The week that was in Thailand news: Thai children and the end of English dominance.

[EnlightenedAtheist]

7 hours ago, Dustdevil said:

Japanese did not become the world's commerce and transport language, and neither will Chinese. They're too difficult and time-consuming to learn to read and write. You do realize that you have to learn at least four or five thousand characters just to read a tabloid newspaper. Then you have to learn how to combine those thousands of characters to construct different meanings. As for grammar...English has 26 characters, Arabic 24 or 26, I forget which. Either one is more practical, but it's English that's been established.

 

English has 205 ways of representing those 44 or so phonemes.

 

One could argue that one has to memorize a good number of parts of words in English to know how to pronounce them, how to decode them, and to spell them. In fact, I could argue that English is part logographic (like Chinese) and part phonemic (like Spanish). The vowel system is mostly logographic (as I have described in the OP) and the consonant system is mostly phonemic. Not so easy.

 

Chinese has a huge diaspora and is getting to be a world power. It is already in Africa as mentioned. 

 

You know what happens to people and civilizations that don't adapt,... they decline. Latin used to be the lingua franca. French was for a while. They probably all felt that they could not possibly be kicked to the curb.

Edited January 19, 2017 by EnlightenedAtheist

[overherebc]

On 15/01/2017 at 0:14 PM, bbbbooboo said:

hmmmm......truer words have never been spoken on TV. I suspect this will put a Thai pigeon amongst the cats. Well done to the author

 

Truer wurds have nevir been spoken

Well ritten woznt it

Dont forget punktyuaeshun

'It' can make a difrens

[EnlightenedAtheist]

5 minutes ago, overherebc said:

 

Truer wurds have nevir been spoken

Well ritten woznt it

Dont forget punktyuaeshun

'It' can make a difrens

 

What? New punctuation rules! How dare we break these rules? (Of course, English words break spelling rules all of the time and that's okay!)

 

Actually, I am more confused by your new system as it is not very coherent.

 

Is your schwa an "e" or "u"? Truer but wurds but nevir?

The "s" is again a "z" or an "s" phoneme?

 

But, you know what? You could spend your time talking about content! Form over content? Why? I got the main thesis without the punctuation.

 

Speaking of content, it is quite obvious that the PM (the party/elite) was being demagogical to make the average Thais feel that their nation (the govn't really) is doing so well, it could soon kick English (those foreigners) to the curb. Wow! It might  make some of the locals looking at the foreigners stealing their women feel better. It was such outrageous a comment it probably made headlines. It probably worked!

 

[overherebc]

Isn't english changing continually?

If you could travel to a past time, let's say five hundred years or so it's very likely that english as spoken or written today would not be understood. The same would apply going five hundred years into the future.

Spoken or written english is understood at the time it's being used. 

All these wonderful rules on spelling and grammar will change with time.

Not only english changes.

'Le weekend' is now accepted as being part of French.

 

[sprq]

On 15/01/2017 at 1:15 PM, aslimversgwm said:

yes it b---dy well is! I, and many 'educated' British or US born people do ALL the time for as long as they live! English is NOT an easy language - you really have to believe that or you'll continue knocking poor Thai students who find it horrendously difficult.

They find it difficult because they're extremely badly taught. It's actually very easy for anybody to pick up basic English if they are well taught, even if their native language is as different as Thai is. To speak English well is another matter - it's a very complex and subtle language at its best - but to speak it at a basic level is much easier than with languages like French or German, for example, to compare other major European languages.

 

In short, Thai students are extremely badly served by their teachers - and that's why they are so bad at English, not because English at a basic level is difficult. It's not!

[sprq]

On 15/01/2017 at 8:33 PM, spidermike007 said:

Yes, the statement about the lingua franca future of Thai, was astonishing to anyone with an inquiring mind. It is always kind of amazing to me how little Thailand rates on the world stage. Outside of Thailand, few ever mention the country. Once in a while it comes up in conversation since people know I live here. But, how often do you see Thailand spoken of in the media? Now that most Westerners are losing interest in Thailand as a tourist destination, due to two very hard years spent sabotaging the industry, by both the PM, and the TAT, they are not even discussing it as a place to visit anymore.  

