Peppy

Yes, I think just about everybody in Thailand knows where Bang Khwang prison is. If your taxi driver doesn't, he probably wouldn't be able to find the Grand Palace either. Just show him a piece of paper with เรือนจำบางขวาง on it and he'll get you there.

You only need tones to speak to male Thai strangers and they pretty much don't want to talk to you anyway. I certainly don't want to talk to them.

Huh?

'ow su-am su-ar see-cow', I'm hardly likely to be wanting to wear a rice tiger.

But if that's what you say, that's what your listeners will hear, regardless of how unlikely it is. I mean, if you go up to a hotdog stand and order up a couple of hitdigs or homdots or wombats or whatever, you can hardly blame the hotdog guy for giving you a funny look and perhaps not understanding you at all, even if it's clear from context what you want.

And even if you can sometimes get your message across through context (though hand-waving and figure-pointing would probably be just as effective), how do you talk about things out of context? Like, what if you want to talk about rice or tigers or shirts or knees or bedmats or buffalo horns and there aren't any around for you to point at and say, "This is what I'm talking about"?

Tones are very important. เสือ is as close to เสื้อ as cat is to hat. What if somebody told you their hat had kittens?

I don't know if this works for everybody, but I've always said the word 'lasagne' as "leh-sawn-nguh", and it's the only word I can think of in English where I use the "ng" sound to begin a syllable--try saying the final syllable, "nguh" by itself. That's the sound you're looking for in "งาน/ngaan".

Another method that might work is to say a word like "sing" or "song" as recommended above, but "freeze" your mouth on the last part of the word--stop at the "ng", and don't let your tongue go anywhere. Now try and say a vowel sound, like "aa", starting with your tongue where it was at the end of "sing" or "song". The sound that comes out should sound like "ngaa"--now just add an "n" and you've got "ngaan". Practice until you can get your tongue in the right position without saying a word ending in "ng" first.

I think you can use อย่างกับ for any simile-type comparison (that is, comparisons using 'like' or 'as'), not just ones involving the senses. It usually sounds more like ยังกะ in everyday speech.

With all due humility, would it be too much to suggest that trying to fit Thai thought into English tenses implies that inside the Thai thought is the same sense of linearity of time that is inherent in English.  I'm not sure that Thais conceive time in the same linear way we do.  For example, try putting this line from a 70's song into Thai "And I wonder if you know that I never understood.  Even though you'd said you'd go, until you left, I'd never thought you would".

I don't know much about the way Thais think--in fact I'm not sure I know much about how anyone thinks--but if we're talking about language, I think both Thai and English are equally capable of expressing events or ideas in a linear manner. The only difference is that English grammar demands it, even when it isn't necessary, while Thai omits unnecessary time references and includes them only when the sequence of events (whether in relation to each other, or to a specified or implied point in time) is important to the message being conveyed.

(Consider the sentence "Yesterday I saw a movie." Using the past form of 'see' is completely redundant in this sentence, since it's quite clear when it happened.)

I'll take a stab at "And I wonder if you know that I never understood.  Even though you'd said you'd go, until you left, I'd never thought you would"--"และฉันสงสัยว่าคุณรู้หรือเปล่าว่าฉันไม่เคยเข้าใจเลย แม้ว่าคุณบอกไว้ว่าคุณจะไป จนถึงคุณจากไปจริงๆ ฉันก็ไม่เคยคิดว่าคุณจะทำ" (If anyone can improve on this, please let me know.)

David, thank you for providing the background to that sentence. I'm fairly certain now that the future tense is correct, though Rikker did make a very reasonable argument for it being past. Also, I think your translation of the other sentences is rather good--I especially like the use of "mental attitudes" for "แนวคิด". I would have used something else, like "line of thought" or "viewpoint", which I think are also valid translations of the word, but "mental attitudes" fits the context better and sounds much more idiomatic.

Interesting interpretation, Rikker. I hadn't considered that it might be referring events that had already occurred. It would be interesting to see the whole article to get some context, but Googling the phrase turns up nothing but this page! Have you got a link to the article, David?

The khun that means a Noble, it seems, would be be KhuUN then? and is probably rarely used.

