Mispronounced Tones

[toasted]

This is something which has bugged me for a long time. Why, when I mispronounce a tone, is it so hard for a native speaker to guess/figure out what I'm saying? Taking context out of the equation, for example, if I say to a taxi driver "Pai _______", yet get the tone wrong, he has absolutely no idea where I want to go. In English, if a word is mispronounced, we can generally have a good shot at what it means, but this doesn't seem to be the case in Thai. I speak Thai quite well but have never been able to get my head round this. Can anyone help?

[withnail]

I guess one thing is because to western learners of Thai the tones are something added to a word whereas to native speakers they are deeply ingrained in their minds. I think reading Thai helps to outline this.

For example the words dog and horse to a learner of Thai are both maa but with rising and high tones added respectively. In Thai script however they are หมา and ม้า. Not the same at all, are they?

I think farangs speaking Thai also forget that sometimes they are not just pronouncing something wrong they are saying something else entirely. I once heard a foreigner saying to a Thai lady who had just asked the question "What did you think about today?", ไม่ชอบ ฟันตก. I realised that what he meant to say was it was raining and not that his tooth fell out, but that's pretty much what he said and perhaps I was listening in English as well as Thai (if that makes sense).

Another factor is that I often know what a foreigner is trying to say because it's what I might say (in English) in the same situation.

Also some people don't realise just how bad their pronunciation is, sometimes they are saying the wrong tone the wrong vowel or consonant sound and the wrong vowel length. In the example above the guy got the tone and a vowel wrong.

I do agree though that there are times when I don't understand why they can't work things out from the context. My favourite example of this is when I asked for two litres of petrol once and the boy at the pump asked my gf what I had said. He had understood my first word สอง but not the second. Seeing as the only units he has to deal with all day are Baht and litres I'd have thought it was fairly obvious.

My only guess with this one is that a. some of these people are quite thick. and b. that some Thais work themselves up into a state of confusion just because we're white and they are expecting us to force them to speak English. I did once hear of a half Thai guy who looked so western that when he spoke Thai to people they frequently didn't understand him even though he had grown up here.

[toasted]

Thanks for sparing the time to post that well considered answer, Withnail. I imagine that any foreigner here who can speak half decent Thai has had an experience along the lines of your petrol station attendant scenario. I think your suggested answers to that are spot on, although it's probably a bit of both rather than one or the other in such situations where the listener hasn't had the benefit of a good education and maybe not much exposure to foreigners.

I must admit that I'm not expecting an easy answer (if any) to my query, but your idea that the tones are so ingrained certainly makes sense. I guess I'm looking for an insight into the thought process involved. I have an irrational(?) feeling that I can't consider myself anywhere near fluent in Thai until I grasp what's going on here.

[withnail]

Sometimes it's the thought process that gets in the way of us learning a language.

[Johpa]

This is something which has bugged me for a long time. Why, when I mispronounce a tone, is it so hard for a native speaker to guess/figure out what I'm saying? Taking context out of the equation, for example, if I say to a taxi driver "Pai _______", yet get the tone wrong, he has absolutely no idea where I want to go. In English, if a word is mispronounced, we can generally have a good shot at what it means, but this doesn't seem to be the case in Thai. I speak Thai quite well but have never been able to get my head round this. Can anyone help?

Tones are indeed, as another poster put it, "ingrained" as they are part of the phonological inventory no less than vowels and consonants. Using a wrong tone is little different to a Thai ear (actually more the brain) than an Indo-European speaker using the wrong consonant. The tone carries information that relates to meaning (phonemic) and a change of tone can change the meaning of the word just as a change of consonant can change the meaning in Indo-European languages. It is little wonder that most Thais get confused when you use the wrong tone. And when you combine the wrong tone with wrong consonants (especially the unaspirated stops and the lack of a final glottal stop) and a very heavy accent, well don't be surprized that Thais can't read between the lines. So you can have a large Thai vocabulary and be able to construct many proper sentence forms in Thai, but if you don't have minimal control of your tones and consonants then you may not yet speak Thai well yet.

[mangkorn]

Also some people don't realise just how bad their pronunciation is, sometimes they are saying the wrong tone the wrong vowel or consonant sound and the wrong vowel length.

I'd say you hit the nail on the head there, mate.

