A Study in Thai

I recently updated my book, Teach and Learn: Reflections on Communicative Language Teaching, from which this is a chapter, and made it available on Kindle and as an inexpensive paperback. To enjoy a read, please click here.

By Peter McKenzie-Brown

Many of the characteristic errors Thais make in English are directly related to interference from their own language and culture. “Contrastive analysis” is the process of understanding learner errors by comparing the make-up of a second language with the learner’s native tongue. In these notes, we make a start.

Thai society is highly stratified, and differences in social status are reflected in Thai grammar. The royal family has its own set of pronouns and word uses, used exclusively by its members and those who work for them. So does the Buddhist establishment. Thus, there are four major “registers” – subsets of language used in particular social settings – in Thai speech. These are royal, ecclesiastical, polite and vernacular.

Besides being stratified, Thailand has brought together diverse groups of people over a very short period of time, and the country’s borders with it neighbours are porous. As a result, Thai is one of many languages spoken in the country. Others include Khmer, along the border with Cambodia, and a variety of Burmese and tribal languages in the north and along the Thai/Myanmar border.

Thais speak four main dialects. The central dialect, which is the official language of Thailand, is spoken in Bangkok and environs. This dialect is known as klang. The other three major dialects are khammauang, spoken in the north; lao, which is used in the northeast, and tâi, which is the southern dialect.

Grammar: Thai is a flexible language which has no prefixes or suffixes, no genders for nouns, no articles, no plurals and no verb conjugations. It is a high-context language, which means it conveys much information through context rather than through linguistic rules.

On the other hand, it has at least 49 pronouns, including at least 17 for “I” and 19 for “you.” The choice of pronoun indicates the gender of the speaker: for instance, põm means “I” for a male; diichán means “I” for a female. The other pronouns indicate the degree of familiarity you have with the person you are addressing, the nature of the conversation (for example, personal or business), and the level of respect you wish to show. Personal pronouns do not change, regardless of their place within a sentence. There are no possessive pronouns in Thai.

To complicate matters further – from an English speaker’s perspective, – Thais will frequently use nouns (including proper nouns) as pronouns. For example, young girls and sometimes even young women use the Thai word for mouse as the personal pronoun “I.” Women especially, but also men, also sometimes use their personal names instead of the pronoun “I”. When talking to or about foreigners, Thais will occasionally substitute faràng (Thai for “foreigner”) for “you, him, her or them.”

Thai uses particles as polite “closing” words, or to indicate degree of familiarity between the speakers. These one-syllable words are always found at the end of a clause or sentence. Since a single sentence may have several clauses, it may also repeat the same particle several times. The most common particles are khâ (used by women) and khráp (used by men.) These particles literally mean “yes” in polite Thai, and can be used scores of times in a single conversation. Particles suggest courtesy and power relationships. Thais will sometimes explain that sentences without particles are “not beautiful.”

The main Thai dialect has five tones. Thai writing therefore requires four tone markers. These tone markers represent the high tone, the low tone, the falling tone and the rising tone. The mid-tone – also called the common tone – does not require a tone marker.

The word order in a simple Thai sentence is subject-verb-direct object. If there is an indirect object, the word order is subject-verb-direct object-indirect object. Adjectives and adverbs follow the word they modify. Numbers precede the noun.

In Thai sentence structure, you don’t use intransitive verbs when you describe Thai nouns. You say “She beautiful,” or “Computer expensive very.” In Thai, these are complete sentences. They do not require a verb.

Thai suggests plurals with the use of noun classifiers, of which there are many. In effect, Thais say “I have pen, four item” rather than “I have four pens.” Parallel structures exist in English, but they are rare – for example, “50 head of cattle.”

Thai/English Phonology: English has many features that cause difficulties for native-speakers of Thai. This summary reviews pronunciation problems that Thai learners frequently have with English pronunciation.

English has six consonant sounds that do not exist in Thai: /v, th (voiced and unvoiced), z, sh, zh/. Also, the Thai /r/ is quite different from the English retroflex /r/, and Thai speakers frequently pronounce this sound as /l/, even in their own language.

For Thais, many consonant clusters are difficult to pronounce. There are several reasons for this. For one, only two consonants maximum are permitted at the beginnings of words in Thai. In addition, there are no consonant clusters in Thai word endings. Only eight consonants – /n, m, ng, pb, dt, g, y, w/ – are allowed to occur in that position.

While English pronunciation is heavily dependent on consonants, Thai pronunciation is heavily dependent on vowels. Thai has many more vowel sounds than English, and in Thai it is important to pronounce vowels distinctly.

In English, the vowels of unstressed syllables in content words and the vowels of function words are generally reduced or even dropped. English speakers often reduce vowels to schwa (the unstressed sound “uh”); this can make them almost inaudible to the Thai ear.

