Anyone yet ready to say goodbye to the USA we know?
I’m asking for a friend.
@JohnPhilpin Where is he/she thinking of going instead? I suspect the US he/she knows is very different from the one I know or millions of others know and love. I suppose your question is rhetorical, one that can't or won't be answered?
@JohnPhilpin Yes, Thailand is pretty awesome. But he/she will either need to learn the Thai language or have someone who can translate for them. In most areas in Thailand, English is not a common language. All the kids learn it in school, but not to the point of being able to speak it routinely. A bank teller once told my wife that I speak Thai very well, but this was after she heard me say only three words in Thai, "Thank you" and "Goodbye." Those three words are not actually the basis for rich dialog with others in the country.
@Ron many years ago an English friend moved to Denmark ... he worked in a concrete factory and stayed in the home of his girlfriends parents who had some younger children around. After a year his girlfriend summarized his Danish abilities as being the only person she knew with the vocabulary of an 8 year old, but with command of words she had never ... ever ... heard before.
@JohnPhilpin @Ron When we were learning Arabic, we had the vocabularly the size of a small child…but the content was entirely grown-up (war and diplomacy) 😂 We couldn’t have a normal conversation with anyone, but we could talk about cease-fires and bombings and a few other random things with the best of them!
@JohnPhilpin Interesting. I doubt I will ever have such a distinction in Thailand. I probably have some special vocabulary about ham radio, but those words are generally stated in English. For the rest, I speak very few Thai words and just the most common. Thankfully my wife's English has been getting better and better!
@smokey What an amazing concept to need to know vocabulary for war and cease fires. Do kids growing up in the area learn the same words? Here in Thailand my specialized vocabulary is mostly focused upon the parts of a Buddhist temple, subjects I consider quite worthy of being learned.
@Ron It’s a function of the standard US textbook (“the orange book”) which was written during the 1970s. There’s a newer book written in the 90s where you learn vocabularly relevant to a lonely Egyptian girl in NYC who is the daughter of a translator at the UN :-P And in Aleppo, our textbook contained important things like “the elephant is in the box” and “He is an important officer in the military” :-P I have no idea if that one was just for teaching Arabic to foreigners or if it was something used with Syrian students…. In Cairo, on the other hand, I did learn some truly important things, like terms from Islamic art and architecture 👍
@smokey Did they teach you how to pronounce the words? In Thailand they teach English to the kids, but with no practice in pronunciation or conversation. My wife's co-workers were excited to speak English with me, but then I would struggle to figure out what they were saying! One of our good friends could not pronounce her R's, like many, so she just skipped them. She was an analyst, so I asked her what it was she analyzed. Her answer was "the not." Huh?? Turns out she meant the North, Northern Thailand. But she couldn't say the R, so she just skipped it and it came out Not (Noth).
And of course on the other side, my pronouncing the Thai tonal sounds is nearly impossible for me. I smile widely, nod, bow and give lots of wais. Now I can properly pronounce hello, goodbye, & thank you in Thai.
@Ron Yes, I was definitely always taught to pronounce everything—in grad school, we even had a separate hour of conversation class every day. There are several sounds I can’t pronounce exactly right (I can hear it with my own ear), but they’re close (no tones in Arabic, thankfully!).
I’m curious why in Thailand they don’t spend time on pronunciation or conversation when teaching people English; it seems so strange from the perspective of my language-learning experience (even for Latin, we spent time on pronunciation and reading aloud).
@smokey I don't know why pronunciation gets short shrift. It could be they're short on English teachers and the teachers they have may not even be certain of their own pronouncing. English is not a second language in Thailand, as it is in the Philippines.
I know of one Thai language teacher (from Malaysia) who was unusual for putting an emphasis on pronunciation. He made the point at one seminar by having one of his better students call on the phone to order pizza for the class (in the Thai language). The person who answered the phone almost immediately switched to taking the order in English, proof that the student's Thai order was unintelligible.