It hasn't been bestowed on anyone since feudal titles for commoners were abolished in 1942, and the last guy with ขุน/khun in front of his name died in 2006, so "rarely used" might be an understatement.

I'm not sure if KhuUN is the best way to transcribe the word, though; the two U's might suggest that the vowel is long, but it's not, the vowel and consonant sounds are the same as Khun that means you--only the tone is different.

I minor suggestion that last part of the phrase is refering to smthn that already happen (Sia Laew)

whole sentence "by the time the government realizes what they have done, thailand is no longer the same"

Yes, เสียแล้ว/sia laeo refers to something that has already happened. In this case it means something that will have already happened at the point in time at which "the government realizes what they have done". Hence "will no longer be the same".

I think the general "rule" here regarding relative clauses like ที่คุณชอบ is that they have to be attached to a noun (or a noun classifier), so หนังสือที่คุณชอบ is ok, as is เล่มที่คุณชอบ, but ผมซื้อหนังสือมาที่คุณชอบ isn't, because ที่คุณชอบ is just kind of floating out there after มา, and it isn't clear what it refers to. Grammatically speaking, I don't think it's correct.

 I think it is "transcription". "Transliteration" attempts to apply letter by letter equivalents, irrespective of the sounds. Transliteration is

"The rendering of the written glyphs of a spoken language into a foreign writing system. This is usually achieved in a manner such that the original script can be reconstructed from the transliteration result."

Seems like an odd idea to me--how would you suggest that English words be written in Thai script in such a way that the English spelling could be reconstructed by someone unfamiliar with the particular English word? As in my earlier example of the transliteration of English into Thai, how would you write "How are you" in Thai so that the O and W in "how" could be reconstructed, the E in "are", and the OU in "you"?

What about homophones?

meat = มีท, and meet = มีท. If a Thai reads the word มีท out of context, how would they know which one it is? Of course, you could add something to differentiate them and show that one uses "ea" for อี and the other uses "ee", but then it wouldn't be the Thai writing system anymore, would it?

Anyway, if copying the sounds of a language into writing is called "transcription", and copying the letters is called "transliteration", then I guess ทับศัพท์ is "transcription". So a transcribed version of the word ทับศัพท์ would look like this:

tap-sap, tab-sab, tup-sup, or tub-sub

While a transliterated version might look like this:

tha!b-sha!phth*  (using "th" to represent ท, "a!" to represent อะ, "b" for บ, "sh" for ศ, "ph" for พ, and the asterisk for การันต์)

I've always called the tap-sap/tab-sab/tup-sup stuff transliteration. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the idea of transliteration as presented above as seems a bit wacky to me, as it's impossible to capture the letters or glyphs of one writing system in another without practically creating a new writing system which is all but unreadable by the native users of the system you're "transliterating" into (take "tha!b-sha!phth*" for example).

Little troubled by your tone there, mate. My post was meant tongue in cheek and not as an opportunity to slam me or my gf. Just for the record, if you would like to have a phone conversation and compare Thai ability sometime, I'd welcome the opportunity. Started speaking Thai in 2508 (if you can figure out when that was --just to adopt your attitude for a moment). Pass for a native over the phone most of the time. How about you?

I think he is a native. I don't think he was trying to knock anyone though, just explaining the reasons why Thais speak English the way they do.

Per the online version of the RID:

"ทับศัพท์ ว. ที่รับเอาคําของภาษาหนึ่งมาใช้ในอีกภาษาหนึ่งโดยวิธีถ่ายเสียง และถอดอักษร เช่น เขียนทับศัพท์ แปลทับศัพท์. "

Apparently, "ทับศัพท์" is the process of transcribing the sounds of one language into the writing system of another language.

In a word, transliteration, no?

I live out in the sticks and i'm often referred to as 'YOU YOU YOU' by people who don't know me. I believe this comes from what people would say in Thai คุณครับ/ค่ะ khun khrap/kha. Although i haven't heard this used often, and have never heard a Thai shouting คุณๆๆ khun khun khun to another Thai to get their attention.