 

So, the very possibility of it becoming a world language would to some extent be based on the presumption that Thailand is becoming more and more important a nation. Perhaps it is all of the Pulitzers, Peabodys, Oscars, Nobel Peace prize awards, Olympic gold medals, World Cup victories, and other international recognitions that Thailand is achieving? 

 

Talk about myopia. Talk about living within the ivory tower. Talk about being out of touch with his people. Talk about a limited world view. What can one say? 

I'd say it's simply the arrogance of a powerful man unused to his pronouncements being questioned and who gets in the habit of saying whatever idiocy comes into his mind because nobody ever questions him. Of course, he does get questioned these days, by the media and some others, and gets very riled about it, but still slips back into his usual bubble of spouting inanities without fear of contradiction, such is the mentality of a powerful person in Thailand.

[sprq]

5 hours ago, EnlightenedAtheist said:

 

English has 205 ways of representing those 44 or so phonemes.

 

One could argue that one has to memorize a good number of parts of words in English to know how to pronounce them, how to decode them, and to spell them. In fact, I could argue that English is part logographic (like Chinese) and part phonemic (like Spanish). The vowel system is mostly logographic (as I have described in the OP) and the consonant system is mostly phonemic. Not so easy.

 

Chinese has a huge diaspora and is getting to be a world power. It is already in Africa as mentioned. 

 

You know what happens to people and civilizations that don't adapt,... they decline. Latin used to be the lingua franca. French was for a while. They probably all felt that they could not possibly be kicked to the curb.

English will remain the world's lingua franca, even as China rises and America declines.  There is no way that Chinese - the only conceivable rival of English - can replace English in the near future, or any time this century, because English is too well established globally and Chinese is damned difficult by comparison, at least in reading and writing. English also has soft power behind it, all the movies and music and TV shows, etc, etc which the world loves and the Chinese don't ever look like replacing. The world may buy Chinese goods by the shipload but it has no interest in the Chinese language.

 

I'm not being myopic by saying this, I'm being realistic. 

[EnlightenedAtheist]

12 hours ago, sprq said:

They find it difficult because they're extremely badly taught. It's actually very easy for anybody to pick up basic English if they are well taught, even if their native language is as different as Thai is. To speak English well is another matter - it's a very complex and subtle language at its best - but to speak it at a basic level is much easier than with languages like French or German, for example, to compare other major European languages.

 

In short, Thai students are extremely badly served by their teachers - and that's why they are so bad at English, not because English at a basic level is difficult. It's not!

 

What is your definition of basic English? 100 words? 500 words?

 

I have a problem with wild statements that are not supported with anything, but one opinion. They are "extremely badly taught" you state. Where is that thesis supported? I don't see any data. How do you know? How many schools and classes have you been to? How long were you there for? Some teaching involves a foreign teacher. Can you give us less opinion and more hard data? How is the teaching deficient? Again, what is this opinion based on?

 

Then, you even go further with the opinion. You state unequivocally that basic French or German is much tougher than English. Again, you do not elaborate. I know a lot of Thais who speak excellent French or German.

 

 

 

[EnlightenedAtheist]

12 hours ago, sprq said:

English will remain the world's lingua franca, even as China rises and America declines.  There is no way that Chinese - the only conceivable rival of English - can replace English in the near future, or any time this century, because English is too well established globally and Chinese is damned difficult by comparison, at least in reading and writing. English also has soft power behind it, all the movies and music and TV shows, etc, etc which the world loves and the Chinese don't ever look like replacing. The world may buy Chinese goods by the shipload but it has no interest in the Chinese language.

 

I'm not being myopic by saying this, I'm being realistic. 

 

That's what the Romans thought.

[EnlightenedAtheist]

16 hours ago, overherebc said:

Isn't english changing continually?

If you could travel to a past time, let's say five hundred years or so it's very likely that english as spoken or written today would not be understood. The same would apply going five hundred years into the future.

Spoken or written english is understood at the time it's being used. 

All these wonderful rules on spelling and grammar will change with time.

Not only english changes.

'Le weekend' is now accepted as being part of French.

 

 

So you are saying that because something happened 500 years ago it will happen again? So, we should expect another Inquisition soon because it happened 500 years ago? The variables in the equation have not changed a bit since then? We have a lot more books read by a whole lot more people who have gone a lot longer to schools. They are using smartphones now with access to just about anything they are interested to learn. How does one pronounce "laissez-faire"? No problem.

