Thailand’s English standard: It’s not all bad news!

[fruitman]

59 minutes ago, whatproblem said:

So thailands got some standards now ,well done 

 

Yup, heavy duty standards on their motocycles so they can overload them and still park it.

[anotheruser]

7 hours ago, rwdrwdrwd said:

Given that the guy's point was that writing and reading are improperly given focus, rather than speaking and listening, success in Scrabble doesn't really negate his comments.

 

Also considering it isn't necessary to understand English to play scrabble either. 

[rwdrwdrwd]

39 minutes ago, Baerboxer said:

 

The guy is a tool and was being a prat. Walking up to strangers and asking silly questions. Looked a bit staged too.

 

To be fair I  haven't bothered watching it,  just read his defence of the video.

[freebyrd]

49 minutes ago, chainarong said:

I was surprised with Cambodia ,they told me that they do first 4hrs at school in English the next four in Khmer

 

My wife has a 16 year old, she's been speaking English 9 years already.

[nausea]

Just to comment on the vocabulary/native speaker incomprehensibility thing, I once knew a Chinese guy, an accredited Chinese/English interpreter and pretty fluent, who boasted that his vocabulary was way beyond your average native speaker. I had a hell of a job convincing him that "stop to think" meant reflect and not stop thinking.

 

[12DrinkMore]

2 hours ago, Jimbo2014 said:

I praise thailand for its efforts to retain its language and culture in this age of homogeneous globalisation.   We ridicule Thais for not speaking english.  The vast majority of English speakers living in Thailand speak appalling Thai (if any) and dont see any hypocrisy in ridiculing thais over their english.

 

There are a lot of English speakers who have declined into a Tarzan like language. 

[nausea]

I agree, guilty myself. But what do you do, the nuances of the English language are rather difficult to explain. Sometimes you can get into a deep conversation with a Thai, about the unmentionable, or personal circumstances. Better not go there.

[Dustdevil]

7 hours ago, DaveE13 said:

 I think accents are reason why the Brits or Americans cant be understood. I know I have to talk a lot slower even in Hong Kong where the English Language is spoken.

Even with relatively neutral accents like "broadcast standard" American or RP, a lot of Malaysians, esp. Chinese, will tell you that "You spea' wi' hayvy slang, lah."

[EnlightenedAtheist]

Whenever I read anything on this topic, I have to laf, sorry laugh!  The real root for the average low English skill in Thailand (anywhere really) is the hundreds of thousands of misspellings in the English LEXICON. It is not a real secret that English has a crazy spelling system and so many irregularities for so many irregular rules that many view it as being closer to Chinese than Finnish (one of the best of all spelling systems, along with Spanish). Yet, we expect miracles using pedagogy centered on writing and reading. Oh! They cannot speak? Nooooo! Really? Here is why!

 

 

Which should reminds you of this:

 

 

I am sure you laughed at thaaaaaaat thinking... "When are they going to fix that?" Hum! 250 years of waiting you fix thaaaat!

 

We know that thaaaaat should be better like this, but what will we complain about? Of course, tutoring agencies will close doors too! Is English spelling the FIAT of all spelling systems? Lemon anyone? Recall?

 

If English orthography was more like Finnish. But, THEY should really fix those wires! Those loose wires! Who is lost?

 

 

 

Of course, there are many excuses for NOT fixing anything. 80+ spelling rules. (1/2 of them exceptions that have exceptions.). 205 ways of spelling 43 sounds (phonemes). Cognitive dissonance, really, but ... the naysayers will say that it would be nearly impossible to make it better, to make it more phonetic (phonemic is the better word), which is a bit of a red herring since we are more interested in fixing the hundreds of thousands of irregularities and not debating whether we can solve the cot/caught issue and a few others. Here is a samole of what we are talking about for just 7000 common words. Please don't bring the etymology argument either,. Except for being helpful with some prefixes, no one cares (and no one can possibly memorize) the etymology of 1 million words. Btw, for 250 years dialectal accents have not vanished, so why would they with English 2.0? Of course, the Brits do not like "academies", those organizations that rule over language use. I guess that is why you are using a spell-checker and we have spelling bees and why so many people cannot speak English! Now, you can continue to laugh and imagine how superior you are to them. Question is: "Ar u?" I mean: "Rrrrrrrrr U?" I mean: "Are you?" And, yes, you can do something about it: http://spellingsociety.org/international-english-spelling-congress. Ar U going too? (Oh! "Too"! Oh! No! And when speaking do you also spell in the air too or to to disambiguate or not? Excuse #1001. Next?)