I think you're right--it's a good example of first language interference among people who have very little knowledge of the language they're trying to speak. They're not intending to be rude, they just don't know any better. Just something that us white (and black)-skinned folk living in Thailand have to put up with, but I do make a point of telling any Thai who's interested in learning English that "Excuse me, sir" and "Excuse me, ma'am" are much better equivalents to "คุณครับ/ค่ะ". Christopher Wright of Chris Delivery fame also touches on this in his books, stand-up routine, and TV show: he tells people that saying "YOU YOU YOU" is the same as saying "เอ้ย มึง" in Thai. To me เอ้ย มึง/oei meung is far more rude than "YOU YOU YOU", especially with strangers, but he does get the point across that most foreigners don't take kindly to being called to attention in such fashion.

Like meadish said, คุณ/khun is formal and the best choice if you're not sure which pronoun to use.

The family words พี่/pii (elder sibling), น้อง/nong (younger sibling), น้า/nah (younger aunt or uncle), ป้า/bpah (auntie, older aunt), ลุง/lung (older uncle), ยาย/yaai (grandma), and ตา/dtah (gramps) are best used with people who live and work in informal settings, or with people you feel close to. Choose the word that best reflects their age relative to yours.

As bhoydy notes, คุณครู/khun khruu or simply ครู/khruu is often used for schoolteachers, though they may sometimes be called อาจารย์/ah-jahn. Professors are almost always called อาจารย์/ah-jahn, but people who are also professors might call them คุณ/khun informally. อาจารย์/ah-jahn is also used for respected monks, spirit mediums, exorcists and the like.

Doctors are usually called คุณหมอ or simply หมอ.

Like in bhoydy's post above, you can call your spouse's parents คุณพ่อ/khun paw and คุณแม่/khun mae. This is also used by teachers when talking to the parents of their students.

The literal definition of ทับศัพท์/tapsap is "transliteration" (like writing "เฮา อาร์ ยู" so people who don't read English can say "How are you"), but as farangnahrak says it's most often used in reference to words used in Thai which were borrowed from English. Perhaps this is to encourage the idea that using borrowed words is somehow "wrong", since they're "not real Thai words, they're transliterations of English words". I've never heard ทับศัพท์ used in reference to the myriad of Thai words borrowed from Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Khmer, and despite their best efforts, I don't think the guardians of the Thai language are having much success in their efforts to stop the flow of English words into Thai. There are even some who go so far as to suggest that Thais should say "คณิตกรณ์/kanit-gorn" instead of "คอมพิวเตอร์/computer", or "การละเล่น/gahn la-len" instead of "เกม/game", but have you ever heard anyone use these words?

Peppy - even your comment on my "occational spelling mistakes (there aren't any)" and my "grammatical mistakes" (yes - I write the way I speak) are "condenscension" - which you are obviously too insensitive to understand.

While I can understand how you could feel my compliments are a form of condescension, please rest assured that they are not. I'm well aware that mastering a foreign language to the extent that one could be mistaken for a native speaker takes an enormous amount of time and effort, and I have great respect for anyone who can do that, regardless of my feelings about their opinions.

As for the issue of whether or not you make the occasional spelling mistake in your posts, I'll let the above quote speak for itself.

sbk above is correct--คุณ/khun is used as a second-person pronoun to address both men and women. It can also be used as a title in front of both male and female names and nicknames, when talking to or about a person.

The aristocratic title you refer to is in fact ขุน, which is necessarily transliterated as "khun", but is pronounced with a rising tone (sounds like "khun?"). The "khun" (คุณ) which means "you" has a middle tone.

Parvis

My comments regarding your English skills were sincere and genuine, and I'm sorry if you interpreted them to be anything else. Your style of writing is fluid, with plenty of idiomatic expressions and precise vocabulary, and I probably wouldn't have guessed that you were anything but a well-educated native speaker had you not informed me otherwise. (You do make the occasional error in your spelling and grammar, but as you yourself noted, many native speakers are far worse.)

As I said, I don't think we'll be able to resolve this dispute immediately. I'm sure we can both find evidence supporting our viewpoints somewhere online, but then we'll just be back to square one. My suggestion that age affects learning ability was only put out for the sake of argument that there are other factors that affect language learning besides the points of 'study' and 'immersion' discussed earlier in the thread, but my personal experience as a language learner and my observations of other speakers of foreign languages do support this theory.