[puuchai299]

A western lady friend of mine,who speaks very well in thai,she went to a salon wanting 2 braids/platts put in her hair,she told the thai lady she wanted sawng bier and at the same time gestured with her hand indicating where on her head to make them,the thai lady replied mai mee heineken ka,mai kai beer.My friend got really frustrated and called her teacher to ask if she understood what she was asking,her teacher said yes you spoke it correctly,my friend got to thinking the same as the OP,why when it's so near and obvious given the fact that it was a salon and not a bar the thai couldnt suss it.Anyway i told my friend not to worry,come sit down and have a heineken.....

[withnail]

The problem with mispronunciation is often compounded when someone who knows what the speaker is trying to say doesn't correct them. Teachers and spouses often fall into this category so as with puuchai299's example it could be that the woman was 'correctly' asking for two beers but incorrectly asking for braided hair. I'm not certain how that particular phrase should be spoken but I'm guessing it may be wrong on more than one level.

This also goes for guys whose 'girlfriends' and all of her 'colleagues' understand him when he speaks Thai in her bar. Normally in sentences of no more than two words, spoken with a heavy Yorkshire accent and usually involving the topic of beer and sex. Of course they understand that's all they do all day long. This doesn't mean a taxi driver or shop assistant will also understand.

I'm being sarcastic of course but it's true that our partners become used to our way of speaking Thai and of course couples often create their own language of sorts.

[meadish_sweetball]

All very true. I try hard to make my wife correct my mistakes, but she has got used to my way of speaking by now. Not a good way to progress.

[Rikker]

Run into Meadish's same problem myself. My wife is used to how I speak, so unless I'm using the wrong noun, she rarely corrects me. One of the few people who is utterly merciless with my Thai anymore is my 12-year-old niece. She laughs straight in my face when I flub a word, and I must say, it's a nice reality check.

As for the beer/braid situation, that's a บ/ป mixup between เบียร์ and เปีย. Not only that, though, this demonstrates the importance of classifiers, since I think if you wanted two braids you still wouldn't typically say สองเปีย, but rather เปียสองข้าง, and for even more clarity you'd probably want to be even more specific and say ถักเปียสองข้าง, since ถัก is the verb 'braid.'

In all matters of comprehension, it comes back to how much the listener is used to the speaker's accent. For example, Americans frequently have trouble even with Australian accents, because in general we're not as familiar with them as some of the more common British accents. So when we wonder why Thais don't understand "farang Thai" very well, remember that we're bringing literally hundreds of different native accents into the equation. Andrew Biggs, for example, still has an obvious Australian accent when he speaks Thai, even though his Thai is good. As fellow second-language learners, we're much better at deciphering poor Thai than the natives are, because we know the likely mistakes, and have usually made them ourselves. But Thais don't have that experience, which makes it more easy to understand why all the blank looks from the natives.

The moral of this story is: keep at it. Don't let a few communication setbacks get you down!

[toasted]

I agree with pretty much everything that's been said so far - a mix of incorrect tone, badly pronounced vowel or consonant and accent would make understanding extremely difficult. But in isolation, do you think that only a mistake in tone makes a word incomprehensible? To the degree that egg and car are different in English.

[meadish_sweetball]

Depends on the context, but it is certainly possible. I usually find that when it is just one tone I mispronounce, people understand me, but will correct me giving the right pronunciation.

Obviously, the listener's previous exposure to foreigners speaking Thai, imagination, and general deductive abilities will play a large part.

[wolfmanjack]

I think it is fair to point out that most thais do not speak thai correctly. there was an article in the Bangkok post about that topic. Also thai has many words that use the rolling rrrrr similar to spanish but many thais can not do this correctly. My wife uses the rolling rrrrr when she speaks but she is the only one i hear it from. I asked her about it and she said very few people she knows can do it.

[meadish_sweetball]

I find most people can pronounce ร correctly, but only if they concentrate, and then they often end up with the phenomenon of hypercorrection (replacing all /l/ sounds in their speech with /r/) which is also incorrect.

While it is true that many people's spoken Thai is not 100% according to the pronunciation rules of Central Thai, Thais, unlike most farang are still operating within the boundaries of what is comprehensible to other Thais - and this is where you need to be to make yourself understood easily.

What I am saying is that the fact ร sounds like ล in many people's spoken Thai does not much impair communication between Thais, because it is an expected and common enough pronunciation (in fact the two sounds are allophones in many people's spoken Thai, even though language purists want to preserve the difference).