Edited November 30, 2016 by EnlightenedAtheist

[Slip]

It is really quite unfair to criticise Thais over this article.  It is another example of the click-bait style of writing of the Inspire web-site, which is I believe a completely English-language endeavour.  The fact that Thaikand has some excellent scrabble players is in no way an indication of the across-the-board abilities of Thai speakers being anything other than  it is.

I was interested to see quotes from the recent BBC article suggesting that the fact non-native speakers of English don't understand native speakers is the fault of those native speakers, rather than the non-natives who have not mastered the language.  Having read that article I seem to remember it drew at least in part on a popular internet meme entitled "What the English say vs What the English mean".

'Asinine' is a recently and aptly used word for both the BBC article and the OP.  Sadly it wouldn't score all that well in scrabble.

Edited November 30, 2016 by Slip
grammar?

[anon467367354]

5 hours ago, yellowboat said:

Attaining word power proficiency in English is not trivial.  Father use to remind us that there were 20,000 words in the English Language, but his children chose just a handful of off colored ones to express themselves.  Learning to speak well is also not trivial.   

 not sure where your father got his facts, but is a bit more accurate, this doesn't include medical or science terminology.

Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, together with its 1993 Addenda Section, includes some 470,000 entries. The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, reports that it includes a similar number.

[nausea]

In my experience Thais are pretty good at English, if they have decent teaching. They are mostly motivated by the chance of a good job. Everything works against them. Cynical people see this as a threat.  And I would be very worried  if was a 1%'er  and the great unwashed had access to the internet and the English language.

[EnlightenedAtheist]

3 minutes ago, nausea said:

In my experience Thais are pretty good at English, if they have decent teaching. They are mostly motivated by the chance of a good job. Everything works against them. Cynical people see this as a threat.  And I would be very worried  if was a 1%'er  and the great unwashed had access to the internet and the English language.

 

Sure, good teaching does help, like anything. But, the English language iZ the elephant in the room.

[EnlightenedAtheist]

9 minutes ago, gr8fldanielle said:

 not sure where your father got his facts, but is a bit more accurate, this doesn't include medical or science terminology.

Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, together with its 1993 Addenda Section, includes some 470,000 entries. The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, reports that it includes a similar number.

 

And if you Google it, it is claimed that we have reached 1 million words.

[KMartinHandyman]

The essence of the op is Thais were offended by an internet jerk (which I agree is an idiot) and so they're saving face by pointing out that they have seven people that can spell English very well.

[nausea]

9 minutes ago, EnlightenedAtheist said:

the English language iZ the elephant in the room.

Indeed, we'll have to see how it works out. Pretty difficult to put it back in the box I would imagine, for countries like China and Thailand. 

[Slip]

1 minute ago, KMartinHandyman said:

The essence of the op is Thais were offended by an internet jerk (which I agree is an idiot) and so they're saving face by pointing out that they have seven people that can spell English very well.

 

Except 'they' is not the Thai people but a foreigner-oriented English language website.  

(I agree he's an idiot).

[fruitman]

15 minutes ago, KMartinHandyman said:

The essence of the op is Thais were offended by an internet jerk (which I agree is an idiot) and so they're saving face by pointing out that they have seven people that can spell English very well.

 

That scrabble-champion reads huge thick dictionaries for hobby....that's a way to become good in that game.

[nausea]

Interesting interpretation. 