I'm not a "professional" teacher, but I do give private English lessons. I don't want to blow my own horn too much here, but I've been very pleased with the level of English some of my students have reached after only 8-12 months study (with lessons comprising grammar and structure, phonics, pronunciation drills, free and guided conversation, reading and writing practice, and so on)--and these are upper-primary and high-school level students who couldn't count to 20 or consistently understand the difference between "How are you?" and "How old are you?" when they started. I've also taught older learners--the oldest being 65--and while those that had some English ability prior to studying with me got plenty of practice and reinforcement of what they already knew, I didn't feel that they learned a great deal of new material in terms of either structure or vocabulary. Perhaps this reflects on my abilities as a tutor, but as I said, I have had rather satisfactory results teaching younger learners.

All of this may reflect the issue of a "learning habit" more than age, but I think the "learning habit" tends to decrease with age, since the older you get the better you are at navigating the world around you, and learning new skills becomes less necessary than it was when you were younger. This is not true for all older people, since many may continue to foster the "habit" of learning new things throughout their life (and conversely, a fair number of young people seem to try as hard as they can to forget this habit as soon as they reach puberty). I would imagine that people who are habituated to learning (and perhaps you are one of these people) are probably the best language learners regardless of age; but I still say the majority of people who have this habit intact are probably under thirty.

I've never heard it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It might just be a flash in the pan though, since a lot of borrowed English phrases in Thai come and go like Priya Suandokmai's boyfriends.

It is a perfect example of people who mix their Thai with English just to show that they can speak a bit of English.

We do use the word "safe" quite often and most people understand the word. We usually tabsab content words like nouns and verbs but not functional word like "for"

What about "อินเทร็นด์/in-tren"--in trend? And incidently, where did this word come from? It sounds quite unorthodox to me--"in fashion", or "trendy" would be better, I'd think--but then, so does "for safe". Or is there actually a dialect of English that I'm unaware of where saying something like "Tight jeans are very in trend this season", or "He's so in trend" is considered acceptable?

(Just did a Google search for "in trend"; it seems it only exists as part of the phrase "back in trend", as in "Tight jeans are back in trend this season." Perhaps "for safe" was butchered out of the phrase "for safekeeping" in a similar manner.)

^^^ What are you guys on about? I thought this thread was about Thai slang in the sixties...

Just kidding. Sorry to have hijacked your thread with all that, mikenyork.

Since Meadish and NBD were so kind as to bring us back on topic, here's one that really bugs me:

วัน ทู ธรี โฟร์ ไฟว์ ซิคส์ เซเว่น เอท ไนน์ เท็น

Wun, tuu, ate, and ten are ok, but tree, foe*, fie*, sick, say-WHEN, nigh? (*Where are fee and fum?)

The vocalizations resulting from attempts to transcribe English to Thai script are as bad as when it's done the other way around. Phonics is something that needs to be taught early in schools, preferably by a native speaker. It's not so useful for vowels, which are dreadfully inconsistent in English (especially in common words: come/home, comb/bomb, eat/great/bread, mint/pint etc. etc.), but it's absolutely necessary for consonants, which usually make the same sound all the time (with just a few exceptions like G, C, and Y, though even these follow general rules). For any Thai who wishes to be halfway understandable when speaking English, it's imperative to learn and practice the sounds of the English consonants and combinations thereof, especially in the final position.

It always gets me to hear the ignorance of individuals who claim that age has anything to do with ability to learn a language (or anything else for that matter) and then provide "many people who immigrate to a foreign country as an adult are good examples of this" and "the level of fluency they achieve is directly related to the age they started learning it" as proof.

It is probably correct that older individuals - especially in Thailand - feel no need to speak the language and very often do not have the desire to learn. As an older individual you tend to associate "with your own kind" rather than go out to meet "native people." This applies to "immigrants" in other countries as it does to older individuals living in Thailand.

My own personal life alone refutes this contention that age in itself is a detriment to learning.

I was born in a country that "changed hands" after World War 2 and learned both languages. As a young adult I went to Australia - and English is now my "primary language". I would certainly refute any suggestions by a native speaker that my English is not at least as good as his (although I still retain an accent) and probably is generally much better.

