thaigrammar

[buhi]

mytakeonthaigrammarandifyoucanunderstandthisyouarebrighterthanmostpoorthaichildrencan

[Squeegee]

"...are brighter than most Thai children can..."

You are in no position to ridicule anyone else's grammar, irrespective of your ignorance of their written language.

[bannork]

Reading Thai is not difficult and the pronunciation is far easier than English as it's phonetic with only a few exceptions

none of the good food blood bough though through enough irregular English pronunciations.

[Stan42]

I also found it, and still find it confusing, that Thai's do not use the space bar or commas. At least this is the criticism I thought OP was hinting at.

[bannork]

Thai language does use spaces, between phrases and/or sentences- pick up any newspaper and you'll see what I mean ( we're not allowed to use Thai script except on the Thai language forum)

[montrii]

Reading Thai is not difficult and the pronunciation is far easier than English as it's phonetic with only a few exceptions

none of the good food blood bough though through enough irregular English pronunciations.

I completely disagree. If this is true for you, you have a most enviable talent, but I can assure you it is not true for most, including me. And I am a professional translator of Thai books and magazines, with quite a few volumes out in the bookstores right now. Thai is a bear to learn to read, the lack of parsing makes even quite educated Thais stumble with regularity, and there are more than a few exceptions to phonetic spelling, plus many ambiguities in the ways things might be pronounced. For instance, reading a simple word like เสนา you would likely be tempted to read "sa-nao," to conform with a standard rule. But the actual pronunciation is "sei-naa," which is also standard. And there are so many letters with identical sounds that you often can't tell how to spell something from the way it's pronounced. You have to learn rules about high consonants, mid consonants, and low consonants, plus long and short vowels and "live" and "dead" syllables. This is all BEFORE the exceptions. The writing system is also inflexible, and therefore incapable of accurate transliteration of many, many sounds in other languages. I have been speaking Thai since my 20s and have successfully done free-lance translation for many years, but I still read measurably slower than English. It seems to me someone who believes what you state here, that reading Thai is not difficult, is either 1) incredibly talented, and believes this talent extends to the rest of the human race, or 2) plain old ignorant.

[Suradit69]

"...are brighter than most Thai children can..."

You are in no position to ridicule anyone else's grammar, irrespective of your ignorance of their written language.

"...are brighter than most Thai children can..."

Whoever wrote than certainly has problems coping with English grammar.

The English language with all it's inconsistencies is quite difficult to learn regardless of word spacing. Certainly when it comes to learning the Mother Tongue I would say most Thai children are more successful than many of the regular native English speakers who post on Thai Visa ... including those who inquire about making "boarder" runs or those who complain that immigrations officers are trying to "illicit" negative reactions or those who say "you should "of" done this or that."

I've seen examples of passages in English rendered in scriptio continua that were actually quite easy to read regardless of the spacing.

This poem written by Gerald Manley Hopkins in the 1800's is a bit more challenging because words are often chopped in two to preserve line length.

MARGARETAREYOUGRIEVI

NGOVERGOLDENGROVEUNL

EAVINGLEAVESLIKETHET

HINGSOFMANYOUWITHYOU

RFRESHTHOUGHTSCAREFO

RCANYOUAHASTHEHEARTG

ROWSOLDERITWILLCOMET

OSUCHSIGHTSCOLDERBYA

NDBYNORSPAREASIGHTHO

UGHWORLDSOFWANWOODLE

AFMEALLIEANDYETYOUWI

LLWEEPANDKNOWWHYNOWN

OMATTERCHILDTHENAMES

ORROWSSPRINGSARETHES

AMENORMOUTHHADNONORM

INDEXPRESSEDWHATHEAR

THEARDOFGHOSTGUESSED

ITISTHEBLIGHTMANWASB

ORNFORITISMARGARETY

OUMOURNFOR

Spring and Fall (1880) by Gerard Manley Hopkins rendered in normal punctuation:

Margaret, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves, like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! as the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you will weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrow's springs are the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.

