Where Thai Excels, or Comes Up Short

[HeijoshinCool]

This is for those who are fluent in both languages:

Compared to English, where does Thai excel, and where does it come up short?

[Dr Robert]

depends on the criteria you measure it by...poetic? practical? scientific? etc etc probably need to qualify your question a bit more.

[HeijoshinCool]

depends on the criteria you measure it by...poetic? practical? scientific? etc etc probably need to qualify your question a bit more.

In any and all categories, please. Whatever anyone feels well informed about.

EDIT: Grammar

[Dr Robert]

I think Thai language excels when you examine it in its historical context and in its links to it past agrarian culture and the beautiful, poetic descriptions of everyday life and needs. It is both pragmatic and lyrical and I am surprised there are not modern writers exploiting this...at least I am not aware of them writing about this and that could be wrong. Love someone to point me in the right direction. I am new to the language and would really like to explore some more. Culture and language are so contextual and inextricably linked -would be grateful for advice as to how I could investigate this more.

Nice question OP.

[HeijoshinCool]

Here's some specifics:

Ability to be concise (brief but still clear; not prone to misunderstanding)

Flexibility (able to say the same thing, many different ways)

Lots of other possibilities, tell us what you know.

Feel free to takes sides, in an informed way. No doubt there are people reading this who are considering investing substantial time and money into learning a new language.

[HeijoshinCool]

Well, guys, I know there are those of you who are Thai language aficionados, and you just haven't stumbled across this thread yet. It is after all, Friday night and you're probably stumbling across dust bunnies now on the way to your bed.

As for me, I'm about to risk my life. If I'm still alive this time tomorrow, I hope to find many fine postings here, of which if any are questions, I'll be glad to reply to.

Off to the bus station!

[CaptHaddock]

Speaking Thai is fun. For instance, it is clear that Thai has many four syllable constructions because the Thais just like the sound of them. Or doubled adjectives to indicate a difference of degree in a quality. The tones are fun. French speakers admire elegance in expression and like the purity of the French vowels, for example. Thai speakers like the sounds of the words themselves, such as the many examples of onomatopoeia. English has some onomatopoetic words, of course, but not so many as the Thai.

[HeijoshinCool]

Thanks to the two posters that speak Thai. Interesting points.

With all the members bragging about how fluent they are, thought there might be a few more posts, but I guess posts talk, and BS walks.

[Richard W]

Ability to be concise (brief but still clear; not prone to misunderstanding)

Well, Thai as used frequently fails to to be clear. While there is the ideal คำเดียวก็พอ, misunderstanding seems so common that ไม่เป็นไร seems to be an essential lubricant. Translated laws frequently seem completely unclear; I no longer believe this is a failing in the translation.

Now, this may be a failing in Thai culture rather than the Thai language. Perhaps it is possible to be precise in Thai without seeming to be speaking in translation.

I can point to a number of categories where Thai frequently relies on context, whereas English usually has to be precise:

number (singular v. plural)

person (Thai drops pronouns, and quite a few may be 2nd or 3rd person depending on context)

tense

voice (active v. passive)

It may validly be objected that Thai can usually make the distinctions, so in so far as there is ambiguity, it is a matter of choice, rather than clearly inherent in the language.

In the category of mood (largely marked by auxiliaries in English), Thai is different rather than less capable - English largely works with 'can' while Thai has a choice of ได้, เป็น (ไม่)ไหว. Also, while English generally obligatorily marks present v. past, Thai obligatorily marks irrealis (future, potential) v. realis, so looked at naively one would say that marking the future (with จะ) as such is almost obligatory in Thai, whereas English may rely on context.

Thais seems reluctant to distinguish 'hardly ever' and 'never'. This imprecision extends to the highest level of society (the precise example is 'hardly anyone' v. 'no-one'). I dread to think how many Thais have been judged to be liars because the word for 'never' was mistranslated into English as 'never'.

[HeijoshinCool]

Ability to be concise (brief but still clear; not prone to misunderstanding)

Well, Thai as used frequently fails to to be clear. While there is the ideal คำเดียวก็พอ, misunderstanding seems so common that ไม่เป็นไร seems to be an essential lubricant. Translated laws frequently seem completely unclear; I no longer believe this is a failing in the translation.

Now, this may be a failing in Thai culture rather than the Thai language. Perhaps it is possible to be precise in Thai without seeming to be speaking in translation.

