Thai Could Be World’S New English, Prayuth Says

[Flashermac]

Bet they don't speak Mandarin.

 

A buddy was a Mandarin translator in the US Army. He is quite frustrated that very few Chinese Thais can understand Mandarin. They are Hakka or Taechiu.

[ALHOLK]

I read a long time ago that even tho Mandarin is spoken by most people in the world Cantoneese is the Chinese lanfuage spoken in most places in the world. I had a Chinese workmate that spoke Cantoneese, he told me that old Cantoneese, which he didn't understand, contained more that 10 tones.

[dean]

Isn't Prayuth also an accomplished singer, having released several hit songs in the last 2 years. Quite a Renaissance Nan for all ages.

[Flashermac]

I read a long time ago that even tho Mandarin is spoken by most people in the world Cantoneese is the Chinese language spoken in most places in the world. I had a Chinese workmate that spoke Cantoneese, he told me that old Cantoneese, which he didn't understand, contained more that 10 tones.

 

A Chinese Malayan friend told me that he could speak 4 "dialects". He had to learn the other 3 as foreign languages, since that's what they are. China calls them dialects because they use the same non-phonetic characters, but in fact they are not mutually intelligible. It's somewhat like claiming there is only one German language, and that German, Dutch, Frisian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, English etc are just "dialects" because they all have the same Old Germanic base.

[waerth]

Dutch is the true Old Germanic Flash .... all the others are dialects and subservient to us!