Further, different standards apply for different varieties of Thai - the Isaan and Northern Thai dialects have no /r/. Many Bangkok Thais of Chinese descent also have a non-trilled /r/ as in Chinese/American English.

[CSS]

I agree with pretty much everything that's been said so far - a mix of incorrect tone, badly pronounced vowel or consonant and accent would make understanding extremely difficult. But in isolation, do you think that only a mistake in tone makes a word incomprehensible? To the degree that egg and car are different in English.

I think just a missed tone is enough to make a word incomprehensible, particularly if there is not a enough context or the listener isn't used to the accent of the speaker. Maybe it's not to the degree of egg and car but rather of "May I fill your cup?" and "May I kill your pup?" As pointed out earlier the tone is equally as important and carries an equal amount of meaning as a vowel or consonant to a Thai ear. So, in the two example sentences I only changed one meaning-carrying-sound from two words but it completely changed the sentence to the degree that the listener would be quite confused.

[Rikker]

The "Thais don't speak Thai correctly" rally cry is incessant, and there's an article about it in one newspaper or another several times a year, it seems. It's hard for me to get on board with that, because it's just a matter of perspective. There is something called "Standard Thai," but it's a fantastic creature rarely--if ever--sighted in the wild.

Like any language, the Thai of instruction and the Thai of actual use are different things. Books like "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" demonstrate that the prescriptivist tradition is alive and well in English, too, and while I still expect people to differentiate there, their and they're, I think it's futile to try to insist, say, that "hopefully" is used incorrectly, or to try to stop the idiom "that begs the question" from being used in the now common sense of "that leads us to ask the following question."

In Thailand it's interesting, because there is still a strong connection in people's minds between poor language skills and the utter destruction of Thai society. For many educated Thais, if you can't use the language correctly, you're betraying the national heritage. Of course, don't mention that Standard Thai is less "pure" than many other dialects, because of the huge proportion of Indic and Khmer loans (and, more recently, English). Lao is purer to its Tai roots than Thai, but we don't really need to there, because this idea of purity is a nationalistic notion not based in science, anyhow. For people whose native language isn't central/Bangkok Thai, isn't it betraying their roots more to conform, instead of speaking their true native tongue? Especially with non-Tai minority languages. For most intents and purposes, Standard Thai means Bangkok Thai, when in reality most Bangkok natives of several generations are from mixed Chinese-Thai stock.

The Thai language is changing, like every language is changing. In English, does it matter that most folks would say "he pawned it off on me" instead of the etymologically correct form "he palmed it off on me"? Not really.

If no Thais use the trilled-R except newscasters and radio announcers (who have to pass a government-issued pronunciation test to earn certification), then is everyone else incorrect? How do you reconcile the fact that it's a losing battle? Even the people who use Standard Thai in their work don't use the trilled-R at home.

It's comparable to complaining that almost no one distinguishes between the once-different "w" and the "wh" sounds in English anymore. Just because they were historically pronounced a certain way doesn't mean they always will (or have to) be.

Oops, that was a rant... but a fun one.

[toasted]

OK. So it's 1-1 in the vote. I know it's tough to simplify to this degree, but my original 'Why' question has become an 'Is it the case that......' question. I'm hoping for more opinions - Without any context to help, and in isolation from other errors, is it the case that an error in pronunciation of tone can cause complete misunderstanding from a native Thai speaker?

[jdinasia]

I agree with pretty much everything that's been said so far - a mix of incorrect tone, badly pronounced vowel or consonant and accent would make understanding extremely difficult. But in isolation, do you think that only a mistake in tone makes a word incomprehensible? To the degree that egg and car are different in English.

Yes ... were you referring to your dog your horse or did it come?(maa)? or some wood? or was it new or a question?(mai)

Much of Thai is monosyllabic and can have more than 5 words for the same syllable .. so yeah egg and car are a good concept here.

[Johpa]

OK. So it's 1-1 in the vote. I know it's tough to simplify to this degree, but my original 'Why' question has become an 'Is it the case that......' question. I'm hoping for more opinions - Without any context to help, and in isolation from other errors, is it the case that an error in pronunciation of tone can cause complete misunderstanding from a native Thai speaker?

