Please do not dump some tissue into waters - English is tough! (Part 1)

English is tough!

"R" - I've decided it's more of a vowel than a consanant. It's so close to other things that we easily accept as vowels, but with this addional weird tounge action.

rabbit/write - consonant
draw/cry - consonant

No problem there. But check these out! Say them! Notice your lips and tongue!

car/bar/far
air/care/bear
oar/more/sure/door
ear/beer/fear
super/faster/number

sort/court
bored/chord
form/dorm
burn/fern
church/birch

By the way, can you check out these spellings? They don't even make sense! Thai is like 95% phonetic. They have 44 consonents, but each letter only makes one sound, or at most one sound at the beginning of a syllable and another one at the end, but it's consistant! C, J, G?

Anway, English words adopted by Thai go like this -

airport - "eh-paw" (we don't really pronounce the 't' either)
summer - "sahm-muh"
beer - "bia"
court - "caught"
bar - bah (like ball, without the 'l')

"V" - There's no 'v' in Thai. They have an 'f' sound, but anything English with a 'v' is changed into a 'w'. A popular album is called "Tongchai Willage", at Bud's I sometimes order "wanilla" and all the cool CMU kids drive "Wespas".

Make a 'v' sound for 3 seconds. It's weird. Now imagine doing that for the first time ever.

"N/L" - They have a letter like 'l', but when it's put at the end of the syllable, it's pronounced like an 'n'. It's just Thai and it works fine for Thai, but when you have English words that end with an 'l' this is what happens...

email - e-men
football - footbahn
central - sentron
Nepal - Nepan
volleyball - wolleybahn

Sounds we need new letters for

PH - does p + h = f? no way!
TH - does t + h = -th? not at all.

And to make matters worse, the major transliteration system in Thailand that uses the h to distinguish between the hard 'p' sound, between b&p, and the soft one, as in "puppy". So the city that pronounced like "Bpai" is spelled Pai, and the place which is pronounced more like "Puket" is often spelled Phuket, and then tourist laugh because it looks like "fuck-it", and it also happens to be a place with a lot of prostitues and ladyboys.

Same with -th. 'T' is used for the hard 't' sound between d&t, and 'th' is used for the soft sound as in 'toilet'. So the signs that should be read as Ta Pae Gate, say Tha Phae Gate and I've heard more than one English speaking tourist call it "Tha Fae Gate". I wonder if one of those English people who use 'f' instead of 'th' would call it Fa Fae Gate?

So bringing it back to the Thai students learning English. They see English all over the place in Chiang Mai, but it's Thai English, it's not really Western English.

Consonant clusters that makes sense They have some in Thai (with 'l's and 'r's), but 'l's and 'r's are so annoying to pronounce they're barely used. We were taught them in AUA class, but no one says them in the real world.

bpla - bpa
glai - gai
krai - kai

As much as I try to explain, my kids think that because in Thai they're not that important, in English they're not that important either. Here are some words they can't even distinguish between each other.

crab - cab
plant - pant
break - bake
free - fee

In Thai you don't really pronounce the last consonant sound. We do, but just a little bit, but here are words they pronounce the same.

nice - night
rice - right
find - fine
pink - pin
anymore - animal
single - singer

'L'/'R' - hopeless!

I gave them the sentence, "Turn right at the light, right?" in telephone and it was nearly impossible. Extrememly entertaining though.

One time I heard a 2 minute story from a really bright kid about a lat that couldn't get out of a liver.

Difficult boy's names from the textbook -

brain - one syllable, thing in your head
Brian (bry-yin) - boy's name

dinosaur - prehisoric animal
Dino (dee-no)- boy's name. Luckily there's popular scooter called "Fino" and they all know that, so I write Fino, they say "fee-no!" and then I erase the f, write a d and they say, "awwwhhhh! Dee-no!"

Accents -

For some reason all English words that make it into Thai get a stress on the last syllable. So they think they're speaking English when really they're still speaking Thai.

staw-beh-RII
com-pu-TUH
A-meh-li-KAH
pep-SEE
ham-buh-GUH
wan-ni-LAH

Scary vs. Scared -

This one is pretty entertaining.

