Why Thai's speak English so poorly

[bibblies]

Nervous_Dog said:

Mind you, English is a very hard language to learn, especially coming from Thai.

Oh, I don't know. There are some very simple rules - on plurals, for instance, where one simply adds an "s", never requiring an apostrophe with it. E.g. "Why Thais speak English so poorly...". How much easier can it get? ::

 

Thai spelling's not too bad. Given the spelling of a word, you can at least pronounce it with relative certainty compared to the pecularities of English ("bough", "rough", dough", etc).

 

The biggest mystery about Thai/English to me is why they transliterate their 'W' to a 'V' when there isn't a 'V' in Thai. E.g. Sukhumvit is actually Sukhumwit. So why put a 'V' in it?

[Guest]

Oh, I don't know. There are some very simple rules - on plurals, for instance, where one simply adds an "s", never requiring an apostrophe with it. E.g. "Why Thais speak English so poorly...". How much easier can it get?

You must have just finished reading Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss.

[bibblies]

No but I've heard of the book and she used to be a Times columnist. Even the Times makes such mistakes now, albeit only occasionally. (It really gets me because it's such an easy rule and putting in an artificial apostrophe is more effort than just adding the bloody 's'! How hard can it be? )

[Guest lazyphil]

I feel a new thread looming, watch this space......

[krml]

Torneyboy said:

krml said:

It is interesting that you should mention that. My wife wants her son from a previous marriage to learn English.

 

She is concerned because she says she speaks better English than her former teacher. The only reason this happened is because I have helped her. She still has room to improve but she is doing better than I am trying to learn Thai.

 

Unfortunately her son is a different matter all together. I wouldn't no where to begin with him.

 

You sound very much like me and our family situation.

 

Our son came out to OZ in April..went to school and after three months very little progress...my wife even said she will send him back to BKK.

 

We spoke to the school and got one on one an hour a day with the ELS teacher.

 

Gave us homework and we worked at it hard...even put stickers around the house..chair,table etc etc.

 

I think it was Zaad that told me to make it fun....so we did..and one day he come home from school and ...wow.....he spoke English...it just clicked in.

 

Take time and it will get better.

 

My wifes English is very poor and is trying to learn with her son

 

One suggestion...a great book i got from Uni...Beginning Thai by Preecha Juntanamalaga...ISBN0731515285.

Comes with a workbook and my son and i are working with this during the school holidays right now...he learns the English and me the Thai.

 

We insist on English at the dinner table...please pass the salt etc etc.

 

Good luck

A funny thing happened one of the previous times I was there. He has a little table that has the Thai syllabi written across the top.

 

My wife's sister had been teaching him. She left because she had some errands to run. He decided he wanted to learn some more so he dragged the table over to me and began pointing at the different Thai characters. I shrugged because I did not know them. He looked at me like I was the biggest freakin' idiot on the planet.

 

I have been trying to learn them but finding the time has been a little hard. Thai is definitely a time consuming language.

 

I will have to look for that book. Thanks.

[Guest]

New to this site and new to thai also, but have noticed from the little listening i've done to thai that the transliterations into English limp seriously, causing many confusions. Having studied Hebrew, I'm beginning to go beyond the romanizing to a deeper appreciation of the spoken rules. Perhaps the arrogant English didn't have the patience to really understand the nuances, or maybe were just too linguistically ignorant.

Sorry to sound all academic and stuff

[jitagawn]

The FIRST chore is to learn the alphabet in its entirety.

Makes everything so much easier.

Takes a while but worth it...

 

I personally have a very hard time understanding transliteral spelling

but if it is spelled in Thai -no worries. Same with teaching English to Thai Spell the sounds using the Thai alphabet and it never fails!

Anyway good luck.

[sidsanuk]

I am by no means a linguist and only speak limited Thai, but this problem has been nagging at me for ages. Motivation is to help my wife with her pronunciation.

 

Don't think it is just a Thai thing. I notice for example that many Asians have the problem of shortening words and not sounding the last letters of words, often so important in English.

 

Think I found the answer. If I can find the weblink I'll post it. But in summary it is this.

 

We are all tuned due to our language and cultural background to hear sounds differently. The analogy was this.

 

The rainbow. We (Most English Speakers) are taught there are 7 colors in the rainbow. We base all other shades and variations on this. We only SEE 7 colors.

In some cultures, there are different words for different shades of a color! In some languages there are three words for green. Totally different colors to them! So in those languages they SEE a different matrix of colors.

 

Same in language. My wife has trouble hearing the difference between English words like Sheep, Sheet, Ship, Shipped etc. Why? Because her ear has not been trained to hear those differences. Just like I have problems hearing the difference between the many variations of the Thai word Mai. 7 or 8 I think, based on tone and vowel length. My ear is not trained to pick up those differences.

 

Not sure of the answer, but probably constant practice at saying and listening to, specific problem words. Without getting to the point of being irritating, I now (at her request) correct my wife if she mis pronouces an English word badly. And 90% of the time, it's shortening the word or (same thing) not pronoucing the last letter/s.

 

Tricky thing to overcome I think. But any tips based on success stories most welcome.

 

Sid

[Torneyboy]

Hi Sid

Good work...

My wife gets upset when i pick her up on a word (after say twice in a day) so i let a lot slip through at the moment.

Repetition is the answer imo...slow going however

[Flashermac]

<< Same in language. My wife has trouble hearing the difference between English words like Sheep, Sheet, Ship, Shipped etc. Why? Because her ear has not been trained to hear those differences. >>

 

Then her teachers let her down somewhere along the line. Distinguishing between "minimal pairs" (cheap, sheep; which, wish; right, light ...) is one of the first things Thai students get in studying English. Problem is that most Thai teachers of English can't tell the differences themselves!

 

 

There is a simply a serious shortage of English teacher in Thailand, so English minors usually find themselves teaching English instead of their major subject. Also, recent graduates who neither majored nor minored in Thai often find themselves teaching English in rural primary and secondary schools. The logic is that they had studied English more recently than the older teachers at the school and therefore are presumed to speak it better. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

 

Suppose you studied German, Spanish or French when you were in high school -- maybe even took a year of one at university. Would you feel qualified to teach classes in that language? I sure as hell wouldn't.