But of course Mr. Luke, a mistaken tone can lead to a failure to communicate. The tone in Thai carries that same amount of information that a consonant carries in English.

Imagine that a non-native English speaker with a heavy accent and limited proficiency comes up to you and says: "Excuse me, you help me, I lost my jat."

[Johpa]

The "Thais don't speak Thai correctly" rally cry is incessant, and there's an article about it in one newspaper or another several times a year, it seems. It's hard for me to get on board with that, because it's just a matter of perspective. There is something called "Standard Thai," but it's a fantastic creature rarely--if ever--sighted in the wild.

Yes, it is difficult for many people to grasp that the dialect of English that became the "Queen's English" is merely a historical accident and has absolutely nothing to do with it being a better, more correct, more precise, or a more polished dialect. From a linguistic point of view, all dialects are absolutely equal. It is only from a sociological perspective that some dialects have more perceived prestige than others.

It is little wonder that the old polemics about incorrect language usage have seen a resurgence recently given the current post-Thaksin politics with some sides (Sonthi Limthongkul) attempting to belittle Thaksin's rural supporters.

[toasted]

Ok. Let's take the example of the word 'jat'. In the context of Johpa's sentence, we can conclude that it's a mispronunciation of either hat or cat. At least they are of a higher probability than words such as jet and jar. Without the context, I agree that it would be misunderstood, and that this would be the case with a mispronunciation of tone in Thai. However, on hearing 'jat' without context, most native English speakers would recognise it's not a word (most people wouldn't recognise it as the currency of Burma, before anybody goes there!), and would reply along the lines of "Do you mean hat, cat, jet, jar.....?". But getting back to the thrust of my initial post, such a mistake with a tone in Thai seems to only elicit a look of bewilderment. Any thoughts?

[Johpa]

..... But getting back to the thrust of my initial post, such a mistake with a tone in Thai seems to only elicit a look of bewilderment. Any thoughts?

Further thoughts move along the line that it is an asymetric relationship: you are desperately hoping that some Thai person wants to understand you as much as you want them to understand what you are saying while the reality is that the Thai person, on the contrary, could care less whether they understand a word you have to say.

[johnnynmonic]

One other option to the bewildered looks that I'm surprised no one has posted: They just dont want to bother with trying to decipher what you said. Easiest to get you out of their hair is to just give a dumb look.

You know you've tried it with the traffic cops...http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/whistling.gif

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/style_emotic...t/whistling.gif

edit: Johhpa said as much in the post before mine...http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/jap.gif

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/style_emotic...default/jap.gif

[bangsue]

yes, it's quite funny that i can understand farangs speaking thai, but my gf cant understand them speaking her own language. i always think of the older guy in the chinese restaurant at home speaking english in his heavy chinese accent.

sometimes it's to do with context also, a kiwi saying 'ten' to me sounds like 'tin'. some clarification is needed afterwards or maybe the scenario will give it away.

my gf says she is often misunderstood when speaking with her own kin, but it only takes a second to clarify what she meant. 99% of farangs are not skilled enough in thai to be able to do this.

a massage lady said to me in english last week - "Do you have a problem on your body?". it took 3 repeats before i got what she meant. she more or less pronounced it all correctly, but the grammar and rhythym of the sentence seemed odd to me. as a native english speaker and i just couldn't get it. same in reverse i guess. a native english speaker could have just explained immediately.

[Kaojai]

In English, if a word is mispronounced, we can generally have a good shot at what it means, but this doesn't seem to be the case in Thai.

It's not necessarily a case of mispronunciation (considering English speakers), but accent and a pronunciation different to one we are used to.

I've lived in Southern Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan and Thailand and grew up in the US. In each place, until I adjusted my hearing to local accents, there would be times when I would find it difficult to understanding everything locals said even if they spoke English quite well.

The most difficult situation for me arose in the UAE in a work place where a number of young Irish people started working. There were times when I had to ask them to repeat something two or three times and even then I was at a loss.

After being out of the US for nearly 40 years, sometimes when I hear someone speaking with a regional accent, especially from the south, I find it difficult understanding them.

[Jersey_UK]

I don't speak Thai, never really got much further than a few rude words amongst the usual suspects........despite a number of attempts. (half hearted).