"This is no fun. I am boring!"
"The horror movie was great! I was very scary!"
Students with a better vocabulary - "I tripped while I was walking. I was really embarressing!"
"I saw a dog go the bathroom on the street. It was digusted."

Fun vs. Funny -

They use funny where they should use fun all the time. One time a group asked me for the superlative for fun and I got so excited and when they finished their story it turned out they actually wanted be using funny. I've tried to explain it with "Did it tell jokes?" It's kind of harsh because I consider my students pretty funny but they don't necessarily tell jokes. I started with, "Did it make you laugh?" But Thais laugh all the time, even without humor, so that didn't work. They also use fun to mean they enjoyed it or had fun.

"Last weekend, I went to Robinson (a mall) with my friends. It was funny."
"The most interesting place I've been is Doi Suthep Temple. I was very funny."
"I went to a horror move. I was very scary. It was funny."

Going, Doing -

In standard Thai fashion they first say...
"go-ING"

"do-ING"

"Well, try this - 'GO-wing'"

But you didn't realize we use a 'w' in there, huh? Me neither until I heard them say it!

Iceland, island -

"Samui is an...."
"ICELAND!"

Close! Usually one kid knows it's supposed to be "i-land", so I write the both on the board and then get them to the world map and we talk about Iceland, and I get them to try to say Rjeykviek or however it's spelled. That's fun.

"Which one is a country?" "ICELAND!"
"What is Samui?" "I-LAND!"

French fries -

So in Thai fried chicken is said as "chicken deep fry" so when it gets to English is either "chicken fry" or "chicken fried" on a good day. They all love KFC, so I try to get them to remember K-F-C, and it works for a minute, but then they see french fries and everything goes out with window.

Every restaurant with an English menu spells it french fried. Like chicken fried, right? They're deep fried like chicken so finally, English makes sense!

But it doesn't. Cause they're french fries. We do something called Sentence Auctions where they get to put money on sentences and bet if they're correct of incorrect. It can get really tough. One correct sentence I used was, "I'll have a hamburger and french fries, please" and every group confidently put $500 (highest bet) on it being wrong! I was scared they were going to say, "I'll like" or "I'd have" or something like that, but then they all said, "French fried! French fried! Right???"

Oh no. So I have to draw a picture of McDonald's french fries and say, "These are friezzz." And then draw one lone fry, "and this is a... fry." The name actually has nothing to do with them being deep fried! And the French part is confusing even for me. Is it supposed to be capitalized or not?

So English is ridiculous.

Thai isn't easy, but it makes sense. There's an order to things. Check this out...

tam - do
ahahn - food
tam ahahn - cook (v)

sa-at - clean (adj)
kwam - the essence of (used to adj. into nouns)
kwam sa-at - cleanliness (n)
tam kwam sa-at - clean (v)

rahn - shop
rahn ahahn - restaurant

rong - building
rian - study/lean (v)
rong rian - school

jing - true (adj)
kwam jing - truth (n)
jing jing - truely (adv)

dee - good (adj)
dee dee - carefully (adv)
jai - heart
jai dee - good person (adj)
dee jai - glad, happy, excited (adj)

ngan - money
tam - do
tam ngan - work

nang - sit (v)
tii - place, place to (n)
tii nang - seat (n) (not chair, but seat number like on a bus or plane)

mai - stick
jim - dip
fan - tooth
mai jim fan - toothpick

gai - chicken
pad - stir fried
med ma muang - cashews
gai pad med ma muang - chicken with cashews!

Ok, enough for now!

This is all from the top of my head. I have a lot of stuff written down in notebooks from observing in class and I've also been recording a lot of my student's writing to figure out what the toughest stuff is and because their mistakes are just so cute.

HOW CAN I USE BEING INTERESTED IN THIS STUFF IN AMERICA?

WHAT CAN I STUDY?

WHERE CAN I WORK?

AHH!!!! HELP!?!!?!?

Thanks =)