Why Can't Thai People Understand Me?

[simon43]

I'm feeling pretty despondent!! I've been learning to read/write/speak Thai for a few months now, although I've been living here for about 2 years. I'm pretty good at reading Thai aloud, although I may not understand all the words! But I understand the tonal system/class etc etc.

My Thai teacher and my Thai GF can understand me fine when I speak Thai

Today I was at my office and had to tell the security guy that I was going to bring my car later that day. So I first told him that I had an office in the building.

The guy could not understand one word of what I said! He called over the other 2 guards and I tried again. No joy!! I then explained that I was going to drive my car here this afternoon and was it ok if I parked it?

Well, I could have been speaking Martian because these guys could not understand a single word!!! I tried again, and was very careful to get the correct tone etc etc, but all to no avail.

Where am I going wrong? This was very frustrating, especially since I have no probs speaking with my teacher and GF. Maybe they were just pig-ignorant or perhaps from Cambodia?? (Or maybe they just like winding up Farangs!!)

[sbk]

Possibly Cambodians, but I have encountered this myself. I have lived here for 15 years and have to say, my tones are pretty good. Most people understand me. However, one time I went with my husband to the local snooker hall (no, he doesn't gamble, just likes to play ) and ordered a soda. Not a hard one for any Thai person to understand, you'd think. So-da, right? The girl looked at me like I was speaking some other language and had to look to my husband who then said, "So-da" exactly the same way I had! I think it's because they don't expect a farang to be speaking Thai so they just assume it isn't Thai and can't understand.

[simon43]

Yes, I guess it must be that. But isn't it the most annoying thing when you say a Thai word or phrase perfectly - you are not understood - and then your Thai partner says EXACTLY the same thing and they all understand!!

[Boon Mee]

Yes, I guess it must be that. But isn't it the most annoying thing when you say a Thai word or phrase perfectly - you are not understood - and then your Thai partner says EXACTLY the same thing and they all understand!!

Yeah, but don't forget, Simon that you thought you said the word or phrase exactly as a Thai said it. Your ears told you you did but perhaps your tone wasen't quite the same. Happens to me all the time. Keep practicing...that's what I'm doing!

[yim noi]

I have had the same kind of experience with so called "less educated" Thais. Either they are not very good in Central Thai dilect themselves or they just don't expect a foreigner to be able to speak Thai. It is like their ear flaps are closed and they refuse to listen. Say the same phrase to an "educated" Thai or someone who knows that you already speak Thai and they seem to have no problem.

[withnail]

I had a classic example of this once in a petrol station on koh samui, a young kid you was working on the pump asked how much petrol I wanted to which I replied two litres "song lit" he turned to my girlfriend and she said "didn't you understand what he said". His answer was "I understood the first word but not the second".

This particularly p***** me off because his job is to sell petrol all day which can only be sold in either litres or baht!

I told this to my thai teacher yesterday and she said the same thing happened to her in England, she's Thai but lived there for over 30 years and her English is flawless.

[Paleface]

Im sure many of you have had the same experience as I have.

A Thai person speaks English to me and I dont understand. Nothing wrong with his English, but my mind and ears are expecting him to speak Thai.

[Darknight]

I had a classic example of this once in a petrol station on koh samui, a young kid you was working on the pump asked how much petrol I wanted to which I replied two litres "song lit" he turned to my girlfriend and she said "didn't you understand what he said". His answer was "I understood the first word but not the second".

This particularly p***** me off because his job is to sell petrol all day which can only be sold in either litres or baht!

I told this to my thai teacher yesterday and she said the same thing happened to her in England, she's Thai but lived there for over 30 years and her English is flawless.

i went into a gas station to have my wife ask the way to somewhere.

We stopped and a young boy comes and ask "petrol?" , my wife explains in thai for about 30 seconds "i need the road to there bla bla"

This guy goes " uhu, petrol ?" she said no and explained again and he was completely out of his world that we didn't want petrol. so he called his foreman or something, same question ..... mai loo.... next one .... mai loo

It took for the senior manager to come before somebody finally had the BRAINS to answer a question in thai which had nothing to do with their fixed routine.