I can point to a number of categories where Thai frequently relies on context, whereas English usually has to be precise:

number (singular v. plural)

person (Thai drops pronouns, and quite a few may be 2nd or 3rd person depending on context)

tense

voice (active v. passive)

It may validly be objected that Thai can usually make the distinctions, so in so far as there is ambiguity, it is a matter of choice, rather than clearly inherent in the language.

In the category of mood (largely marked by auxiliaries in English), Thai is different rather than less capable - English largely works with 'can' while Thai has a choice of ได้, เป็น (ไม่)ไหว. Also, while English generally obligatorily marks present v. past, Thai obligatorily marks irrealis (future, potential) v. realis, so looked at naively one would say that marking the future (with จะ) as such is almost obligatory in Thai, whereas English may rely on context.

Thais seems reluctant to distinguish 'hardly ever' and 'never'. This imprecision extends to the highest level of society (the precise example is 'hardly anyone' v. 'no-one'). I dread to think how many Thais have been judged to be liars because the word for 'never' was mistranslated into English as 'never'.

Excellent. Thanks for taking the time.

Your final paragraph in particular is the type of thing I'm looking for.

[Mole]

Some European languages with their inflections, tenses and cases, a sentence with just a few words will be able to tell quite precisely who did for who, when, how many, etc. English has lost a lot of this though.

While East Asian languages rely more on context and you usually have to spend more time talk, talk and talk and even then still not be quite sure of what's really going on.

But the East Asian languages are more metaphoric in that most words are made up by combining 2 (or sometimes more) other words, which may not necessary be related or obvious, for example ใจดี [good heart] for nice (person), ใจดำ [black heart] cruel (person). In Chinese, their writing even reflects this. So by analyzing a word, you can kind of get their mentality of things.

In Thai, understand is เข้าใจ [in heart] rather than [in mind]. You can say it almost reflects their culture when often they'd rather understand with heart than mind.

Many Thai words even make you hmmmm... or huh?

However, in Thai, a sentence may be able to tell you the level of seniority, social status and wealth and level of politeness. This seems to be more important to convey than exactly what and when they're doing.

[kriswillems]

Ability to be concise (brief but still clear; not prone to misunderstanding)

Well, Thai as used frequently fails to to be clear. While there is the ideal คำเดียวก็พอ, misunderstanding seems so common that ไม่เป็นไร seems to be an essential lubricant. Translated laws frequently seem completely unclear; I no longer believe this is a failing in the translation.

Now, this may be a failing in Thai culture rather than the Thai language. Perhaps it is possible to be precise in Thai without seeming to be speaking in translation.

I can point to a number of categories where Thai frequently relies on context, whereas English usually has to be precise:

number (singular v. plural)

person (Thai drops pronouns, and quite a few may be 2nd or 3rd person depending on context)

tense

voice (active v. passive)

It may validly be objected that Thai can usually make the distinctions, so in so far as there is ambiguity, it is a matter of choice, rather than clearly inherent in the language.

In the category of mood (largely marked by auxiliaries in English), Thai is different rather than less capable - English largely works with 'can' while Thai has a choice of ได้, เป็น (ไม่)ไหว. Also, while English generally obligatorily marks present v. past, Thai obligatorily marks irrealis (future, potential) v. realis, so looked at naively one would say that marking the future (with จะ) as such is almost obligatory in Thai, whereas English may rely on context.

Thais seems reluctant to distinguish 'hardly ever' and 'never'. This imprecision extends to the highest level of society (the precise example is 'hardly anyone' v. 'no-one'). I dread to think how many Thais have been judged to be liars because the word for 'never' was mistranslated into English as 'never'.

Nice post.

Very often I hear 2 Thai people talking about something, thinking they understanding each other, while they are clearly talking about a completely different person and or time ....This sometimes leads to major confusion afterwards.

It's very important to ask questions when something is not clear in Thai, for grammatical reasons, but also because Thai people tend to say whatever you like to hear (which might be very different from what they think), and because as a non-native speaker you might be misunderstanding what they are saying.

[HeijoshinCool]

What about when reading Thai, what effect does the absence of commas have?

Once my GF was reading English, I pointed out to her how the placement, absence, or inclusion of commas could make a huge difference. She understood what I was saying, but can't really form a comparison.

[kriswillems]

What about when reading Thai, what effect does the absence of commas have?

