Is Your Thai Better When You Speak To Certain People?

[samran]

Just an observation I had (again) today.

I had lunch with my cousin. We can chat for ages, on most topics in rapid pace Thai. Regardless of what we talk about, I find that I am always speaking a much higher - near native (I reckon) - level of Thai when I'm chatting to her.

With others, my Thai degrates to something which is pretty good, but just isn't the same.

Do others have this expereince?

[roietjimmy]

Just an observation I had (again) today.

I had lunch with my cousin. We can chat for ages, on most topics in rapid pace Thai. Regardless of what we talk about, I find that I am always speaking a much higher - near native (I reckon) - level of Thai when I'm chatting to her.

With others, my Thai degrates to something which is pretty good, but just isn't the same.

Do others have this expereince?

You bet. I find that people I am well aquianted with understand me better than people whom I don't know. My guess is the ones I know well have learned to understand my accented Thai and others have not. Also, being a foreigner, I suspect the average Thai expects me to be speaking English so their reciever is set for English and when I speak Thai, I get this totally blank stare. Let us not dispair however, as Thais from different regions can't understand each other either!

[soundman]

I don't know about my Thai being any better than the badly accented, grade 2 level that it currently is when speaking to different groups of people, however, I have found that people I associate with on a daily basis have adapted their listening to the way I speak & communication is fairly straight forward.

Speaking with older Thai's that have had little contact with farang before tends to pose the greatest communication difficulties.

Listening to the news readers & presenters on television, I tend to find those people speak the clearest, and subsequently are the easiest to understand.

Cheers,

Soundman.

[khaojao]

i do!

when i speak to thais who cannot speak english at all, the thai words just roll off my tongue and i understand them perfectly too. (street thai not formal thai mind u)

but when i have to speak to seniors and thais who can speak english, it becomes spasmodic.

[TheChiefJustice]

Absolutely, Samran. This happens to me a great deal and I often wish that I could control it better. With my Thai teacher, I speak at a very fluent level. With people I do not know who do not speak English, I also speak well, but not as well as I speak with my teacher. With people I do not know who speak English very well and with poo yai, things start to go down hill somewhat. With my wife, I speak like someone who has been learning Thai for only a short while. When we met I could not speak a word, so our relationship has always based on English, and the switch to Thai has been rather difficult. I remember once a Thai client called me while we were in the car and I had a conversation with him about work related matters. My wife was completely shocked at my level of Thai - again showing the the level I speak with her was far lower than that used with my client.

This is all psychological, of course. One often builds barriers to fluency with fear and apprehension. Breaking down these barriers will hopefully allow one to speak Thai at the same level with all people. Easier said than done. Perhaps hypnosis might help!