13 minutes ago, Slip said:

 

Except 'they' is not the Thai people but a foreigner-oriented English language website.  

(I agree he's an idiot).

I remember meeting some Italian guy - learning  English is hard work, full stop, no excuses.

[Slip]

5 minutes ago, nausea said:

Interesting interpretation. 

I remember meeting some Italian guy - learning  English is hard work, full stop, no excuses.

I agree with your sentiment about English being hard to learn, but I'm not sure why you quoted me.  I was referring to someone who said that the Thais were offended, and were saving face. I pointed out that the OP is not  from Thai people saving face but an English language 'news' site.

 

I have no idea what you mean by 'no excuses'.

 

For what it's worth I teach an Italian exchange student who joined my class about 3 months ago.  Her English is the best in the class.

Edited November 30, 2016 by Slip

[George Graham]

The difference between playing Scrabble and speaking English is similar to the difference between playing Connect 4 and chess.

[nausea]

Then I withdaw my comments. My Italian friend, 'who had a rather jaundiced view of Thai language accomplishments, was obviously misguided.

[George Graham]

Just now, nausea said:

Just to comment on the vocabulary/native speaker incomprehensibility thing, I once knew a Chinese guy, an accredited Chinese/English interpreter and pretty fluent, who boasted that his vocabulary was way beyond your average native speaker. I had a hell of a job convincing him that "stop to think" meant reflect and not stop thinking.

 

Exactly nausea. How about "the drinks are on me."

[nausea]

1 minute ago, George Graham said:

The difference between playing Scrabble and speaking English is similar to the difference between playing Connect 4 and chess.

Really? They are two totally different skills. I would say the difference is between learning the Koran by heart, and writing a poem. 

[fusion58]

11 hours ago, hkt83100 said:

And how many of these Scrabble Masters can speak a complete sentence in English?

 

Exactly.

 

By analogy, if I buy a guitar and memorize 10,000 chords, then that makes me a great composer.

 

That's the logic employed by the simpleton who penned this article.

[George Graham]

9 hours ago, nausea said:

Really? They are two totally different skills. I would say the difference is between learning the Koran by heart, and writing a poem. 

"They are two totally different skills." Glad to see you got my point.

[rodney earl]

This is about a very small percentage of the thai population and it is not about speaking and being able to put a english sentence together. Get any thai citizen

to say very and you will see their level of competancy.

[Jimbo2014]

16 hours ago, Mook23 said:

I would agree wirh you if those hypocrites had learned thai in their home country in school. Which they didnt. The thai "learn" english as 2nd language... your argument is bulls hit!

Ps. I do speak thai but not to please the thai but to easy my life. I also speak french and german and... wolof! ?

 

Yea right.  I learnt French at school - I can remember how to tell you I can speak french and count to ten.  Thats about it.  Unless you are using a language every day its really hard to retain what you learn in classes such as school.  Ergo your counter argument is Bulls hits and balls too.

[Retiredandhappyhere]

 

"Scrabble is the world’s most popular word game and is played competitively by more than ten thousand people across the globe"

 

Admittedly, scrabble is quite popular but to put its popularity in context if the above statement is correct, one person out of every 700.000 people in the world play it competitively.    Even allowing for all the really young kids in the world who should be excluded,  that does not sound like scrabble is taking over the world in a competitive sense.  Nevertheless, it is a good educational game and should be encouraged. 

[Jane Dough]

Three pages of comment about Scrabble and English. I would say that the OP got you clicking there.

By the way, all of the Scrabble players competing in Malaysia this week have a good command of spoken English, many of them are fluent. The game didn't teach them this...travelling all over the world representing their country and communicating with other players using English has given them that. The OP didn't say scrabble taught them how to speak English, he was remarking on Scrabble being a beacon showing that not all avenues using English in Thailand are dead end streets.

 

And for those who have a comprehension problem and used the word "asinine" it scores very nicely, thank you, being a seven letter word it is likely to get a 50 point bonus.