Edited June 18, 2015 by Suradit69

[montrii]

Wait a minute . . . GMH wrote it that way? When? I see only normal versions . . . as http://www.potw.org/archive/potw29.html

[bannork]

Sorry Montree, we will have to agree to disagree. I've done my share of reading and writing Thai over the years, I did a Bachelor degree in Humanities, majoring in Thai language at Ramkhamhaeng, the year after Andrew Biggs- that involved a lot of reading and writing and I say again, it's not that difficult.

I'm not talented, simply motivated, once one is familiar enough with the words, the brain easily scans sentences, recognizing and breaking up the words.

The tone rules make things easier in my view because then the reader knows how they should be pronounced, unlike in English where the non-native speaker has no choice but to memorize long and short vowels ie good mood or even a complete change of sound- bull hull

Millions of Thai people read newspapers, magazines and the internet every day, not all of them are incredibly talented.

[buhi]

"...are brighter than most Thai children can..."

You are in no position to ridicule anyone else's grammar, irrespective of your ignorance of their written language.

"...are brighter than most Thai children can..."

Whoever wrote than certainly has problems coping with English grammar.

The English language with all it's inconsistencies is quite difficult to learn regardless of word spacing. Certainly when it comes to learning the Mother Tongue I would say most Thai children are more successful than many of the regular native English speakers who post on Thai Visa ... including those who inquire about making "boarder" runs or those who complain that immigrations officers are trying to "illicit" negative reactions or those who say "you should "of" done this or that."

I've seen examples of passages in English rendered in scriptio continua that were actually quite easy to read regardless of the spacing.

This poem written by Gerald Manley Hopkins in the 1800's is a bit more challenging because words are often chopped in two to preserve line length.

MARGARETAREYOUGRIEVI

NGOVERGOLDENGROVEUNL

EAVINGLEAVESLIKETHET

HINGSOFMANYOUWITHYOU

RFRESHTHOUGHTSCAREFO

RCANYOUAHASTHEHEARTG

ROWSOLDERITWILLCOMET

OSUCHSIGHTSCOLDERBYA

NDBYNORSPAREASIGHTHO

UGHWORLDSOFWANWOODLE

AFMEALLIEANDYETYOUWI

LLWEEPANDKNOWWHYNOWN

OMATTERCHILDTHENAMES

ORROWSSPRINGSARETHES

AMENORMOUTHHADNONORM

INDEXPRESSEDWHATHEAR

THEARDOFGHOSTGUESSED

ITISTHEBLIGHTMANWASB

ORNFORITISMARGARETY

OUMOURNFOR

Spring and Fall (1880) by Gerard Manley Hopkins rendered in normal punctuation:

Margaret, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves, like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! as the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you will weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrow's springs are the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.

"Thai children can," Interesting that I made that error and I believe it was because I was writing in an unfamiliar way, but you are correct it is not the correct use of English grammar. Good point!

Thanks for the replies from the Thai readers and writers. It interests me as I cannot read Thai and do find it strange not to have spaces between words.

Remember this is "fun and entertainment" not a flaming match!

My son finds reading English easier than reading Thai and he goes to a Thai school. This is why I became interested in the difficulties of learning to read and write in Thai. Perhaps he is not very gifted, same as his father!

Children of his age , who have learnt English reading and writing from the start of their school life, are in my experience far in advance in their ability to write simple sentences.

As stated I cannot read Thai, and was hoping for and received feedback from those that are able to. Many thanks.

[montrii]

@Bannork . . . putting your quote in because I forgot to do it at the start . . .

Bannork wrote:

". . . we will have to agree to disagree. I've done my share of reading and writing Thai over the years, I did a Bachelor degree in Humanities, majoring in Thai language at Ramkhamhaeng, the year after Andrew Biggs- that involved a lot of reading and writing and I say again, it's not that difficult."

Well, not knowing more than that, I just say my hat's off to you if you feel it's easy - you're certainly not ignorant! - but I doubt that perception is shared by many. I love the cool-looking characters and the history in them, but I believe the language would be well served by a serious reworking of the writing system. A lot of me would hate to see it Romanized, after the Vietnamese model, but I believe it would promote increased literacy in Thailand and make the language more accessible to scholars. But I see disadvantages in that, too. At the very least, though, I think they should start parsing words (putting spaces between them), and making a more sophisticated and consistent use of punctuation.