A lot of them are just BLOODY STUPID. especially security guards and petrol clercks...

It's not your spoken thai, they don't even understand their own people sometimes.

[RDN]

Im sure many of you have had the same experience as I have.

A Thai person speaks English to me and I dont understand. Nothing wrong with his English, but my mind and ears are expecting him to speak Thai.

Spot on!! My Thai g/f often talks to the Thai girl next door for ages in Thai. I know she is speaking Thai and try to understand what they are saying. And then she says something to me in English and I don't realise she is speaking English so ignore her. She asks why I don't reply and then I "play back" in my mind what she just said to me and it is clear she is saying English words. Very strange!

I think the problem is that many Thai vowel sounds are quite similar to English vowels. OK, there are many Thai vowels that are never used in English, but a lot of them are. So it can be quite difficult to realise when a Thai has stopped speaking Thai and has started speaking English. I think so anyway!

So it is quite likely that Thais have the same problem. Maybe you should always put Khrap or Ka at the end of your sentence as a clue that it is Thai you are speaking!

[falong]

I'm feeling pretty despondent!! I've been learning to read/write/speak Thai for a few months now, although I've been living here for about 2 years. I'm pretty good at reading Thai aloud, although I may not understand all the words! But I understand the tonal system/class etc etc.

My Thai teacher and my Thai GF can understand me fine when I speak Thai

Today I was at my office and had to tell the security guy that I was going to bring my car later that day. So I first told him that I had an office in the building.

The guy could not understand one word of what I said! He called over the other 2 guards and I tried again. No joy!! I then explained that I was going to drive my car here this afternoon and was it ok if I parked it?

Well, I could have been speaking Martian because these guys could not understand a single word!!! I tried again, and was very careful to get the correct tone etc etc, but all to no avail.

Where am I going wrong? This was very frustrating, especially since I have no probs speaking with my teacher and GF. Maybe they were just pig-ignorant or perhaps from Cambodia?? (Or maybe they just like winding up Farangs!!)

That sort of thing happens to me all the time. I think many thais are expecting english to come out our of mouths and they will not recognize the thai unless it is perfectly spoken. Maybe not even then. Others can understand everything.

[samran]

as my uncle told me once....there is a reason why they are security guards.

Its natural to think when learning a language that if someone can't understand you, then it must be because you are saying it wrong. Not always, as you have to take into account the stupidity of the listener as well.

[appleman_thai]

yep - they think we are speaking english - its certainly not Thai - no matter what you think!!

But whats annoying is that after the first couple of tries that they dont get it......

Example, im in a coffee shop. They only sell coffee! I order a kafeeee and i get a dumb expression??!??!?!? again.... kafeeeee.

Now come on, it even sounds the same in English and in Thai..... and they only sell <deleted> coffee!!!

At this stage they just run away..............

[meadish_sweetball]

Generally speaking, very few of us speak Thai without an accent. Even for the few people who manage to pull that one off, they still do not always make themselves understood.

There are a number of reasons I can think of:

1. The listener's expectations - as already commented. If you expect one language to come out of a person's mouth, your brain uses the wrong program to process the information, and it just becomes gibberish until, like RDN said "you replay the phrase in your mind"...

2. The listerner's level of education / exposure to foreign languages, and to some degree, exposure to written language and complex reasoning. The more you study, the more you realize that there are different ways of expressing the same thing, and you learn to understand sentences that sound weird or off-key even though grammatical (e.g. English as spoken and written by a foreign person [me for example]). This is why you should always employ a translator who translates INTO his mother tongue, and not the other way around. While I can make myself understood just fine in English, I would not trust my writing to be of publishable quality. There is a big difference.

3. Weird constructions/word order on part of the speaker:

When we want to say something new in Thai, which is not a set phrase we have learnt from a book or tape, we often choose a sentence structure that does not sound 'as a Thai would say it' and adapt it more to our own speech conventions.

Instead of saying "(ráan) pit kii moong (ler) khrap" or, even simpler "pit reu yang khrap", I tried "khun pit meuarai khrap" and "yang pert yuu mai khrap" which is not the way a Thai would say it, and consequently it did not matter that my tones, vowel lengths and consonant sounds came out right, because I produced an alien message. Now, a Thai who knows English or any other European language would probably understand my question anyway, but not the waitress I asked, despite a number of attempts.

