Thai Tourist Police Soon To Speak Fluent English

[jackr]

Thai tourist police soon to speak fluent English

the number of tourists to Thailand to at least 28 million each year

[catweazle]

Un-<deleted> BeLievAble

Just saw this a minute ago, after arriving back home from a biz trip... Is it 1st of April already? Seems that I missed X-Mas, New Year, and all...

If this isn't the biggest joke since some Thai GM announced that Phuket would become THE ultimate I.T. Hub of Southeast Asia in... I believe it was 1999??? Almost a full decade later - Phuketians still were using 256k dialups and LoxInfo while the rest of the world was enjoying the www via fiber optics...

Edited October 19, 2012 by catweazle

[hhiser]

I also had to check the calender to make sure it wasn't 1st April.

Weeeeeeeeelllllll, this goes on the list, drug problem gone in a year, no more floods in BKK, corruption to be routed out, etc. Really is pathetic.

Oh, forgot, the guy who built my kitchen extension roof who provided a lifetime guarantee, I can't find the sod.

And a F1 GP through BKK 555+ Great day for fake news!

[astral]

Pigs might fly too....................................

Not implying that the Tourist Police are pigs.

[FNQ]

Are they kicking out the old ones and employing Britts?

i

In OZ we have (or did) a saying give a Pom a job with a uniform and..... well you ausies will know the rest.

[cdnski12]

This should be interesting. I've met Thai University Profs teaching English, who had less comprehension than my GF. Her English is not fluent, but her comprhension is very good.he is not scared to make mistakes. Now if I can just get her to correct her pronouns ...

[dighambara]

The joke of the day following another delayed 3G Auction....

AGREE...!!! English is a very difficult language - especially for Thais, where intonation canges the meaning of words.

One of the hardest things for Thais to learn is that 'doer', dooor', 'dour' spoken by people from Soodd Afrika to New Yawk is actually 'DOOR'...

[alanferdi]

The joke of the day following another delayed 3G Auction....

can't even get my student to speak English in the international program in 2 years

LEARNING IS FIRST AN ATTITUDE..... Knowing a little would really do more harm! But then a good move! It would be good to also change the Road signs to proper English! - Turn Left on Green ... is more understandable than .... Turn waiting light and a whole series of similar lingo problems in this country. Why cannot they just get professional help... they need to stop using Chinese Translation software or google as a matter of fact, if they want to do it properly.

Practice makes perfect.... but practicing something wrong makes it perfectly wrong!!!

[softgeorge]

Are they kicking out the old ones and employing Britts?

i

In OZ we have (or did) a saying give a Pom a job with a uniform and..... well you ausies will know the rest.

No sorry, please go on and educate an Aussie

[JeremyBowskill]

Triffic now they can be useless in 2 laugages!

[Konini]

If Thais were really clever they would speak English. They do have access to BBC, but, prefer to watch pantomime (630pm-8pm) and wholesale murders ( 830pm-1030pm ) Even the French have realized they are cleverer than they thought and can actually speak English!

Only because we dug our feet in and refused to speak French

[Konini]

There are some Tourist Police in the deep south that do speak English but many also speak Malay. Many of us who are Volunteer Tourist Police do come and help out when called. It is very difficult for many of them to learn as they don't have much chance to speak English after years of learning it in school. My son goes to the best school in Hat Yai and even though I am a native speaker his English is far less than perfect. On the other hand my nephew who had taken English for years would never speak to me as he was scared of saying words incorrectly. A few months ago I gave him a job in my restaurant during his school break and it made a huge difference in his confidence. He now speaks fairly good English with me and he has taken up a whole new interest in learning English. Maybe instead of trashing these guys the rest of you could take the time to speak with many of these tourist police and encourage them to try to speak more English. Please remind them that there are many accents of English depending on what country the people who are speaking it come from. After all how many people can understand a Cockney and they come from England. Possibly suggesting to the officers that maybe trying to work a couple of hours a night in a tourist area selling food or being a waiter will make a big difference in their confidence to speak English.