English function words, which are generally unstressed, are often dramatically reduced. English speech is stress-timed rather than syllable-timed.

The Writing System: Thai uses an alphabet related to that of Sanskrit. Most native-English speakers accustomed to the relative simplicity of the Roman alphabet find it difficult to learn. The system is phonetically quite precise, however. There are few irregular spellings, and to native-Thai speakers the rules of composition are quite natural.

The Thai writing system has 44 consonants that represent only 21 distinct sounds. (Two consonants are obsolete and 12 rarely used. A number of consonants are redundant in the sense that they convey the same sound as other consonants. Part of the reason for this redundancy is that consonants are grouped into three groups – high-tone consonants, middle-tone consonants and low-tone consonants. This approach is used to enable the writer to convey tones.

Each consonant has a character name to help when spelling it out loud. For example, the first consonant in the alphabet is gaw-gài. The first syllable suggests the consonant sound, while the second represents a word (in this case gài or “chicken”) with which to associate the letter.

There are 21 vowels, which are used in various combinations to create 32 different vowel sounds – either long or short vowels. While tone markers are consistently placed above the letters of the alphabet, different vowels are placed in front of, above, behind, under or around the consonants.

The following text illustrates the main features of the Thai writing system. In addition to the placement of vowels and tone markers, note that that written Thai uses no punctuation. There are no capital letters. Full stops, question marks and exclamation marks do not end Thai sentences. Neither does the system use the complex Western arrangement of commas, colons, dashes and other characters used in European punctuation. Also, there are no spaces between words except in the case of Arabic numbers, which writers separate from the Thai text.

ในวันที่ 25 พฤษภาคม 2549 ในหลวงได้รับการถวายรางวัลจากองค์การสหประชาติในความสำเร็จทางด้านการพัฒนาความเป็นอยู่ของมนุษยชาติซึ่งนายโคฟีอันนันเลขาธิการสหประชาชาติได้นำมาถวายด้วยตัวเอง

The text refers to the Human Development Lifetime Achievement Award presented to the King by UN Secretary General Kofi Anan on behalf of the United Nations Development Programme. The award was presented on May 25, 2006 (2549 on the Buddhist calendar).

To Sum up: As this brief discussion illustrates, studying the contrasts between Thai and English can shed light on the errors your Thai students make. Enabling teachers to better understand the linguistic features of another language provides insights into the subtleties of language itself. This should help you become better at the job of teaching English.

The Gift of Tongues and The Written Word

I recently updated my book, Teach and Learn: Reflections on Communicative Language Teaching, and made it available on Kindle and as an inexpensive paperback. To enjoy a read, please click here.

By Peter McKenzie-Brown

In the beginning, there were only two language skills: listening and speaking. Language began as an aural/oral process. It has always been associated with visual cues, however (consider the pervasive importance of body language in human encounters}, and those visual cues eventually led to the language skills of reading and writing.

In the West, that process began in ancient Sumer, about 3500 BCE. Oddly enough, reading, writing and arithmetic developed out of early accounting systems, rather than the other way around. Reading and writing extended language in quite an extraordinary way. From a function restricted to ear and mouth, they turned it into one that can also be conveyed by eye and hand.

The gradual development of widespread literacy led to many changes in the human condition. Most notably, it liberated language from the immediacy of the spoken word. Both reading and writing require more time than the aural-oral skills, and they tend to encourage thought. The following lists compare spoken and written language, with item #1 in the first group mirroring item #1 in the second group, and so on.

Listening and Speaking

1. Listening and speaking involve impromptu, informal, colloquial language.
2. Unfamiliar national and regional accents and pronunciation problems cause difficulties in comprehension.
3. Meaning is conveyed by word stress, intonation and body language.
4. Gestures and expressions aid understanding.
5. Speakers speak in real time; listeners participate immediately.
6. People easily develop native-language listening and speaking skills.
7. Speech is essentially impermanent.

Reading and Writing

1. Reading texts tend to be organized, formal and stylized.
2. Alphabets and ideographic-style writing systems (think Chinese writing) vary greatly in complexity and approach.
3. English orthography (spelling) is highly idiosyncratic.
4. Meaning is enhanced through punctuation and writing style.
5. Writers have time for corrections; readers can puzzle out meaning.
6. Learning to read and write requires conscious effort.
7. The printed word is documentation.

To read and write, we need six things. In the balance of this commentary, I will review them, and consider their implications for the English teacher.

The Roman Alphabet: English-language learners need to recognize the letters of the Roman (also called the Latin) alphabet. It is very difficult to understate the impact of this hoary old alphabet on western civilization. According to some theorists, this alphabet uses so few letters to represent words that it helped Westerners become highly analytical, and thus had a huge impact on the western mind and outlook.