4. The barriers between what is considered as two separate sounds are not the same, causing the speaker to think his distinctions are ok, although they are not:

Example, <i> and <e> sounds. In my dialect of Swedish, the short <e> sound is close to <ae> or <backwards 3> in the international phonetic alphabet (not as in English spelling). When I learnt Thai vowels, my teacher did not correct me when I brought this distinction over to Thai, where the <e> sound, as in 'spicy' and 'scale' - "phet" and "klet" is much more pointed and closer to a short <i> sound... When I still smoked, I asked the clerks in the shop for "LM daeng neung sawng", but my "L" was too much like an English "L", and did not have that "i" sounding quality - so they did not understand. I had to tone down the <ae>-ish quality to get it right.

Another problem of mine is to distinguish between the vowels อ and โ . Not to hear which is which, but to pronounce them correctly myself... This is exactly the same thing as somebody mentioned with "l" and "r" for many Asians. The distinction between the two sounds is not important in spoken Thai - people get by anyway, and so the child's mind decides to not pay any importance to that sound distinction - since nobody else is doing it! There is a theory that we actually learn to recognize sounds in our native language when we are still only foeti inside our mothers.... and the older we get, the more we get stuck in our native language's speech conventions and patterns unless we are exposed to another.

Finally, a story:

A foreigner who spoke fluent Mandarin Chinese was out pedalling his bicycle in the Chinese countryside. He came to a crossroads and was not sure which way to go next, so he called out to some farmers in archetypal Chinese farmer's attire who were working in the paddy field:

[in perfect mandarin Chinese]: Excuse me, is this the way to Nanking?

The two farmers just shook their heads. He tried again, tried to change the structure of the sentences, but the farmers just stood there staring at him blankly. Frustrated, he gave up and chanced his way in an arbitrary direction. When he was just a little dot in the distance, one of the farmers turned to his companion and said:

"You know, that's really funny! If that bloke wasn't a foreigner, I could have sworn he was asking for the way to Nanking!"

------

Another story along the same lines told to me by my girlfriend is the time when an eight-year-old girl in her village came running home to her mother and said "Mummy, I can speak English!!! I talked to a farang and he asked me for directions, and I understood everything he said."

It turns out the farang had lived in a nearby village for ten years and spoke fluent kham meuang...

[xbusman]

Had a farang friend who was pin point perfectly fluent in Japanese. He once related to me that he had to start every request with the phrase "If you listen to me very carefully you will realize that I am speaking to you in Japanese". He went on to say that about 80% of the time they would carefully say back "I am sorry I cannot understand you because I dont speak English" and the conversation would have to work forward from that point. Personally, I think its simply expectations and perceptions, we are slaves to a world as we define it. Every time I think its stupid, I think of all the years I carried heavy luggage around airports until someone else put wheels on them.

[siam]

I think it is definitely they do not expect farang to speak Thai,

I went into a petrol station one day and asked for a diet coke,fai cola,

Yep she came back with 5 cans of Coke

[george]

Happens to me as well, speaking Thai quite well. Some Thais might think we try to speak English and act as they have no ideas.

Have you ever been in the situation, going to a Thai Government office etc. with your Thai wife/GF:

You, beeing a farang, ask a question in (nearly) perfect Thai, and the reply from the official is automatically re-directed to wife/GF without even looking at you. A bit annoying indeed...

TiT

[meadish_sweetball]

Hi George,

I think it happens to everyone... and it is definitely irritating.

I sometimes see it happening in Sweden too though, generally when foreign parents go with their kids to a government office - the officials will address the kids instead of the parents, even though the parents try their best to speak Swedish.

At times, it is impossible to follow the Thai spoken by service people - even for many, if not most, Thais! When I went to sign up for a subscription at AIS recently, the girl at the desk repeated set harangues of rules she had obviously learned by heart, making it impossible to follow.

