![]() If I get into a taxi in Bangkok and ask the driver to take me to "Future Park Rangsit" he will probably have no idea where that is. To me, correct pronunciation means speaking the language so that it is easily understood with no confusion. When I speak Thai in my everyday life I am not satisfied unless I speak with correct pronunciation. I'm sure that if they said that to a Thai person, however, the response would be "Arai nah?" (What?) Then the Irish person would have to explain again, perhaps in a different way, such as "I came here in July" or "I came here eight weeks ago". When my Irish friends said, "I came here two moont ago", I knew what they meant. Were the Irish correct or were they speaking ‘wrong'? Should I have one rule for the Irish and another rule for Thai people? I must admit, I didn't know what to do.Īfter a lot of thought I decided that I was obviously in no position to ask the Irish teachers (some of whom became very good friends of mine, by the way) to start changing the way they spoke and reverted to my philosophy that as long as the spoken language is understood by the listener then everything is OK. I had left Thailand searching for greener pastures and came upon native English speakers who, according to my philosophy, did not speak English correctly! I must admit, I had real problems with this when I first encountered it. Also, these Irish teachers pronounced ‘the' exactly the same as Thai people do - ‘duh', as well as ‘dis', ‘dat', ‘dese' and ‘dose'. I grew up watching Dave Allen and listening to Ian Paisley on the news but I had never heard ‘month' pronounced like this before. ![]() I had never associated with Irish people before in any capacity and, as a language teacher, I was amazed to hear some of them pronounce the word ‘month' as ‘moont'. I used to work with a group of Irish English teachers in Bahrain. This brings up a whole argument about the need to perfect pronunciation. Unless I knew something about the Thai language I would be totally ignorant of this. So in effect when you ask them to speak English they are really speaking Thai. What they do (and I am guilty of this, too) is they transliterate English into Thai and pronounce the Thai words using the conventions of the Thai language. If you ask a Thai student to say, for example, "The dog" they will say something that sounds like "Duh dok" because they do not have the "th" sound in Thai and they do not end words with the voiced ‘G' sound as we do. These resources are typically very well written but they are never specific for Thai learners because they do not tackle pronunciation of the ‘English sounds' that Thai students need to make in order to be understood. If I am very fortunate, I may be given a specific textbook to use that comes with a listening CD. Wherever I have taught in Thailand I have almost always been asked to teach ‘listening and speaking'. My philosophy on spoken communication has always been that perfect grammar, extensive vocabulary and intimate knowledge of tenses are all totally worthless if the listener cannot understand the words that are coming out of your mouth. But if I did not know anything about Thai language, how could I know this? I must always be aware, however, of my speed when talking and to accentuate the sounds that we have in English but are not present in Thai. I don't have any argument with this because by simply exposing students to listen to a native English speaker for 50 minutes per week is better than nothing. I'm still a long way from being a fluent communicator and I have trouble understanding spoken Thai (especially on TV) but being able to read and, to a lesser extent, to write has been invaluable for my day-to-day life here.Īs an English teacher I am constantly reminded that I am paid to do so because I am expected to speak English at all times in the classroom. ![]() I was not content to simply speak Thai I also wanted to be able to read and write it so that I could eventually master the language and, more importantly, use it. I didn't need to learn Thai to allow me to live in Thailand, of course - it was simply a goal of mine. When I made the decision to leave Australia and come and live in Thailand, one of the main reasons for choosing this country was that I wanted to learn a second language. ![]()
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