I don't like to correct my gf when she's speaking English. Am I the only one?

[jpduggan]

Don't worry about it, Thais are fast enough to correct us if we try to speak Thai or just pretend that they don't have a clue what we're trying to say!

[wilcopops]

Too much correction will put her off.....and no matter what you think, speaking "pid-gin" will improve her English gradually.

Over correction is usually a sign of someone's own feelings of inadequacy.

[wilcopops]

I can't be bothered to rather than not liking to correct my wife but glad I did.

I wouldn't want her to be speaking bad English with me in front of our children.

I get really annoyed with some friends who come round to ours and speak pidgin Thai/English with my kids. I mean what the ####? It is funny though watching my kids cringe. One of my friends who is the worst teaches English at a university!

I correct "her in doors" all the time and expect her to correct my Thai..... If the native speaker is not correcting, how someone to improve in a language which is not their native one ?

Even at work I help correct my Thai colleagues English, obviously doing in such a way as I am not coming across as a grammar Nazi

" If the native speaker is not correcting, how someone to improve in a language which is not their native one ?" - What????

[sirchai]

If you like to speak baby English, it's up to you. I know an American English teacher, married to a Thai for some years but they only communicate in Thai.

His wife can read and write, (usually "chatting on facebook"), but not speak in English. Married to an English teacher,but can't speak it. Failed.

Another guy, Canadian sometimes tells me: I go Bangkok tomorrow. Then I tell him to stop speaking baby English to me, as I'm not his wife. ( Not yet!)

Why would you not correct her English? I always appreciate when Thais correct my mispronounced Thai/ Lao.-

Edited December 18, 2013 by sirchai

[ignis]

To speak proper English you need a fresh plum in your mouth, never found any here...

[sabai-dee-man]

It drives me up the wall! I have a very well educated Australian friend, with a string of letters after his name, who talks like a child with Thai girls, and ends up doing it with his western friends too. I feel it's belittling, personally.

I always speak to them how I would a native English speaker, and if they struggle with something, try to find another way [still in correct form] to try and say it. I'm no teacher, but I love to help Thais learn, because in my experience, they really love to learn. Many have said I should be a teacher, but Thailand couldn't afford me!

As another poster pointed out, you don't need to correct everything thing they say, as they say it, but wait for the best time to do so. Conversational flow is also important. However, it is my experience that Thais really appreciate the opportunity to improve their English language skills, and would go as far as to say many even prefer to speak in English than in Thai, when they have the chance to do so with a native speaker, even if he/she can speak Thai.

[sfbandung]

I always correct her but without ridicule. Her English is still much better than my Thai!

We have fun with mutual difficulties. She was filling out a departure card from Australia and I wasn't traveling with her. She called and wanted to know what "Resident departing temporarily" was. We still laugh at her attempt to pronounce "temporarily". Haven't found a Thai yet who can say it 3 times quickly.

From my point I was trying to get on top of "End of the walkway" in Thai. Which we hear of course endlessly at Swampy. "Sin sut tang Lian". My pronunciation of the last word is always wrong and amuses our Thai friends enormously when I try.

[onvacation]

Interesting topic.

Yesterday I got together with two Thai ladies who have a college degree. They mentioned, that the reason they didn't invite other Thai ladies to our yesterday gathering was because they were tired of translating (for me lol). These Thai ladies I got together with are married to farang and have decent English. They try their best to speak good English. They are my friends, my equals not my students therefeore, I don't correct their English ever unless I am asked. If I don't understand them I just ask lots of questions, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't but oh well we get along fine and that's what important to me.

Do I find mature ladies talking baby talk cute? No way. But I do respect their effort in learning another language. I think in your situation it would be helpful if you asked your partner if she wanted to learn correct English. If the answer is 'yes' you either have to correct her or send her to a language school.

I started to speak like a baby too.

Just yesterday I said to my Chinese friend 'I no go market today':-)

[namdocmai]

I was taught to speak Queen Elisabeth english, i couldn't be bothered to learn it untill i started travelling abroad. When i met the first Scotsman i thought he was a Russian trying to speak english to me which he couldn't.

I correct my wife but not in public. She also works with foreigners and has been abroad with me many times. She understands the importance of speaking proper english but sometimes still makes the same old mistakes like saying browse instead of blouse and so on.

One day at the airport i was sitting close to a German and his Thai wife. They had their own language, a mix of Thai-German-English and something else. Really funny to hear but i wonder what happens if they go abroad together.

It also took me 25 years to speak english at the level where i am now and i still feel dumb when i don't know how to say something properly. I speak 5 languages so it is not a real shame though.

I always like to be corrected myself since i know the importance of speaking proper english. But sometimes i meet Americans with strange accents that i really can't understand. One american i met was going to have a "mill" in some restaurant and he liked to eat real "batter" on his toast.

