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Dialects within Isaan


gobbledonk

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Years ago I lived in an apartment compound that had a lot of UN people in it - US, UK, Dutch, Hungarian and Japanese plus the landlord's Thai kids. The children all played together and their common language was Thai! My wife came in one day with a puzzled expression on her face, asking who that "little blonde girl" was. I told her it was the American girl in the house near ours. She said the girl's Thai was absolutely perfect, native speaker level. Unfortunately, after they move away most of the children will never use the language again and almost completely forget it.

 

Kids soak up languages like a sponge, no matter how grammatically complicated. For some reason, we lose that ability around age 12. :(

 

 

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Years ago I lived in an apartment compound that had a lot of UN people in it - US, UK, Dutch, Hungarian and Japanese plus the landlord's Thai kids. The children all played together and their common language was Thai! My wife came in one day with a puzzled expression on her face, asking who that "little blonde girl" was. I told her it was the American girl in the house near ours. She said the girl's Thai was absolutely perfect, native speaker level. Unfortunately, after they move away most of the children will never use the language again and almost completely forget it.

 

Kids soak up languages like a sponge, no matter how grammatically complicated. For some reason, we lose that ability around age 12. :(

 

 

Well, we don't really *lose* that ability, but it gets blocked by all the psychological garbage we acquire as "adults": things like being afraid of looking like a fool when we make mistakes, or hesitance to let weird sounds come out of our mouths...which means two essential components of learning a foreign language fluently get blocked!

 

The other thing that adults suffer from in language learning is lack of motivation...motivation is probably 70% the major factor in language learning success.

 

For kids, the motivation is clear: fit in with the kids around you. It's strong, and it's sufficient to facilitate very rapid language learning.

 

We still have that *potential* as adults...but too often, adults who "decide to learn a foreign language" lack a strong enough motivation. I can tell you from experience with my own (adult) language students: when the motivation is there, they really do "soak it up like a sponge," no matter what age they are.

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Unfortunately, they have to overcome the "English" that was taught to them by non-English speaking Thais teachers over the years. I've only met a handful of Thai English teachers below the university level who could carry on a conversation in English. Most often I had to speak Thai to them. Not really there fault ... since most of them had not been English majors or even minors! (Common practice for the newest teachers to get stuck with the English classes, even though their major may have been been science of maths.)

 

 

 

 

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Unfortunately, they have to overcome the "English" that was taught to them by non-English speaking Thais teachers over the years. I've only met a handful of Thai English teachers below the university level who could carry on a conversation in English. Most often I had to speak Thai to them. Not really there fault ... since most of them had not been English majors or even minors! (Common practice for the newest teachers to get stuck with the English classes, even though their major may have been been science of maths.)

 

 

 

 

Very true for Thai English students! Except I don't teach English...I teach a Southeast Asian language in the States.

 

But yeah, 0 attention is paid to practical communication in 90% of English teaching in Thailand. It's all translation and grammar rules. Useless in the real world.

 

I did actually teach English as a volunteer for a little while in Bangkok, very specialized English (to sex workers)...it was great, I used both Western pop songs (carefully chosen for phrases and vocab they could put to use right away with their customers) and "stream of consciousness" deconstructions of situations that came up in students interactions/miscommunications with customers. Man, if I could get paid for that I'd do it full time, they were great students (as long as I didn't expect each student to show up every time, haha)

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Even the text books used at most Thai universities are next to useless as they are far too difficult for the level being taught. My uni had some very good material created by the foreign English teachers - all practical and conversational. But now the new dept head has ditched it all for some flashy and expensive language books from the UK; these are not only too difficult but are BORING! The situations are invariably inappropriate, and the books obviously were designed with language learners in Europe or South America in mind. :(

 

Frustratingly, most Thai university level lecturers have never had any teacher training. They just mimic their own teachers, who couldn't teach worth crap either. But God forbid you should criticise them, not if you want your contract renewed. You just do what you can in your own classroom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Had a funny experience in Pattaya - I dont know whether she was an expat Farang's kid or simply Leuk Kreung (didnt look Asian, so probably the former), but she could have been a blonde Aussie schoolgirl from a short distance away - right up until she turned to her Thai girlfriends and started speaking. This wasn't the halting Thai of someone still learning the language - it was as fluid and relaxed as I've heard anywhere. Must freak some of the older Thais out - it certainly threw me for a loop. The Thai kids clearly had money, so it may well have been classmates from one of the International schools.

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The other side of the coin: I was taking the train north years ago, and sitting across from me was a Thai gal who had married a USAF guy and moved to West Virginia when he got his discharge. She said her husband was a coal miner, and she was taking their two children on a visit to their grandparents in Uttaradit. Then kids started to talk. "Mamaw, Ahm hungry. Ah wawnt sumthin ta eat." Pure Appalachian English! :p

 

 

 

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The other side of the coin: I was taking the train north years ago, and sitting across from me was a Thai gal who had married a USAF guy and moved to West Virginia when he got his discharge. She said her husband was a coal miner, and she was taking their two children on a visit to their grandparents in Uttaradit. Then kids started to talk. "Mamaw, Ahm hungry. Ah wawnt sumthin ta eat." Pure Appalachian English! :p

 

 

 

Haha...yeah, I've met Cambodian refugee kids who grew up in the southern US who talked like that as well. Too funny. And quite jarring!!

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