Tinglish

[JamesWest]

[Mod Edit] Moved here from the weather thread.

my Thai girlfriend just told me that "Lane crumb soon." she is really good at knowing if it is going to rain or not.

[JamesWest]

and now it is laneing... she was right about the lane crumbing soon.

[musungu]

What a pathetic comment - suggest you get away from 'baby' English on the forum

[BOZ]

What a pathetic comment - suggest you get away from 'baby' English on the forum

Dude "Leally".... One of the things that I find enjoyable is how my Thai wife speaks english.... Tinglish if you will... I praise here for her efforts and I just love to listen to her and the word choices she makes when communicating with me.... If we as memebers choose to share the words and phrases used with others... It is our choice, you can chose not to "Lead" them, or better yet just smile and enjoy the information and have fun doing so... Jameswest I commend your efforts and thanks for sharing your experiences with the rest of us!!! Wish we had a like button!!!!

[JamesWest]

What a pathetic comment - suggest you get away from 'baby' English on the forum

Dude "Leally".... One of the things that I find enjoyable is how my Thai wife speaks english.... Tinglish if you will... I praise here for her efforts and I just love to listen to her and the word choices she makes when communicating with me.... If we as memebers choose to share the words and phrases used with others... It is our choice, you can chose not to "Lead" them, or better yet just smile and enjoy the information and have fun doing so... Jameswest I commend your efforts and thanks for sharing your experiences with the rest of us!!! Wish we had a like button!!!!

thank for this Boz, I was really feeling bad about that musungu comment...

i also think is it very endearing when my girlfriend speaks her version of english. it really puts a smile on my face. she is very intelligent and can spell and read english and is working on pronouncing words. when we drive around on my scooter, i will point to things and say "flower, tree, road, tower, building" and she repeats it back to me. And of course she hears me say "learn to drive" a lot as I get cut off in traffic.

i know her thai girlfriends get a big laugh from my version of Thai.

[GLCQuantum]

i know her thai girlfriends get a big laugh from my version of Thai.

I have a good laugh at your version of English.

[GLCQuantum]

my Thai girlfriend just told me that "Lane crumb soon.

I find it quite amazing that your Thai girl can't pronounce the often mispronounced 'r' sound in 'rain' and turns it to 'lain' yet she whacks in a perfect 'r' to change 'come' into 'crumb'.

Hmmm.... am I missing something?

[hhfarang]

My wife's english has improved a lot over the years and I kind of miss the tinglish she used to speak like when she was mad at me for screwing up after she warned me about something and yelled "you no rissem!"

[kendo]

My wife used to have problems with r's and s together. When she got a job in the UK in a large pub restaurant she used to call Horse Radish Donkey Radish as she couldn't pronounce horse.
All the regular customers used to find her sense of humor very funny.

[Pleng]

I'm glad that my girlfriend can speak English and my Thai is also pretty good - Tinglish is amusing for a while but it starts to irritate me after a while. I find it peculiar when Farrangs talk to Thai girls in baby English - they often take it so far that I can't even understand what they're trying to say... and then I wonder if they're the same Farrangs who like to moan about the quality of English generally spoken by Thais?

I'll admit it does seem to be an easy habit to fall into but when I do have to speak English, I make a concious effort to use the correct tenses and prepositions. I hear some people justify themselves by saying "they only understand when I talk like this" which is, frankly, b*****it. Just because somebody doesn't understand when to use "went" or "will go/am going", it doesn't mean they can't understand the meaning when it's spoken to them. I wonder if the people who make such claims about people's ability to understand are the same people that seem so concerned about the respect that others do or do not have for bar girls?

The worst, the absolute worst, is when you come across somebody in a bar, and they start speaking to *you* in baby English. I mean... Seriously?

[PET]

Pleng - You are so right and my (Thai) wife agrees too.

[Henry 14th]

I'm glad that my girlfriend can speak English and my Thai is also pretty good - Tinglish is amusing for a while but it starts to irritate me after a while. I find it peculiar when Farrangs talk to Thai girls in baby English - they often take it so far that I can't even understand what they're trying to say... and then I wonder if they're the same Farrangs who like to moan about the quality of English generally spoken by Thais?

I'll admit it does seem to be an easy habit to fall into but when I do have to speak English, I make a concious effort to use the correct tenses and prepositions. I hear some people justify themselves by saying "they only understand when I talk like this" which is, frankly, b*****it. Just because somebody doesn't understand when to use "went" or "will go/am going", it doesn't mean they can't understand the meaning when it's spoken to them. I wonder if the people who make such claims about people's ability to understand are the same people that seem so concerned about the respect that others do or do not have for bar girls?

The worst, the absolute worst, is when you come across somebody in a bar, and they start speaking to *you* in baby English. I mean... Seriously?

Yes this is spot of me. I have a couple friends in BKK who just can't seem to communicate in regular English anymore, whether it is spoken or written via SMS. It does make me cringe.

My Thai is really bad considering how long I've been here. Pure laziness I know. If I'm not prepared to learn the Thai language I'm certainly not prepared to bastardise the only language I can speak into baby talk.


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[dtaai-maai]

I agree wholeheartedly with everything Pleng said.
There's a happy medium, of course, when it comes to speaking English to your average Thai.
2 of my regular visitors are at opposite ends of the spectrum, and I often don't know whether to laugh or cry!
One rattles away at 19 to the dozen in posh multi-syllabic English and blithely assumes whoever he's speaking to understands every word because they're nodding and smiling, the other slows right down, uses the classic farang Tinglish and for some reason adopts a sing-song tone, sounding like he's talking to a 4-year-old.

As for Mrs D-M and I... my Thai is passable - better than most, but there are a surprising number of pretty good Thai speakers around. I've always been too lazy never had the time to really knuckle down and learn the language properly. After 11 years together we've unconsciously developed our own language - no baby talk, but sentences half in English and half in Thai. Every now and then I find I've been using the wrong word for something for years (I call salt 'khem' for some reason and can't get out of the habit now, despite knowing what it should be...), but because Mrs D-M knows what I mean she doesn't bother to correct me.

Having said all that, when I first came to Thailand in 2003, I spent a year on Samui doing the Fantasy Island mid-life crisis thing (it got boring after a few months). I got quite friendly with a lot of the girls and had great fun writing emails in Tinglish to their boyfriends, explaining how things were going on the farm...

[Pleng]

One rattles away at 19 to the dozen in posh multi-syllabic English and blithely assumes whoever he's speaking to understands every word because they're nodding and smiling

Ahh I knew there was something I forgot in my rant. But,as you say, it's kind of the other end of the spectrum. It's especially bad when they jokes based on complex English word-play and then seem confused that the people they're speaking to don't get the joke.

After 11 years together we've unconsciously developed our own language - no baby talk, but sentences half in English and half in Thai.

I image this is pretty common place. Certainly me and my girlfriend will interchange words. On my part it's sometimes due to not knowing a particular Thai word, but usually it seems we just seem to find the quickest route to say whatever it is we need to say. It's amazing just how many syllables you can save when you mix two languages together

[arcadianagain]

[quote="Pleng"]

Certainly me and my girlfriend

Surely you mean my girlfriend and I