Once my GF was reading English, I pointed out to her how the placement, absence, or inclusion of commas could make a huge difference. She understood what I was saying, but can't really form a comparison.

Similar confusion is possible in Thai, because of the way (sub-)sentences are separated by spaces (there are no points or commas and no spaces between the words). The rules for the placements of spaces are rather complex, mistakes are made and it's hard to find out where one coherent block starts and the next block stops and to which part of the previous sub-sentences the next sub-sentence refers.

[Dag Ekeberg]

One important difference: Thai is actually possible to learn properly because the words are pronounced the way they are written. English...? Oh, well.

The word “Logical” is not the most common term used to describe the Thais, but for some reason they’ve ended up with a wonderfully logical written script. Weird or what?

[HeijoshinCool]

What about when reading Thai, what effect does the absence of commas have?

Once my GF was reading English, I pointed out to her how the placement, absence, or inclusion of commas could make a huge difference. She understood what I was saying, but can't really form a comparison.

Similar confusion is possible in Thai, because of the way (sub-)sentences are separated by spaces (there are no points or commas and no spaces between the words). The rules for the placements of spaces are rather complex, mistakes are made and it's hard to find out where one coherent block starts and the next block stops and to which part of the previous sub-sentences the next sub-sentence refers.

Which has been making me wonder if this is one reasons Thais don't read very much.

It's not confusing in English, but it can change the meaning, sometimes subtly, other times significantly. For instance:

John finds joy in cooking, his family, and his dog.

John finds joy in cooking his family and his dog.

So, how does that work in Thai?

[Richard W]

Thai is actually possible to learn properly because the words are pronounced the way they are written.

While that works for most monosyllables, it significantly breaks down for longer words. I presume you are aware of the irregularities and oddities of such common and simple words as น้ำ, เพชร, ทราบ, ทรมาน, เล่น and ตำรวจ and of the normal pronunciation of grammatical words such as ผม, เขา and ไหม.

The word “Logical” is not the most common term used to describe the Thais, but for some reason they’ve ended up with a wonderfully logical written script. Weird or what?

It may help that there has been no regional balance. Otherwise etymologically incorrect spellings like โซ่ เฒ่า ฆ่า could cause problems. They should all be written with high consonants and mai tho, and there are many more examples. Because the dialect of people who made these spelling mistakes has prevailed, these spellings cause no reading problems for standard Thai.

Compared to English, it probably helps that Thai has plenty of vowel symbols.

[CaptHaddock]

Punctuation, spaces between words, upper and lower case, capitalization of the first word of a sentence only appeared in European languages during the Middle Ages. The Latin of the Romans didn't use any of these devices to enhance readability. By that time written language was at least two thousand years old in the West. Written Thai is less than a thousand years old at this point. At one time lines of ancient Greek were written "as the ox plows," that is, first line from left to right followed by the second line from right to left, then left to right again, etc.

So, readability evolves.

What about when reading Thai, what effect does the absence of commas have?

Once my GF was reading English, I pointed out to her how the placement, absence, or inclusion of commas could make a huge difference. She understood what I was saying, but can't really form a comparison.

[Dag Ekeberg]

Thai is actually possible to learn properly because the words are pronounced the way they are written.

While that works for most monosyllables, it significantly breaks down for longer words. I presume you are aware of the irregularities and oddities of such common and simple words as น้ำ, เพชร, ทราบ, ทรมาน, เล่น and ตำรวจ and of the normal pronunciation of grammatical words such as ผม, เขา and ไหม.

The word “Logical” is not the most common term used to describe the Thais, but for some reason they’ve ended up with a wonderfully logical written script. Weird or what?

It may help that there has been no regional balance. Otherwise etymologically incorrect spellings like โซ่ เฒ่า ฆ่า could cause problems. They should all be written with high consonants and mai tho, and there are many more examples. Because the dialect of people who made these spelling mistakes has prevailed, these spellings cause no reading problems for standard Thai.

Compared to English, it probably helps that Thai has plenty of vowel symbols.

You are right about เขา and ไหม. Your other examples follow the rules of the language, as least as I’ve learned them.

I’m not getting your issue with โซ่ เฒ่า ฆ่า . Looks right to me.