The Roman alphabet is the dominant writing system in most of the world. The primary alternatives are the Cyrillic alphabet (used in the former Soviet Union), the Arabic alphabet, the Brahmic alphabets of India and parts of Southeast Asia, and the ideographic systems of China, Korea and Japan. The latter are not alphabets.

Phonics: Also known as the phonetic method, this is a system of teaching children to read. It is commonly used to teach young learners to read in their mother tongue. In this system learners are taught the sounds which the letters represent, and then try to build up the sound of a new or unfamiliar word by saying it one sound at a time.

Phonics can be used for older learners that use either ideographic or non-Latin alphabets. The main difference is that older learners have probably already learned their own writing system, so they will bring to the learning process strategies based on that experience. A useful embellishment on phonics is to have the students spell words out loud as they encounter them in writing. Thus, “ant” is “ay en tee.” This helps develop the students’ ability to remember and recognize the word.

Handwriting and Keyboards: Remember that the printed word is essentially speech produced through our hands. Until recently, the normal progression of things was that we would first learn to write, then move on to cursive writing (rounded script). In recent years, however, cursive has been given short shrift in the West, as youngsters increasingly used keyboards.

Does this matter? According to one observer,

The loss of handwriting … may be a cognitive opportunity missed. The neurological process that directs thought, through fingers, into written symbols is a highly sophisticated one. Several academic studies have found that good handwriting skills at a young age can help children express their thoughts better

Whatever the case, most teachers in Western countries do not spend a great deal of time on cursive writing. EFL teachers are less likely to spend time with their students working on it, except in unusual circumstances. In most cases, to be able to print in English is enough.

It is essential that English-language learners acquire as soon as possible the ability to recognize and produce written words. And since the computer is not going to go away, it is often useful (it depends on class assessment and the nature of the assignment) to insist on typewritten work.

Orthography: Orthography is the fancy work for spelling, and English spelling is more irregular than any other on the planet. As the table below illustrates, the letter combination “ou” can be pronounced in eleven ways, while we can create the “long e” sound with eleven different spellings.
Letters “ou”

tough, tour, dough, famous, bought, you, should,
journey, loud, flour, cough.

Sound “ee”

paediatric, me, seat, seem, ceiling, people, chimney,
machine, siege, phoenix, lazy.

When you teach vocabulary, it is critical that you point out irregular spellings. Because of the oddities of accepted English spelling (think “straight” and “protégé”), it is often quite difficult for students – especially those who speak non-European languages – to develop quick word recognition. This requires frequent practice. However, as the following passage illustrates, native speakers with sophisticated language skills can recognize words with great efficiency.

The phaomnneil pweor of the hmuan mnid
Aoccdrnig to rsreeach at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Asbouellty amzanig huh?

Punctuation: What stress and pronunciation do to the melody and rhythm of speech, punctuation does for the written word. Punctuation skills are to reading and writing what phonology is to listening and speaking.

English punctuation is highly sophisticated, and it is difficult to teach. However, consistently and from the beginning you should stress the basics: capitalize the first letter in a sentence, the pronoun “I” and proper names; put a full stop at the end of every sentence; indent paragraphs. The more sophisticated functions (commas, semicolons, colons, dashes, writing schema and so on) come much later.

Inflections and sentence structure: Good writing requires good grammar. In spoken English, fluency is mostly more important than accuracy. In written English, the opposite is true. Good writing requires good grammar. Because readers have time to study and analyse written English, they are more aware of errors in inflection (he walks, he walked), and other features of language structures than when they are in aural/oral mode. The same applies to spelling. Also, grammatically correct structures enable readers to identify parts of speech, and this aids them in their understanding.

A brilliant illustration of the importance of structure in written English can be found in Lewis Carrol’s famous nonsense rhyme, “Jabberwocky.” The story begins,

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,/ And the mome raths outgrabe.

In this poem, all of the content words are meaningless. Yet because Carrol’s grammatical structure is flawless, we have no trouble identifying the parts of speech and the inflections of these nonsense words.

“Toves,” “borogoves” and “raths,” for example, are all plural nouns. The other nonsense words are either adjectives or verbs; indeed, "outgrabe" is clearly an irregular verb in the simple past tense. The one ambiguity in this stanza is the word “brillig”. We don’t know whether it is an adjective or a noun, but in terms of sentence structure it is clearly a complement.

Because of the importance of structure in the written word, when you teach writing you must stress strategies – pre-writing activities, revision, dictionary use, spell-checking and peer review, for example – to help students get their work up to an acceptable standard. You must also, of course, let them know what that standard is.