I am in my mid 60th now and have been in Thailand for about 4 years. I made no significant attempt to learn Thai for the first 3 years. I just had no need for it - little desire - and Thai is a tough language.

In October 09 I started to learn Thai in earnest for the following 8 month. Now - I can read Thai - I am told my pronounciation is fairly good. I can hold a simple conversation. I even understand Thai News to "some extend" - but no - I do not consider myself to be fluent YET.

What prevents an older individual from learning Thai is often his own lack of desire - and being told - by individuals (including a certain Thai Language School owner) - YOU ARE TOO OLD TO LEARN. There is no scientific evidence that this is true - but many ignorant individuals continue to perpetuate this myth.

Thank you for your comments on my post--I certainly didn't mean to imply that all older people have difficulty learning languages, but in my experience it seems that a great many do, and noticeably more so than their younger counterparts. Whether or not this is true is a debate that I don't think we're going to be able to resolve immediately, but here's some interesting information I found after doing a search on the subject:

Another site has the following, under the heading "The Older Language Learner":

While the conclusions listed above would seem to support the idea that "there is no decline in the ability to learn as people get older" the body of the article itself does note that older people in general are slower learners, have poorer short-term memories, and are more inflexible when it comes to learning styles. They advise teachers to take these things into account when preparing lessons for their more elderly pupils.

I must say I'm interested in your statement that your personal life supports the idea that older people can still learn. You mention that you grew up bilingual, and began learning English in Australia as a young adult (I presume "young adult" means under 30). I don't mean to get too personal, but how many languages have you become fluent in since then? (After all, you did bring up your personal life as an example. And I should add that your English is excellent and is to be complimented on regardless of the age you learned it at.)

To summarize, I agree with you that it depends on the individual, but I stand by my original statement that age is a factor. I'm quite certain that if you took one hundred 70-year-olds and one hundred 20-year-olds, and forced them all to study and practice a foreign language day in and day out for five years, the average ability of the younger group would far exceed that of the older group, though there would of course be individual exceptions. I'm talking averages here, not individuals.

I think your first sentence works best.

And just for the sake of argument, I'd say: "By the time the government realizes what they have done, Thailand will no longer be the same."

....So when learning a second language, you must surround yourself with that second language, with emphasis on a lot of listening and speaking. (Because children do not pick up their first language from books.) Once you are immersed the second language, you will pick up that language as if through osmosis."

I agree completely with the first sentence above. While learning grammar and vocabulary is absolutely necessary, as the author of the article argues, you won't learn to speak like a native just by studying those things. You will learn 'about' the language, but you won't 'learn' the language.

As the author points out, the second sentence is fundamentally flawed in that learning just doesn't work that way for adults. However, I still believe that immersion is very important to language learning, but you must be observant, attentive, and actively seek to understand what you read and hear--again, as the author says, sitting back and expecting to pick it up the way babies do won't get you very far.

Learning a language is ultimately a combination of the two approaches (study and immersion). Those who only study a language may understand it somewhat but not speak it well, if at all (many linguistics professors are good examples of this), and those who immerse themselves in language without studying grammar may find themselves fairly fluent but stuck with terrible pronunciation, bad grammar, and poor vocabularies (many people who immigrate to a foreign country as an adult are good examples of this).

And of course, age is a factor: For most people who speak a foreign language, the level of fluency they achieve is directly related to the age they started learning it. Almost every foreigner in Thailand that I know of who speaks Thai well started learning well before they turned 30. (Actually, that applies to all the Thais I know who speak English well, too.)

I'm no rocket scientist, but according to Wikipedia,

I'm pretty certain that what you thought was บั้งไฟหมุน (spinning rocket, but I don't think such a thing exists, as it would be quite dangerous) was actually บั้งไฟหมื่น. It's also possible that what you heard as บั้งไฟหอย was actually บั้งไฟน้อย (Little rocket). The rest of what you heard (rocket competition, entertainment for the locals, from small to large) seems pretty accurate.

Looks like there's no harm done. Her friends think it's funny, and one even admitted that hers stink too.

However, the "It wasn't me, it was my retarded boyfriend" bit in English suggests that she might be on to you.