[Mole]

Punctuation, spaces between words, upper and lower case, capitalization of the first word of a sentence only appeared in European languages during the Middle Ages. The Latin of the Romans didn't use any of these devices to enhance readability. By that time written language was at least two thousand years old in the West. Written Thai is less than a thousand years old at this point. At one time lines of ancient Greek were written "as the ox plows," that is, first line from left to right followed by the second line from right to left, then left to right again, etc.

So, readability evolves.

Thai script and all Indian script today which has no punctuation or spaces between words evolved from the Brahmi script which is nearly 2500 years old.

Personally, I don't find it difficult at all to read Thai without the punctuations. It actually works pretty well without and there's no confusion that I can think. The language is in such a way that this isn't a problem.

Even question mark ? is totally unnecessary because the last word in a question already tells it's a question.

[Dag Ekeberg]

Punctuation, spaces between words, upper and lower case, capitalization of the first word of a sentence only appeared in European languages during the Middle Ages. The Latin of the Romans didn't use any of these devices to enhance readability. By that time written language was at least two thousand years old in the West. Written Thai is less than a thousand years old at this point. At one time lines of ancient Greek were written "as the ox plows," that is, first line from left to right followed by the second line from right to left, then left to right again, etc.

So, readability evolves.

What about when reading Thai, what effect does the absence of commas have?

Once my GF was reading English, I pointed out to her how the placement, absence, or inclusion of commas could make a huge difference. She understood what I was saying, but can't really form a comparison.

Civilization is moving back towards the readability of the Romans, thanks to Apple.

Anyway, the brain is easily trained. Once you’ve read a bit Thai, the lack of spaces is not an issue. Youcanstillreadthisright?

[CaptHaddock]

It is one thing to say that Thai is readable even in the absence of spacing between words, capitalization, and punctuation and quite another thing to say that it is equally readable, which I very much doubt. I can read Thai myself in fact, but I am certainly aware that the lack of spacing can lead to unintended ambiguities. In fact, my Thai teacher recounted to me an example of the the Thai Prime Minister making a reading error of just this kind while reading the Thai language out loud publicly. US presidents and UK prime ministers don't make such errors.

While Icanreadthissentencequitewellwithoutspaces and cn rd ths msg vn wtht vwls wtht ny prblm whtsvr, it hardly follows that the readability is therefore equivalent to normal English orthograthy. If we were to ask some cognitive psychologists to compare the readability of several we would expect them to devise experiments for which differences in response times measured in milliseconds would respresent significant differences in readability. Even differences in fonts alone likely result in measurable differences in readability although that might not be obvious relying on naive introspection.

Years ago I remember reading of research at Bell Laboratories about the readability of computer programs the lack of which causes significant expense in maintaining systems. The psychologists at Bell determined that the single most important factor in making a computer program readable was blank lines, even more than comments. From my own experience in maintaining code this result seems perfectly reasonable and gives an appreciation of the subtleties of readability.

[CaptHaddock]

My impression is also that Thai spelling more consistently reflects the pronunciation than in English, but I would want to see research by linguists to test that hypothesis before believing it. If it is true, then the greater consistency of Thai spelling would probably be due to having a lower percentage of loan words than English, which has more loan words than French, for example. In both English and Thai loan words tend to preserve the spelling of the original language while the pronunciation changes to accommodate the speakers of the new language. In English this results in words like Paris having a final "s" sound and a stress on the first syllable that the French word lacks, overlooking for the moment that the French got the word from Greek. In Thai words borrowed from Sanskrit preserve original, now silent, letters, sometimes indicated with the karan mark and somtimes not, such as as ทรัพย์ and บูตร. Both languages seem to adopt the same strategy toward loan words of retaining the original spelling while changing the pronunciation.

The other reason that Thai orthography might be more consistent is that the writing system is less than a thousand years old and the language is spoken by fewer people than English. If I remember correctly from my scant knowledge of linguisitcs pronunciation drift occurs over time and more so the more people speak it.

One important difference: Thai is actually possible to learn properly because the words are pronounced the way they are written. English...? Oh, well.

The word “Logical” is not the most common term used to describe the Thais, but for some reason they’ve ended up with a wonderfully logical written script. Weird or what?

[pablodiablo]

been reading all this highbrow content,had trouble sleeping prior to reading your thoughts, but am now falling asleep at my desk top, thanks guys

[CaptHaddock]

been reading all this highbrow content,had trouble sleeping prior to reading your thoughts, but am now falling asleep at my desk top, thanks guys

I'd hate to think we are keeping you from a relaxing day at the dump shooting rats.