The Missus went to a "Good" Thai school in Bangkok and speaks "Good" Thai (not in any way HISO, but she is not semi illiterate verbally in the style of a typical English Big Brother Contestant)........when we recently went up to Chiang-Mai she did have a few cases where the locals did not understand her, the answer was FOR HER to rephrase / clarify what she wanted rather than get overly hung up on the non understanding, and to accept responsibility for the need to do so as SHE was "abroad"........in Bangkok it would have been her who was "right"..........she did not regard her Thai as "better", just accepted that not everywhere was the same and worked around it. Part of the problem may well have been that folk who did not know her would have been surprised at the apparent mismatch between her appearance and her spoken Thai and were perhaps taken aback adding to their confusion........having a hairy ar#ed farang as part of the equation can also unsettle Thais not used to our cute Farang ways

AlthougH I don't think that learning Thai and learning English presents the same problems, I think their are similarities in the difficulties..........

The wife speaks English, more than good enough to communicate and discuss stuff - even if sometimes we do get the dictionary out!.......to a degree we have our own version of English as I do not correct her as in Bangkok her version of English is understood, certainly be me. We just tend to add to her vocab and phrases. Her Accent is easily understood. I would expect that if I had gone down the learning Thai route with her that my Thai would be on a par with her English, good enough for the Missus and Thai folk who know me, but not always (much?!!) for dealing with Native Thais I had never seen before.

Her spoken English would clearly identify her as a non-native speaker and would also confuse a lot of people in farangland - either because they were not willing to put some effort into understanding or simply because they were not bright enough......but IME she has more than enough of a basis to quickly improve her spoken English (and understanding) to fluent within 6 months to a year of being in Farangland.........but I suspect that she will never be as good as a native English speaker in dealing with Scots and Aussies etc.......let alone Northerners!..........simply because when it comes to language some things are both ingrained from when young and from exposure over many years.

Plus she will probably always assume it is her deficiency in understanding that is the problem, rather than it is in fact the other persons deficiency in speaking proper English - I would say that who is "right" depends on where a conversation is held (as in Thailand) - if up North somewhere (Watford?? ) and the conversation included something like "Ayy ooop, Ecky thump Whippet gone down pit" then the speaker would be right to expect her to understand, but if the same conversation was held down in civilisation then she would be correct to regard the speaker as some sort of retard. But as a non-native speaker she may struggle to acquire the confidence that she is "right".

The same I figure is applicable to Farang learning Thai, for many (most?).........and I guess you need to have a well used strategy to move the conversation smoothly on from one problem word or phrase in a way that is painless for all concerned.......even if it is you who are "right" (FWIW as a non-Thai speaker I find speaking English loudly and using my hands to describe / point at things usually does the trick.........by embarrassing the Missus who then just speaks Thai )

[Richard W]

if up North somewhere (Watford?? )

Watford Gap is a long drive north of Watford.

[PeaceBlondie]

As an English teacher who can't learn Thai, I've noticed that if someone mispronounces two or more words/sounds in one English sentence, communication breaks down. "Half ewe scene 'is dotter?" may mean, "Have you seen his daughter?" or ten other things. So, when a white-skinned farang asks a native Thai at the petrol pump to fill 'er up, even a decent attempt such as "dem tang" may not communicate, or may mean "Did you know there's a bugger sticking out of your nose?" I tell them to fill it up because even though I know my numbers in Thai, I probably don't say them correctly. I've switched to 95 octane because I kept calling 91 "gow nung."

[Roel]

After six years of struggling of Thai language I now understand what a friend of mine said years ago:

In Europe we tend to say "My wife does not understand me" but here it is "Only my wife understands me". I am getting the picture bit by bit now!

[podge]

"Ayy ooop, Ecky thump Whippet gone down pit" then the speaker would be right to expect her to understand, but if the same conversation was held down in civilisation then she would be correct to regard the speaker as some sort of retard.

haway jersey_uk ney need fa that lad thats not a very "civilised" thing to say, is it?

being from the lovely north of england, i find my accent is a great help to speaking thai. we pronounce vowels in a similar way as in thai and don't add r's where they shouldn't be, hearing people (soft southerners ) saying "bart" for บาท makes my skin crawl.

regarding tone mispronounciation, i agree a lot depends on the person you are talking to. i think some people don't like farangs speaking thai, if they don't speak any english they feel they lose face & so will not try to help you. others are impressed by your attempts & will correct tones & help as much as they can.

but then when i start talking about whippets no-one can understand me