Pidgeon english sounds really dumb to me, in shops i also use it to the sales and i don't care if they think it is the proper way to speak english. Mostly i don't speak at all in shops, especially when they approach me with Sawasdee Khrab/Kha.

My wife has a university degree and extra private english lessons for some years. I'm proud when she can talks to any foreigner without using baby-english. If she couldn't do that i probably would never travel abroad with her.

[tingtongteesood]

I really hate when native English speakers talk that 'special' way to Thai people, it's bloody patronising. I refuse to do it. I speak normally. If they don't understand me then I speak a bit slower and try to anunciate more clearly and failing that try and use Thai.

[misterphil]

I ask my wife to correct my Thai, and shes asks me to correct her English. Thats the best way to learn another language when you have a native speaker teaching you.

Some people like to speak broken English such as "what you do?" "where you go?" etc with their Thai wives and GF's but its not for me. In fact I think they sound stupid and why would you want to talk like you don't know how to speak correctly? You should be encouraging them to speak the right way. IMHO

[SpokaneAl]

I am doing my best to learn to read, write and speak Thai. In saying that I don't think that I would be happy if I later found out that most of my Thai conversational ability was made up of broken sentence, baby talk because my family, which are my primary teachers, thought it was cute.

[sabai-dee-man]

On a night out, a bit of "pigeon" English can really help, when a girl is stuck with something. I think it can then be used as a learning tool, but only to communicate a point.

As a side note though, if correcting someone, I will always ask them first if they want to be corrected! Most do, I find. I will also tell them that if I laugh, I will laugh with them, not at them, and explain why something is funny. It grates me when Thais laugh at westerners trying to speak Thai, or act like they have no idea what you are saying. It can really knock a speaker's confidence.

[newermonkey]

My Thai son was like that, but over the years he now speaks good English.

When I am in a good mood I don't correct the Thais, just let it go and usually ignore them, when they use pigeon English!

... But, when I am in a bad mood I get very irritated so the response to the "hungry!" word (or any other pigeon English) would get my response as such..

1) "yes Hungry, its in central Europe, what do you want to discuss regarding that wonderful country?"

2) "No I am not hungry, thank you for the offer to prepare something for me though"

3) "Impossible I just fed the dog it cant be hungry already"

After some very angry looks I will follow up with ... OH..., I see you are saying "you" are hungry, why did you not say "I am feeling quite hungry" or "Are you feeling hungry because I am" then I would have understood instantly!!!!

But if I am out with friends and they start to talk like 3 year old's with the Thais, it really irritates me, especially when the Thai person in question would understand "real" English far better.

I usually say to the friends "<deleted> are you trying to say? cant you speak English?, idiot, moron!!

Could this be why I don't have many friends ? !!!!

5555

Edited December 18, 2013 by newermonkey

[Travel Dude]

My Thai wife hates it when someone speaks incomplete English to her. She would immediately clarify she is not a bar girl. I think you should speak correctly then your gf can learn properly. Me go shower and me want eat is just so poor language. Cute perhaps but I wonder if others see it like that.

[newermonkey]

To speak proper English you need a fresh plum in your mouth, never found any here...

Oh, I say dear fellow, dare I say you obviously don't associate with the right sorts, may I strongly recommend you refrain from associating with the riffraff lower classes.

[newermonkey]

Too much correction will put her off.....and no matter what you think, speaking "pid-gin" will improve her English gradually.

Over correction is usually a sign of someone's own feelings of inadequacy.

Sorry, but you are totally incorrect..

[rjcampbe]

Great topic.

My wife speaks very good english and she will not tolerate someone being disrespectful or speaking down to her. We were aquianted with a couple (The lady was a very nice Thai woman but I can't call the guy a friend.) who we tried to get to know and hang out with. The man is a fairly typical loud American guy who lived here part time and thought he walked on water and was god's gift to Thai women. One of his most annoying traits, besides being a cheap bastard who constantly nit picks sub 1000 baht dinner bills for four people, was the way he would try to control every situation and every thought, move, and comment his wife would make. His wife was very submissive and allowed it, and I felt bad for her... He would frequently try to say things in front of her "in code" so she wouldn't understand what he was saying... and he assumed that my wife couldn't follow what he was saying either... He was VERY WRONG!

Whenever they would come into town, they would call us to have dinner... My wife really liked the lady, but neither of us cared for the guy, we found it hard to refuse the invitation every once in a while... So one night they called and we met for dinner and he started making comments about "thai women" and hinting at his "exploits" and my wife was getting pissed off. She finally told him, very politely, that she didn't appreciate what he was saying in front of her and his wife... He started talking to my wife in pidgin english and just generally talking down to her saying she misunderstood him... That lasted about 3 seconds... My wife, who had held her tongue until then out of respect for her friend, ripped him a new one in the middle of the restaurant, translating his slang "code" and telling him he was a low class, disrepectful jerk. He didn't know what hit him and I laughed so hard I cried. We haven't heard from him since. No loss... really!