When I or my girlfriend asked for clarification, she responded again with a lightspeed rendering of some in-house policy document. My girlfriend's appeal for her to speak slowly was completely ignored. After another incomprehensible, lightspeed tirade, I demonstratively turned to my girlfriend and said, very slowly and clearly in Thai ที่รักครับ ขอให้แปลเป็นภำษากลางให้หน่อย"Could you please translate that into Central Thai for me, tee rak".

Sharp as it may have been, my sarcasm did not succeed in penetrating the service girl's three layers of whitening creams and powder through her exceptionally thick frontal bone and into the grey mass behind it, which, given a more favourable environment, could have developed into a brain.

[Levanter]

Just let me add a different perspective to things. I am a Thai who has spent most of my life being an expatriate in one country or another. For me (and other Thais I know who have also spent their childhood abroad), there are three ways of speaking English: 1) English in an English tone of voice, 2) English in a Thai tone of voice (not to be confused with the five tones of the Thai language), and 3) English with a Thai accent. (By the way, this is just a breakdown we came up with ourselves ... it is not technical or academic in any way.)

The first is, simply, speaking English normally. Close your eyes and we would sound like any random American (we studied in American/international schools) - albeit one without regional accents or speech patterns). The third is also easy to grasp ... just think of any regular Thai person trying to speak English, with Thai tonal additions and conversions of 'v' to 'w', 'r' to 'l', 'th' to 'd', etc.

The second is a bit of an odd fusion ... we tend to lapse into this mode when rapidly switching back and forth between Thai and English; all words are pronounced properly, each syllable is formed and enunciated in a distinctly English fashion ... and yet, the speech as a whole sounds very much Thai (aside from the use of non-Thai sounds such as 'th' as well as longer and distinct 'sh' vs 'ch', for example).

This is because the vocal quality used in speaking English is very different from that used in speaking Thai. It's hard to describe, but Romance languages tend to be spoken in a higher, more musical, and rounder tone of voice, with inflections, a broader range of vocal quality and an irregular rhythm. On the other hand, Thai is more monotone (that is, despite the language having five tones, the quality of the voice itself is monotone), flat and low, and the rhythm of each syllable in a sentence is more uniform.

What I am trying to say is:

It is possible for me to speak English with perfectly formed words, and yet still sound very Thai. And in the same way, foreigners may say Thai words with a distinct five tones and correct pronunciation - and still sound very foreign to Thai ears. You may be speaking very good Thai, but as long as you don't sound Thai, it will seem like you are speaking a different language to those who are not used to interacting with foreigners.

On the flip side, I sometimes need a double take when hearing a Vietnamese person speak. There are certain stretches when their vocal quality is so similar to a Thai person's that my mind starts trying to process their very unfamiliar words as Thai words, and it ends up thoroughly disorienting me for a moment.

In the end, it's not about stupidity as much as lack of experience, so please don't be so harsh in your judgment.

I think it may help, after you have mastered the tones, to pay careful attention to the way you actually deliver entire sentences. Try to keep your voice level and even, don't round out each sound too much, and resist the urge to inflect words or draw out certain syllables.

[OOLEEBER]

Sharp as it may have been, my sarcasm did not succeed in penetrating the service girl's three layers of whitening creams and powder through her exceptionally thick frontal bone and into the grey mass behind it, which, given a more favourable environment, could have developed into a brain.

Beauty Meadish.

Funny, referring to an earlier post regarding So-da. The exact thing happened to me yesterday when an Ozzie friend on her first visit here asked for a soda 3 times and got a blank look every time. Eventually she looked to me for help and I said So-Da and the girl got it straight away.

My friend couldnt belive that I had said exactly the same and it got through. Needless to say I was quite pleased with myself and thoroughly enjoyed the next Bea Chaing.

Hope there are more of these stories out there.

Cheers

[OOLEEBER]

Wise words Levanter.

Thanks for that insight - very interesting and very useful. I for one will try to work on your advice.

Cheers

[samran]

On the flip side, I sometimes need a double take when hearing a Vietnamese person speak. There are certain stretches when their vocal quality is so similar to a Thai person's that my mind starts trying to process their very unfamiliar words as Thai words, and it ends up thoroughly disorienting me for a moment.

Happens to me too. When visiting Hanoi for work a couple of times, I was my brain immediately told me that this person was speaking Thai and my brain began trying to process the what they were saying - with no success.