[kriswillems]

I am pretty sure pronouncing written Thai is easier than written English.

For me, the biggest problem with reading written Thai are the hidden vowels. The exceptions on the in tone rules Richard mentioned are in my opinion just a little problem compared to the problem of the hidden vowels (f.i.ปกติ).

But even taken into account these limitations of written Thai, I think the readability of Thai is much better than the readability of written English. I am totally confused about the vowel use in English. The fact I can more or less pronounce English is much more based on memory and experience than on logic.

The other way around, I think writing spoken English is much easier than writing spoken Thai, because in Thai you need to remember the final consonants of a syllable.

[HeijoshinCool]

Okay, thanks for the esoteric.

I was looking for more practical application, along the lines of when Alexander revamped Greek, drastically, so that there would be no excuse for "misunderstandings" among his troops.

My take is that Thai just is not clear and succinct.

True or false ....?

[CaptHaddock]

I think you are looking at it in the wrong way. A better question would be why is Thai very precise about some things, such as relative social standing, and not very much about other things, such as sequencing events in time. A reasonable working assumption is that languages are useful for the purposes of their speakers, but less apt for the purposes of foreigners.

Okay, thanks for the esoteric.

I was looking for more practical application, along the lines of when Alexander revamped Greek, drastically, so that there would be no excuse for "misunderstandings" among his troops.

My take is that Thai just is not clear and succinct.

True or false ....?

[Richard W]

While that works for most monosyllables, it significantly breaks down for longer words. I presume you are aware of the irregularities and oddities of such common and simple words as น้ำ, เพชร, ทราบ, ทรมาน, เล่น and ตำรวจ and of the normal pronunciation of grammatical words such as ผม, เขา and ไหม.

You are right about เขา and ไหม. Your other examples follow the rules of the language, as least as Ive learned them.

น้ำ, as an independent word, is pronounced น้าม.

เพชร is pronounced เพ็ด. I'm not sure how one should work out that it is not pronounced เพ-ชอน.

ทราบ is pronounced ซาบ, which you could claim as regular. However, ทรมาน is pronounced ทอ-ระ-มาน, with the first vowel short through lack of stress, not ซะ-มาน.

เล่น has a short vowel; Thai orthography has no way to show whether the vowel is short or long. The long vowel does occur with mai ek in closed live syllables, but unfortunately I don't remember an example.

ตำรวจ is pronounced ตำ-หรวจ, not ตำ-รวจ.

I thought ผม meaning 'me' was normally pronounced with the high tone. Perhaps it has reverted to always being pronounced with the rising tone.

Otherwise etymologically incorrect spellings like โซ่ เฒ่า ฆ่า could cause problems.

Im not getting your issue with โซ่ เฒ่า ฆ่า . Looks right to me.

Those spellings don't work for all the dialects of Thailand. The merger of the tones of low consonants with mai ek and of high consonants with mai tho has not happened throughout Thailand. The spelling of these words in Northern Thai (in the Lanna script) and in Lao are โส้ เถ้า ข้า and have different tones to those implied by โซ่ เฒ่า ฆ่า (in Lanna script) or โซ่ เท่า ค่า (in Lao). The standard pronunciation of Siam has retained the merger of the two tones, so Thai doesn't have confusing spellings like English busy (spelling follows Southern England/West Midlands pronunciation, but with East Midlands pronunciation) and bury (spelling follows Southern England/West Midlands pronunciation, but with Kentish pronunciation).

[Richard W]

Personally, I don't find it difficult at all to read Thai without the punctuations. It actually works pretty well without and there's no confusion that I can think. The language is in such a way that this isn't a problem.

Perhaps not for humans, but the lack of word separators doesn't half cause problems for computers. Line-breaking algorithms falter (and 'Thai line-breaking' is a special feature in many text lay-out programs), and it comes close to defeating spell-checking programs.

Spaces between words don't succeed immediately. Classical Latin inscriptions had both dots between words ('interpuncts') to separate words and acute accents ('apices') to mark long vowels. Both dropped out of common use. It's striking that Indian languages now use spaces to separate words, though I suppose this might be due to Arabic influence. Even Pali in Thai script seems to separate words by spaces.

Even question mark ? is totally unnecessary because the last word in a question already tells it's a question.

Why do the stories in magazines (sorry, no access to Thai comics) use question marks? They also use exclamation marks, but perhaps that's less surprising.