But even so... My wifes english isn't perfect. But I pick and choose what parts I try to correct, and when and where and how I do it. I think it would be annoying to live your life in English class, so I don't do that to her. There are some gramatical errors, usually verb tense for irregular verbs, which is a hard concept for a non native speaker whose native language doesn't use verb tense at all. However, most of the errors are pronunciation errors on complex words. And I agree with the OP that some of them are cute. :-) There is a sylable that gets dropped out of the middle of "responsibility" that always makes me smile... She works on it, but that word always trips her up.

One thing I'm sure of is that her English is a hell-of-a-lot better than my Thai. How many of you can properly pronounce a 4 sylable Thai word, let alone 6?

But mostly, my approach is that I don't speak pidgin to her. I speak to her with proper grammer and i use a fair amount of slang and idioms. Usually, she figures it out from the context, but if I go too far, she will ask me to explain it... or she will hear a phrase on TV and ask me about it... What it means, how to use it...

What is REALLY cute is when she starts using these new phrases back on me!

Cross cultural relationships are bound to have these language elements that need to be worked on all the time... It is extra work but it is also makes life interesting. My wife and I communicate much better than my previous marriage... and my ex spoke English... so what does that tell you?

[In Search of Space]

Been married 25 years (yep, you get less for murder). She has even lived in the UK for 25 years, now we live in Thailand. Her English is awful, but I always speak to her correctly in English, no pidgen, still some hope that she will improve - in all areas !

Edited December 18, 2013 by In Search of Space

[uptheos]

I didn't even speak baby talk to my kids, I'm certainly not going to speak it to an adult.

If guys want to take their wives/gf for a ride on a choo choo train, that's up to them.

[belg]

is your girlfriend 12 ? looooooooooooooooooooool

[Torrens54]

As someone else mentioned, it is not a matter of correcting them, but HOW you correct them.

My wife Majored in English at Uni but didn't use it all that much for years until she met me. She has no problem with me correcting her and she goes out of her way to "get it right." When we lived in Australia, she passed her written MDL examination the first time she took the test and she scored 100%.

Same with our daughter, whom we adopted when she was about 7. At the time she spoke only a half dozen words in English and we took her to live in Australia. We were very lucky, her first Primary School Teacher worked hard to get her up to speed and we had her learn the Phonetic Alphabet in just a couple of days.

Now back in LOS as a teenager, she is always Top of her English Class and has been known to (politely) correct the teacher at times. This she does, in the same way that we correct her and the teacher has told us that she appreciates the help.

[shaurene]

I think it is good to correct them at times but not sarcastically. Make out you are helping them, I do with my wife and she has not problem with it.

[MantisMan]

Lots of pidgin phases we use in today's English is from the Cantonese, believe it or not:

Long time, no see

No this no that

No money no talk

Look-see

Chop chop

I'm sure there are more.

[biplanebluey]

Yes,let's all speak perfect English in a BBC estuary accent,what an interesting place the world would be then!

Well I like to hear my wife talking.I understand most what she says and I occasionally correct her nicely if it is for some word that is a problem for me to understand,but hey you guys like the man said--- do you want them to speak like BBC announcers?????? Come on ------ just enjoy the fact that you have a foreigner wife/girlfriend and be happy together-------- if this is all you have to worry about----------

[Bpuumike]

My wife speaks just about perfect english sometimes to good . I do find it odd when some of my friends whos wives still speak" me go to bat room " talk to her like she doesn't understand common English. Years ago we talked like this , some of my friends would just crack up listening to us talk . No problem its all part of the cross culture marriage....

The best one was when she first came to the US we were watching TV and she was scratching her arm . I asked whats the matter she said Im skitchey I died laughing ..... The other word was very she could not say a V sound to save her life ,, was always worry .......

Sort of strange as mine always says vater instead of water. And of course, Sukhumvit.

She has made a greater effort to learn English than I have to learn Thai so only try to correct her in very subtle ways.

[NoshowJones]

No, I think you are right, If you keep on correcting her, she will just get discouraged, I think you should communicate in which other way suits you both. Mrs Possum never corrects me when I say things wrong in Thai, I have to ask her.

[Briggsy]

My English mate speaks pidgin English to me. I'm English.

[sirchai]

I even have the order to correct our Thai English teachers, which is almost impossible. But if my wife and son says something wrong, why should i not tell her that?

Me luv u two mach? My wive you!.-

[flyingdoc]

Agreed!

It is the manner in which we correct any pidgin English, rather than IF we do it! My efforts at Thai are constantly corrected many times over to get the correct tonal ending. Even at University level, I have found sentence construction unacceptable especially in published material!