I've had deep conversations about related subjects with educated Thais, and have often heard Thais of all educational levels say they developed a dislike of reading at an early age because reading was agonizingly difficult to learn when they were in those early school years. Very common story, almost the same one every time. Thailand has some avid readers, but I don't believe nearly as many as in Western countries. Yes, millions easily (more than I) read newspapers every day and are not incredibly talented, but they were taught in early years, and had nothing to compare it to. Most of those same "easy readers" have tremendous difficulty with English and other Roman-alphabetic languages, and much of that is because they're taught to relate the sounds to their own rigid system. Learning to read Thai is certainly not be as hard as reading Japanese (the hardest one I've seriously looked at), but it's a way, way harder than for Korean, and I think than any European language, too.

I guess we can go on agreeing to disagree, but it would be good to hear from others who've made serious attempts at learning it and get more opinions.

Edited June 19, 2015 by montrii

[buhi]

@Bannork . . . putting your quote in because I forgot to do it at the start . . .

Bannork wrote:

". . . we will have to agree to disagree. I've done my share of reading and writing Thai over the years, I did a Bachelor degree in Humanities, majoring in Thai language at Ramkhamhaeng, the year after Andrew Biggs- that involved a lot of reading and writing and I say again, it's not that difficult."

Well, not knowing more than that, I just say my hat's off to you if you feel it's easy - you're certainly not ignorant! - but I doubt that perception is shared by many. I love the cool-looking characters and the history in them, but I believe the language would be well served by a serious reworking of the writing system. A lot of me would hate to see it Romanized, after the Vietnamese model, but I believe it would promote increased literacy in Thailand and make the language more accessible to scholars. But I see disadvantages in that, too. At the very least, though, I think they should start parsing words (putting spaces between them), and making a more sophisticated and consistent use of punctuation.

I've had deep conversations about related subjects with educated Thais, and have often heard Thais of all educational levels say they developed a dislike of reading at an early age because reading was agonizingly difficult to learn when they were in those early school years. Very common story, almost the same one every time. Thailand has some avid readers, but I don't believe nearly as many as in Western countries. Yes, millions easily (more than I) read newspapers every day and are not incredibly talented, but they were taught in early years, and had nothing to compare it to. Most of those same "easy readers" have tremendous difficulty with English and other Roman-alphabetic languages, and much of that is because they're taught to relate the sounds to their own rigid system. Learning to read Thai is certainly not be as hard as reading Japanese (the hardest one I've seriously looked at), but it's a way, way harder than for Korean, and I think than any European language, too.

I guess we can go on agreeing to disagree, but it would be good to hear from others who've made serious attempts at learning it and get more opinions.

" I've had deep conversations about related subjects with educated Thais, and have often heard Thais of all educational levels say they developed a dislike of reading at an early age because reading was agonizingly difficult to learn when they were in those early school years."

Very true.

Many years ago I was working at The Nation with the then head of the English Edutainment department.

On our travels, lecturing, she remarked that I was always reading novels and that she hated reading!

We discussed this and it was as Montrii remarked, that she had never learnt to love reading for pleasure, only for information.

Again , those wiser than I, might like to comment.

Pira Sudham, writes in English; true later in his youth he had the opportunity of an English education.

Asked why he wrote in English and not his native Thai (Isarn), he stated the language was too stilted and limited his ability to full express himself.

Discuss.

[Iamemjay]

Montri, I'm with you. The claim of it being phonetically pure is so far from the truth it is not funny. Another example you did not mention is the silent consonants. My wife has one silent consonant in each of her names. Inexplicably (to little old ignorant me, I must admit) when they translate her names, they include those consonants, so that the English versions still have consonants that are not sounded. I spend my life correcting people sounding the names as they are written.

[buhi]

Was eating lunch and Thai television was on. I noticed the Thai subtitles used parsing.

Children like to read cartoon books; I think the reason being the written language is broken down into readable sound bites with the aid of illustrations.