Better to try than not make the effort

When I read the headline, I thought the writer meant well for PM Yingluck. But it turned out to be just another letter bashing the Shinawatras.

The writer said PM Yingluck embarrasses the whole country by using English the way she does. Embarrass the whole country? Au contraire, I’m sure Hillary Clinton appreciated that PM Yingluck spoke English to her, albeit with some flaws. When English-speaking people speak Thai to me, no matter how bad and how hard it is to understand, I appreciate and respect them for trying to learn my language. I feel honoured. I never say, “You should stick to pasa English. Don’t try to show off and at the same time embarrass your country.”

For PM Yingluck’s mix-up, saying “overcome” instead of “welcome”, which made the writer “very shock[ed]”, relax, this slip-up is called a malapropism and it is innocuous. You see, if there is a technical term for it, it means that it is a common error among English-speaking peoples. I suggest the writer search Google for “Bushism” and “Spoonerism” and he’ll appreciate PM Yingluck’s English more. 

Finally, the writer said, “In history, even wars happened when wrong words were chosen by leaders”. I wish the writer had given some examples. Was it Kasit Bhirom, former foreign minister, who called Cambodian PM Hun Sen “gui” (goon) that brought Thailand and Cambodia to the brink of war? 

Meechai Burapa 

Chiang Mai