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Why Thai's speak English so poorly


Khun_Kong

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<< Or take the fact that the Thais, even the ones who speak relatively good English and have been interacting with farang for years, have a great difficulty telling the English and Australians from the Americans. They simply don't have the ear for the sounds of English language.>>

 

 

I have a fairly neutral, but decidedly North American accent. Yet Thais invariably take me for English or Australian. (I've even had Europeans tell me they didn't think I was American at first, maybe because I dont say "yeah" and pop bubble gum or whatever.)

 

<< Same with us (at least with me). When Thais switch to Lao it sounds like Thai to me. The only difference is that I can understand even less than when they speak Thai. But the sound of it, which is very different to them, is the same to me.>>

 

 

Lao has no R sound. Words with an R in Thai will usually be use a H --- but sometimes an L -- in Lao. (e.g. RAWN = HAWN, RONG RIAN = HONG HIAN). Lao also does not have consonant clusters. Thus PLA = PA, KRU = KU. The pronouns are different, as is the negative word (MAI = BAW). Also, Lao is less formal. In Laos itself you seldom hear people saying KHRAP or KHA. They also seem to WAI a lot less in Laos. But the Isaan Lao you hear from BGs and taxi drivers is sort of mixed with Thai. And if you don't really understand Thai, you probably wouldn't notice the differences with Lao ... any more than Thais can tell where we are from by our accents in English.

 

p.s. I did get a bit concerned when some American tourists asked me where I was from in Australia! Well, I did used to work with a lot of Strine folks. :o

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I did get a bit concerned when some American tourists asked me where I was from in Australia!

 

One of the writers from 'The Simpsons' was out here recently on one of our talk shows, and found himself discussing the Australian accent with a fellow Californian. Both agreed that there are similarities between the Oz accent and the Bostonian accent, but I'm buggered if I can hear it in any of the recordings of John Kennedy (or Frasier Crane, for that matter ...). Something about the inflection on our 'R's' being very similar.

 

Getting back to Thai's and their grasp of English, I found that it varied immensely, and usually in direct proportion to their exposure to native English speakers. I've made the point before that, for all their 'illiterate' reputation, the BGs are some of the fastest learners that I've ever seen. Amazing what a little fiscal incentive will do for one's motivation ::

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Flashermac said:I did get a bit concerned when some American tourists asked me where I was from in Australia!
That is bloody amazing cuz you certainly have a NA accent to my ear, *never* to be confused with an Oz tongue. Oh well.

 

As far as quality of teachers, I gotta believe that that is an issue. I mean, my daughters speak English just fine, but some of the shit they were coming home with made me shake my head -- putting magnets on the refrigerator causes it to use more electricity (flat out silly); or eating burnt toast gives you cancer (dodgy science at best). There were many, many other examples that I have forgotten. And this was from farang teachers at an expensive private school!

 

Cheers,

SD

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>>The gulf between the Roman languages and the Asian languages is much, much deeper then most of us at first realise. It's the sounds, the tones, the sentence structure, the way of expressing things.

 

I agree, but you chose a bad example. Khmer is very different from Thai. Khmer has maybe the most complex vowel system of all languages (the Thai one is not very complex), and Khmer has consonant clusters which Bangkok Thai doesn't have at all. Khmer doesn"t have tones, just like English.

 

BTW English is not a Roman language.

Romance languages are Italian, French, Spanish etc.

English is a Germanic language like German, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages.

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iuytrede said:what's dodgy about burnt toast containing lots of cancerogenous substances?
I have never seen proof of the link to eating toast and getting cancer. Please show me. I am not talking about some poor rat being force fed 1,765,456 pieces of blackened bread, but something reasonable. Sorry, most scientists poo-poo this as well from what I have read -- i.e., yes, there are carcinogens in the carbon on the burnt toast. No, it does not seem that they lead cancer in humans as it is consumed in such minute amounts.

 

Now I would be fine with saying that it could happen and the teacher starting a discussion on scientific method and risks ratios. But that was not the case. This little tidbit was presented as fact with no qualifiers, leading to the kids being afraid to eat toast at all.

 

Cheers,

SD

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MadMax said:

 

To address your subject though, I think the problem is elsewhere. The gulf between the Roman languages and the Asian languages is much, much deeper then most of us at first realise.

 

I realized that with painful clarity on my very first thai lesson :)

 

Cheers

Hua Nguu

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>>yes, there are carcinogens in the carbon on the burnt toast. No, it does not seem that they lead cancer in humans as it is consumed in such minute amounts.

 

If you translate "carcinogen" into English it just means "causing cancer".

 

There is no safe threshold for carcinogens below which they don't lead to cancer (in humans or whatever). The risk is not necessarily very high, this depends on a lot of circumstances.

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A much more interesting question would be "why do americans spell so badly?" Why is it that foreigners that have learnt English as a second language consistently spell English better than Americans who supposedly use it as their native language? What makes it such a difficult language to spell if you can speak it fluently?

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