Farang phuut passat Thai reu plao, k-?

[Guest]

I've heard it said elsewhere before that Thais have almost no verbal imagination. You can butcher a word in English, but still understand what someone means when you take it in context. If you are standing next to a train station, and I ask you how long you have been waiting for the "tren", you will understand me - but miss a tone just slightly in Thai, and most Thais won't get it.

[Lamock Chokaprret]

Luisbkk noted the:

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waitress who refuses to listen to me when I start to order and turns to my GF ...

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Happens to me all the time. That is exactly the response I was alluding to in my first post. Not necessarily what I'd call a language snob but certainly infuriating. My g/f doesn't help when she frequently repeats something I say right after I've said it. I'd like as much of my speech to stand alone as possible, to see how well I'm understood and identify areas where I need improvement.

A note to Worldwalker. I thought all you had to do was change your 'r' to 'l' and be understood in Issan!?

Alai na?

[daeng bireley]

Im my experience most farangs when ignored speaking thai are usually speaking very badly and probably there girlfriend only understands them because she is familiar with the way they speak.

Sounds like some unfair criticsm and lack of understanding of thais going on here. If a person is only partly understood it is a lot easier to defer back to the one that can be.

The same as the title of this topic "farang

phuut passat thai reu plao".

Im sure the spelling mistake passat for phassaa is not intententional. Pasaat can be used to mean crazy like baa. When I first saw it, I thought it might have been intentional (a joke).This sentence should have "dai" in it as well "farang phuut phasaa thai dai rue plao".

If you speak like that, they wont understand you. Be a bit fair. Dont blame the poor thais for your embarrasment if they dont understand what your saying.

Thais also love to compliment farangs who are trying to speak thai by telling them how good they speak or how good their accent is

Dont believe them. Many farangs have gotten into trouble believing the compliments thai make. How often have you heard a thai say "try a bit harder if you keep practising you will pick it up" Thais dont speak like farangs ,in a case like this they wont tell the truth if its liable to offend .

Above all keep trying thai is a difficult language, have patience,it takes a lot of hard work but it is worth it, because a good

or even reasonable thai speaker has a totally different experience in thailand.

[Lamock Chokaprret]

Daeng,

I'll be the first to acknowledge that I probably have a pretty heavy accent when I speak Thai. Oddly enough, since I started this thread I'd been doing some apartment hunting. Memorized a few words (from a dictionary) to assist me and ventured out on my own. Can't say I had a single person not understand what I was asking. I find it hard to believe I got that much better overnight. So now I'm wondering if the phenomena I described is more prevalant among Thais that deal with farangs more? Maybe because they hear so many intolerable accents and kind of get sick of it so start tuning it out?

As for my spelling on the thread, yes the 't' at the end of 'passat' was a typo. But 'can a farang speak Thai' was not really the meaning I was shooting for. More like 'should a farang speak Thai' and I'll freely admit I was a bit unsure of the wording. Considered using 'tawng' but that didn't seem right either. So I just left it off and subject to interpretation.

Besides, I like to be a man of mystery.

Another experience in Lotus yesterday made me believe that things aren't all bad where I asked a lady where kitchen stuff was. Totally butchered the sentence (my g/f later told me so) and she understood and pointed me in the right direction.

I've asked my g/f not to interpret for me (i.e., repeat what I just said) for awhile. Want to see if forcing people to listen might have some effect on their comprehension.

[ November 05, 2001: Message edited by: Lamock Chokaprret ]

[khunsanuk]

Hi,

First of all, this ...

"I'd say about 50% of the people I speak to understand what I'm trying to say. The other 50% have some difficulty for one reason or another. My question relates to the approximately 20% of Thai people I encounter that have no clue."

... adds up to 120%

Anyway, I have been speaking Thai for a little of 4 years now (the last 2 very intensively) and it seems that, as mentioned by others, there are some people who just don't understand you. For me the percentage is way lower than 20% though, and most of the time they will get it if I speak a bit slower (the one thing people always complain about is that I speak too fast).

As to why, I don't know for sure, but unfamiliarity with non-native speakers may play a big part. One girl I know always looked confused when I spoke to her, until she worked in S'pore for a while. Now she understands me a lot better.

Others are terrified at the prospect of having to talk to a farang and just clam up. (I remember this guy at Tops supermarket who almost fainted and started looking around for someone, anyone, to talk to the farang instead of him. Even though I addressed him in Thai!)

Another reason may be that farangs learn 'classroom' Thai. Yes, it may be the correct tone and correct sentence order, but it lacks 'life'. How many people do you know that speak like in those English textbooks?

On the other side of the coin, there are still plenty of times when I can't understand Thais. Whenever someone speaks outside of the norm (i.e. heavy dialect, mumbling a bit, speaking while chewing beetlenut ), I tend to encounter some difficulty understanding them.

BTW, there are plenty of farangs who I can't understand either when they are 'speaking' Thai.

Daeng bireley said:

"Thais also love to compliment farangs who are trying to speak thai by telling them how good they speak or how good their accent is

Dont believe them."

Absolutely agree. Someone once told me there are 3 levels of compliments:

- "Khun phuut phassaa Thai keng" (you speak Thai well) = "I appreciate the effort you make and I can actually understand a few words you say."