The Stress-timed Rhythm of English

I recently updated my book, Teach and Learn: Reflections on Communicative Language Teaching, and made it available on Kindle and as an inexpensive paperback. To enjoy a read, please click here.

English is timed by the syllables we stress. It is thus irregular in rhythm.

By Peter McKenzie-Brown

Imagine yourself at public auditions in which four conductors are competing for the top job in an orchestra. Each competitor has to conduct the same piece of music, and each to the same metronome. As he waves his baton, the first conductor begins with the words, “One, two, three, four.” The second says “One and two and three and four.” The next says “One and a two and a three and a four.” And the last aspirant says “One and then a two and then a three and then a four.”

Which of these conductors will miscue the orchestra? The answer is “None.” Each of these four sentences takes exactly the same amount of time to say. This illustrates a key and yet peculiar feature of our language. It is called the stress-time rhythm of English.

Stress-timing: We can illustrate with almost any word of two or more syllables – for example, “syllable.” We stress this word using the pattern Ooo, placing primary emphasis on the first segment of the word. In English every long word has its own stress pattern. Think of the words “import” and “record,” for example. Both words can be pronounced using either the pattern Oo or the pattern oO. Which pattern you use fundamentally changes the meaning of the word.

Something else happens after you choose which syllable to stress. The pronunciation of the main vowel in the unstressed syllable changes, often to the sound ‘uh’ which is the single most common sound in the English language. This sound has its own special name, schwa, and about 30 per cent of the sounds we make when we speak English are the sound schwa. In English, schwa can be represented by any vowel.

For example, consider the following two-syllable words. The first word uses the stress patternOo; the second, the stress pattern oO. You will notice that in each case we pronounce the unstressed vowel as schwa, regardless of its spelling.
A: Atlas; Canoe
E: College; Reveal
I: Cousin; Disease
O: Anchor; Contain
U: Lettuce; Support

Statements with Noun Lists

Yes/No Questions

This practice of replacing unstressed vowels with schwa also occurs in connected speech – English as we use it in our daily lives. If I ask “Where are you from?” I will stress the word “from,” pronouncing the short ‘o’ sound quite clearly. If you answer “I’m from Sydney,” you will most likely reduce the ‘o’ to schwa. The reason is that you are likely to stress the word “Sydney” instead. This reduction of vowel is the key to the stress-timing of most forms of English.

It's worth noting that some English dialects from India, for example, are characterized by a syllable-timed rhythm. These comments refer to the English of Britain, North America  and Australia.

Native English speakers from those countries frequently use schwa in unstressed syllables. This is why it takes the same amount of time to say “One, two, three, four” as it does to say “One and then a two and then a three and then a four.” Reducing vowels enables us to speed through unstressed syllables. This is how we achieve the particular rhythm of English, in which stressed syllables are roughly equidistant in time, no matter how many syllables come in between.

Syllable-timed: Most of the world's other major languages have quite a different pattern. They are known as ‘syllable-timed’ languages. Each syllable receives approximately the same amount of stress as the others in a word or a sentence. These languages thus have quite a different rhythm from that of English. 

Vowels: When we learn to read, our teachers tell us that vowels are the characters a, e, i, o and u. Phonologically, though, a vowel is a speech sound in which the air stream from the lungs is not blocked in the mouth or throat. Usually, when we pronounce vowels we also vibrate our vocal cords.

We form the vowels in our mouths by moving five speech organs around. The most important of those organs is the tongue – language is the “gift of tongues” – and linguists often describe the vowels by the position of the tongue in the mouth. The vowels range from front to back and high to low. For example, the following ‘Sammy diagrams’ show the position of the tongue in the pronunciation of the high back vowel in the word “boot”, the low back vowel in the word “pot”, the high front vowel n the word “beat” and the low front vowel in the word “bat”.

The position of the tongue when we make vowel sounds is illustrated in the Sammies shown to the side and below.

Based on North American pronunciation, the words in the columns give examples of the 12 vowels in common use. Note that the vowel in “pot” is neither fully central nor fully back. The central vowels are essentially schwa, the sound that makes vowel possible.

In English, the high vowels, shifting from high to low, include the vowel sounds in beat, bit, bait, bet and bat. The central vowels are the mid vowels in machine and but. The back vowels, ranging from high to low, are in boot, book, boat and bought. The vowel in pot is an odd one. It is a low vowel, but it is neither fully central nor fully back.

The Sammy diagrams below, come from the book Teaching American English Pronunciation, by Peter Avery and Susan Ehrlich. So do the illustrations of how stress-timed language works.

Finally, a few graphics showing pronunciation patterns in North American English, also from Avery and Ehrlich.