I have a friend in Indonesia who has both a bachelors and masters degree in English, teaches it at school and has just applied to teach at university. Most of our communications is by email - I try to discourage her from phoning me because I can't understand her! From her writing she is totally fluent - although I occasionally correct her grammar or suggest a better word to use, but her spoken English is terrible, difficult when she is standing in front of me, almost impossible on the phone. As a favour I went to her school a couple of years ago. I found that her students, aged 7 to 18 had a surprising good vocabulary and passable grammar. They just couldn't pronounce the words properly so would get all shy and I really had to keep going at them to answer my questions - easy things like how many brothers and sisters do you have and are they younger or older than you? If the teacher can't pronounce English, what hope do the students have? All they need to do is speak with native English speakers for practice. I encouraged all of them to listen to BBC World service for 30 minutes each day which I really believe would help them (I'm not a teacher, just common sense).

I have to say though that on a trip to see mum earlier this year, I noticed the regional accents are getting stronger and stronger. It used to be only my family and other Geordies that nobody else in England could understand, but now different parts of the UK are not at all easy for everyone else to understand - for me it was particularly Scottish, and we had neighbours from the Gorbels in Glasgow for 11 years so I am very accustomed to it. Even my family who still live in the north east seem to be getting stronger accents - I had to listen quite hard sometimes to follow conversations. I'm good with accents, can sometimes get it down to a village but the language is evolving (as they do) and I have to ask now, along with appalling teaching standards in English (I have a cousin who teaches English to 1st year high school, and she says an average of 30% can't read and write and know few rules of grammar by the time she gets them at age 11) and stronger accents which are almost dialects, how many native English speakers can be considered fluent? I was born in the north east, lived in South Yorkshire for 11 years before heading back up north for a few years and then in Australia for 20 years, so my mixed up Geordie-Yorkie accent has been toned down a lot - I'll never lose it, but it is very restrained in comparison to my sister. And non-native speakers (not just Asians) people have trouble understanding me sometimes.

Back to the topic though, fluency in English for the police is not going to happen - particularly if they aren't interested in it. Basic pigeon English, much as I used to abhor it, will be a good start, as lots of people from lots of countries can speak it and it's usually enough to get by.

[noob7]

If Thais were really clever they would speak English. They do have access to BBC, but, prefer to watch pantomime (630pm-8pm) and wholesale murders ( 830pm-1030pm ) Even the French have realized they are cleverer than they thought and can actually speak English!

Only because we dug our feet in and refused to speak French

And the only other choice would have been German!

[chrisinth]

Okay, understand the jibes at the unrealistic time frame to learn fluent English, which by the way, many English cannot speak or write!! But turning this on it's head, how many Farangs can speak fluent Thai, having in many cases been here a dam_n site longer than 2 years and have opted to migrate to this lovely land? Pot calling Kettle Black maark, maark, me thinks.

I think Tourist Police are mostly aimed at Tourists, how many of them would be speaking fluent Thai?

And if they could, what would be the point of teaching Tourist Police fluent English?

Just askin'

[Konini]

If Thais were really clever they would speak English. They do have access to BBC, but, prefer to watch pantomime (630pm-8pm) and wholesale murders ( 830pm-1030pm ) Even the French have realized they are cleverer than they thought and can actually speak English!

Only because we dug our feet in and refused to speak French

And the only other choice would have been German!

[Chads]

This will be the lingo of the tourist police!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkWMcRlE1mQ

-mel.

Hilarious video! Thank you for posting!!

[bangon04]

Why not give all foreigners a crash course in Thai at the border control ? More chances of succeeding.

is that the crash course for Chinese tourists to fill out the landing card when they are at the front of the line at immigration?

[MEL1]

Seeing as you enjoyed it so much, here's another.

Imagine the tourist police having to deal with this !!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaGpaj2nHIo

-mel.

[sirchai]

What, are they going to hire bar girls as tourist police?

No, but most of them would work as bar girls if they were female.----

[Singlebarrel]

6 months... Miracle Thailand.

Wow 6 months, native speaker and I still haven't master it..

[MEL1]

6 months... Miracle Thailand.

Wow 6 months, native speaker and I still haven't master it..

mastered

-mel.

[paymaster]

Perhaps there is a misunderstanding of what the word "fluency" means.

Thai fluency is unambiguous. "What your name? Where you come from?"

[mickjn]

I think this is great.Only came back today after 3 months in LOS.I have noticed a dramatic improvement in the police speaking English,more than the Farangs speaking Thai

[balo]

If they start by learning the book English for beginners , so we can understand them , it would be a start . Nit noi .