- "Khun phuut phassaa Thai chat" (you speak Thai clearly) = "Your Thai is pretty good, I can understand most of what you say. You even use the right tones most of the time."

- "Khun phuut phassaa Thai klong" (you speak Thai fluently) = "Your Thai is very good, I can understand everything you say."

There are very few farang I know that would fit in the last category. I know I don't, even though I have received this compliment several times.

Sanuk!

[Guest]

They say say kaeng after the introduction,after a couple of sentences comes "Pood chat douay".still gotta hear the "klong' compliment though...

About thais terrified with the prospect to speak with westerners,in bangkokmouth.com Bangkok Phil writes that once he called Pizza Hut to order some food.The thai on the other side noticing he was a farang just dropped the phone and called for help.Waited a few minutes until someone dared to pick back up the phone.Laughed in front of the screen while reading.Can relate to it too

[Lamock Chokaprret]

Khun Sanuk quoting me:

quote:

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"I'd say about 50% of the people I speak to understand what I'm trying to say. The other 50% have some difficulty for one reason or another. My question relates to the approximately 20% of Thai people I encounter that have no clue."

... adds up to 120%

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I meant for the 20% to come out of the 50% that have difficulty. But then again, maybe it is more like 70% that don't understand me.

More from Khun Sanuk:

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Others are terrified at the prospect of having to talk to a farang and just clam up. (I remember this guy at Tops supermarket who almost fainted and started looking around for someone, anyone, to talk to the farang instead of him. Even though I addressed him in Thai!)

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I have definetly run into this. Maybe there should be a proverb for this:

'Meu-uh dtohk jai, mai kow jai farang!'

KS one more time:

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Another reason may be that farangs learn 'classroom' Thai. Yes, it may be the correct tone and correct sentence order, but it lacks 'life'. How many people do you know that speak like in those English textbooks?

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Now how am I going to learn classroom Thai from an Issan farm girl? Seriously, I really doubt this is true, at least in my case. Your point is probably well taken for those people that learn in the classroom though. I know my Spanish is much like you describe. Don't really have much trouble with people understanding that though, although I think my pronounciation there is probably a little better.

And as far as the 'phuut passah Thai gaeng maak' comments, Thais were telling me this on my first trip as soon as I was able to string three words together other than 'sa-wat-dee' or 'kawp koon k-.' Certainly don't put much stock in that compliment. Have to say I haven't risen to either of the other two yet.

[Guest]

I have to jump in on this thread, many of the things that have been said ring true with me. I see shop assistants quaking when I walk into their shops, especially petrol stations, I ask for what I want in Thai and can see them visibly breath a sigh of relief.

I can usually get what I want in one go. Sometimes it takes a repeat, I've also had complete incomprehension. The last time was for cigarettes, the girl looked at me like I was from mars and seemed totally unable to understand a word I'd said. Her colleague however handed me a packet of the correct brand and strength with a skyward look. I think my accent is quite clear when I know waht I'm saying and have had some practice. The trouble comes when I need to use a word I don't know well or have trouble with. Near and far (glai and glai [rising]) This seems to cause the listener problems.

I also think that as we are used to hearing mangled English we can tune in better. There is, for instance, no tradition of dodgy foreign accents in films using Thai.

I am thinking here of Peter Sellers as Inspector Cleuseau or Sean Connery as anyone.

The other day I was asked where I had been that day. I answered, in my best shot accent, that I'd been to Ayuthaya. I got the "alai na" reply and a look of puzzlement.

Two points, firstly my accent is not that bad. Secondly how many places are there in Thailand that sound like a mispronounced Ayuthaya within ones days car journey of Bangkok?

The "smartness" and IQ of the listener comes into play a little, I think, at times like this.

Anyway keep it going guys I've loved reading this thread.

[bibblies]

Phew, I'm glad there are others!

I get this the most from my girlfriend's sister which, together with the GF telling me she wore 'grandmother' style knickers, has completely extinguished any carnal interest I had in her! The rest of the family is OK.

So I'm with the "there are just some people who don't understand you and it isn't your fault" camp. For me, it's usually worse with older people and people from the south. I've even found cases where a fellow Thai couldn't make herself understood!

As a Briton, I occasionally experience the same phemomenom with Americans - especially those from the South. Anyone else get this?

I theorise that it might be something to do with the person listening to your accent, rather than to the substance of what you're saying. I sometimes find myself doing this. If I catch the whiff of a strange or interesting accent at the start of a sentence, I spend the rest of the time wondering where it comes from, and the words become sounds without meaning.

[Lamock Chokaprret]

Bibblies asked:

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As a Briton, I occasionally experience the same phemomenom with Americans - especially those from the South. Anyone else get this?

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I am from south US (FL) and have a friend from Glasgow that can be totally unintelligible at times. Actually I generally have a harder time with Aussies because of the preponderance of slang they use.

From the South in the US, I presume you mean like Georgia, the Carolinas, Alabama, etc. where they have that southern US drawl. In that sense I don't qualify as FL has mostly relocated Yankees (we call 'em Snowbirds).