Having said that, I still maintain there are really some people out there who will just never understand what you say, whether it comes from a native speaker or someone who speaks the language well.

[monkeygirl]

you know, i speak thai fluently with no accent, as a native would speak it, i am half thai so i grew up speaking it. however, i am very white, people cannot believe i am half and half and when i speak thai sometimes people look at me like i'm an alien and try to speak english back to me!! i think that when they expect english to come out of your mouth, they are concentrating sooooo hard on understanding your english that they don't even realize it when you are speaking thai!! it doesn't happen often, but it has happened a few times and taken several minutes for people to absorb and understand that i am speaking thai to them. must be even harder when you do have a 'farang' accent.

[Som Nam Na]

Whenever I speak to a Thai person that I don't know I always open with "do you speak English" (Pood passa angrit dai mai, krap). then regardless of whether they can or cannot say "never mind. I can speak Thai" (mai bpen rai. Pom pood Thai dai).

Generally speaking, my tone is terrible, my pronunciation is pittiful and my grammer is grotesque. But this opening is fairly unambiguous and seems to switch them into listening mode.

MS's number 3

3. Weird constructions/word order on part of the speaker:

is my worst trait because I am always trying to increase my vocabulary with words I find in my dictionary......BUT.......

even in this insurmountable environment people do seem to understand once they've turned thier ears on.

[Boon Mee]

Excellent stuff, everyone! Thank you!

For myself, learning to read Thai has helped my tones and pronounciation. Especially Central Thai where I've found the spelling is a much closer approximation to the correct pronounciation than for example, the English language.

As a native English speaker, I now sympathize more with those who learn it as a second language since it's my opinion, at this stage in my Thai Language studies that spelling/pronounciation is closer in Thai.

[bina]

went to a party the other day with my workers; met a whole group of thai men the guys always show me off as their token israeli that takes an interest in thai food, speech etc.... so i have to speak my thai...

these guys whom i dont know and dont know me, asked the usual questions (have u been to chiang mai, rai, samui, blabla) and i answered and expanded.... they then looked at my group, who repeated word for word what i said (i have a good accent), i know cause i listened to what they said and it was no different than what i said except for maybe that i wasnt drunk and they were already a bit mao. this new group all say , oh , kao jai kao jai bla bla......., it took them an hour to speak and answer directly to me with out the 'translation'!!!

and then i burst out laughing cause i remembered this thread about the not understanding and realized that they just didnt switch the brain over to phut thai issan with falang mode, even if their ears heard thai...

[andyadam]

Anyone from the UK will probably remember "'Allo, 'Allo",

Think of the police guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[RDN]

Anyone from the UK will probably remember "'Allo, 'Allo",

Think of the police guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Good moaning!"

[simon43]

Now have you ever made a bad/hilarious mistake when speaking Thai, just like the Allo Allo program??

When I first came to BKK, I took a taxi to Silom and tried to give the driver directions. 'Leoh sai' was fine, but instead of 'Leo kwa' I said 'Leo kwai'. ...And then repeated it urgently as the driver went past my right-turn, probably looking for a buffalo on the loose

[DJ Pat]

Yes, I guess it must be that. But isn't it the most annoying thing when you say a Thai word or phrase perfectly - you are not understood - and then your Thai partner says EXACTLY the same thing and they all understand!!

Can be off putting that!

[Dradam]

It is sometimes helpful when you start speaking with someone if you speak a little Thai before you ask the question. Just to get them on track.

Say, "Hello. excuse me. Can you help me? I have a question."

It may seem very wordy but it will get Thais into listening mode.

Don't take it personally. Many Thais who are very educated are listening for English right from the start. Even the best Thai can be heard as English if you are trying to hear English.

I still misunderstand English words in the middle of a primarily Thai sentence, especially the names of American Actors and Actresses or movies. The strange tones they put on the names throws me off alot.

I had a girl ask me if I has seen แวน already. I had no clue what she was talking about and I was completely lost as to what she meant. It turned out that she meant Van Helsing. All the Thais in the room completely understood what she was asking.

Many times Thais speak English and I am the only one who doesn't understand.