 

"The advent of printing in the late 1400s drastically changed [...]

The rise of schools, designed to train not only religious workers but also secular clerical workers for government, made it possible to train larger numbers of people in literacy [...]

The growth of a professionalized class of printers outside of the direct control of church and government led to the role of printers in setting norms of writing and spelling. Printers had a strong interest in standardization to reduce variation and hence make the printing process easier. [...]

During the 1500s, a major upheaval in the pronunciation of English vowels, the Great English Vowel shift, spread through the speech community and [...] (from http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Histengl/spelling.html)

 

I think the Great Vowel shift occurred largely before the invention of the printing press and, more crucially, before people could have access to books and could read them. Books had a huge effect of cementing the language: in connecting the spoken words with the printed word. It is very hard nowadays to write without spelling words correctly (spell-checking and forum rules dictate that words should be spelled correctly). In 500 years, things have changed a lot and I have heard a lot of change in how words are being pronounced now that most people are being schooled to say words as they are supposed to be said and pronounced. Now, it is true that English with its extremely flawed spelling system might cause people to mispronounce words. With the Internet though, anyone can check and correct anyone very easily. English media is readily available. At the same time, there could be a SLOW process of unification of pronunciation and accents, but that Scottish lad is proud of his accent! At the same time, now, he is listening to the BBC everyday and might slowly but surely change his accent. But, a Great Vowel Shift? I don't think so it will ever happen. A Great spelling Reform should happen though. I have explained how it could be done in the past, but here is some explanation about how it could be done: 

 

MAIN SINE QUA NON CONDITIONS for a reform (Short “how” answer)

1. No current population will be required to learn the new spellings. It will not be necessary.
2. Introduce the new system in whole to new students in level 1 (primary classes) called cohort 1 (or C1) and phase it in, one year at a time, thereafter.
3. C1 students and all future cohorts will be given bilingual, bicodal courses in the old system. They will be bicodal to some degree.
4. Other (English 1.0) students will get some instruction with the new system, but increasingly so for the cohorts that are closer to the new system’s cohort .
5. Use diaphonemes (average of phonemic variations of main dialects) or some kind of agreed average depending on which Commonwealth countries (their citizens) are interested.
6. Use an extremely systematic and phonemic scheme with virtually no exceptions. No compromise.
7. Keep local, dialectal spoken/speech
8. Use computer technology to transcode material. Writers will see their work published in two varieties, or as desired by the customer using a free transcoding program.
9. No loss of jobs. Translators/interpreters will still be needed for the current population.

Edited January 20, 2017 by EnlightenedAtheist

[overherebc]

Nobody expected the Spanish Inguisition?

That's not true by the way, I think people were actually given prior notice.

I know you didn't use those words.

Re' your list of ways the spelling reform could be done.

It's lists like that those that put kids off learning basic english rules in communication. If you intend it for university studies then fine.

The english language will change/develop all on it's own. Written rules will have very little effect.

[EnlightenedAtheist]

32 minutes ago, overherebc said:

Nobody expected the Spanish Inguisition?

That's not true by the way, I think people were actually given prior notice.

I know you didn't use those words.

Re' your list of ways the spelling reform could be done.

It's lists like that those that put kids off learning basic english rules in communication. If you intend it for university studies then fine.

The english language will change/develop all on it's own. Written rules will have very little effect.

 

We can be funny, but it remains that the main idea as stated is that we cannot expect something to happen because 500 years ago it happened.

 

Re: the list

 

Wow! Hold on! You take my list and you infer that I would use those for teaching English. Wow! Sneaky! But, am I teaching YOU English here? NOPE! Different places! Different subjects! Different times! Different people! Different goals! 

 

A language is made up of two main elements: its spoken part and its written part. The former could change on its own. I argue there is not one chance in a billion that the spelling system will magically change and I have explained why. The only way would be to have a reform and it's bloody well needed after 250 years of virtually no change. Mmm! 250 years of status quo. Mmm! I see a pattern!

[William C F Pierce]

Good job Thais don't understand the complexities of the double meanings in the English language or your post would have been removed. Great to be able to read all your hidden truths.