do so at all. Of course when Khon Tamada asks him if he has a GF from Issarn ... SNIP Too bad the poor bastard doesn't realize that they're basically asking in a round-about way if he learned the language from Thai whores. Well, that is definitely jumping to conclusions. There could be any of a number of reasons for a farang speaking like that. And actually I think it is urban legend that farangs learn Issarn dialect in bars. They may learn some coarse language/Phasa Baan and not so polite slang from some bargirls, but most I have hung around with actually go to great effort to correct you if you get too carried away and try to show off your gutter language. I have been living in Issarn long enough to know if someone is talking an issarn dialect and been married to an issarn woman for 10 years. And it never occurs to me that someone in a bar speaks a dialect to me, unless they wanna make fun or they realize that you can actually speak it. Often they will use it among themselves, but that is a different story. It would be interesting to know exactly what words/terms of issarn origin a farang would pick up in bars?? I would be most interested to hear those. If it wasn`t from listening to the girls having a private conversation. Most BGs speak the central dialect well (definitely much better than the vast majority of farangs) due to exposure from school/radio/television whatever and will definitely be shy to speak their native dialect with people speaking central thai. Of course a native central speaker will be likely to tell their origin, but I bet most farangs would not. Cheers Hua Nguu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 Well, that is definitely jumping to conclusions. There could be any of a number of reasons for a farang speaking like that. In general, yes. In my acquaintances' case, no. In my experiences, I've not met that many farang males whom speak proficient Thai with an Issarn slant. Mostly it's farang dudes speaking broken Thai with some Issarn slangs or perhaps more tellingly, speaking informal additionally. On a sidenote: I'm pretty sure that many NANAplaza dot com posters have gotten their first Thai edu-MA-cation in da' ghetto. I sure did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 24, 2004 Report Share Posted February 24, 2004 Hua Nguu said:Well that goes without saying. However, I can see that I didn`t express myself all that clearly. What I meant by taking advantage was taking advantage at the expense of say an unknowing fellow farang. By the examples I supplied in my intial post you will probably get my drift. Cheers Hua Nguu the unknowing fellow farang is to be felt sorry for. he should though learn the lingo because then bastards like me can't take advantage at his expense anymore. :hubba: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
khunsanuk Posted February 24, 2004 Report Share Posted February 24, 2004 Hi, One thing that I have noticed with a lot of farangs who learn in schools mainly, is that while their vocabulary is great the words just don't flow right. Take Stickman for instance (sorry, Stick, don't mean anything with this, just using you as an example). His vocabulary is substantially larger than mine, and I am sure that his pronounciation is quite good as well. However, when he speaks the words don't flow right, kinda like there is no life in them. I have noticed the same with some of the farang actors on TV, and I can instantly hear that the person speaking is not a native speaker, eventhough all the words, grammar and tones are correct. Not sure why this is... Sanuk! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 24, 2004 Report Share Posted February 24, 2004 KS, I sortakinda get what you are describing, but have you seen and heard any Farang speak Thai with such "flow"? I haven't, in the sense that you're describing. Heck even some Thai MTV vj's, although Thai but born in the west, speak Thai well, they just don't sound at ease. You could hear the "farang-ness" in their speech. I guess it's just difficult to capture the nasal whiny back-of-the-throat essence of the Thai language if you weren't raised here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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