Malays make Thais look tongue-tied

Khun Somsak Pola of Samut Prakan is spot on in today’s letter to the Editor, in which he wrote that Thais don’t listen and don’t care to learn how to read phonetic transcription. Why should they, when they perceive themselves to be so successful and getting along pretty well as they are now?!

I think the problem is not so much linguistic as it is about the insularity of the Thais. Sorry to say insularity, when the Thais may perceive themselves to be people with a ‘globalised’ outlook. Look at so many farang visiting Thailand, Suvarnabhumi Airport is choc a bloc with foreigners coming in, so the Thais rightfully think that they are linguistically all right!

Dr Thongtip Hongladarond, a chemical engineer and an authority of international stature in the oil and gas industry, always likes to ask us, participants in her annual PTIT seminars, ‘Will all Malaysians, Singaporeans, Filipinos and Indonesians please put their hands up?’ When we all did so she said: “OK we have a quorum now, I will start my lecture.’ This was due, she said, to her getting fed up with silent Thai participants in classes, because they are linguistically challenged in comprehensible spoken English!

Come 2015 and the Asean Community, I wonder how will my Thai brothers and sisters cope? Of course we will bear with them, for we genuinely love them very much and we have grown to like their thick unrollable tongues and accent. Malaysian girls, especially from the northern states of Kelantan, Kedah, Penang and Perak go crazy over Nuengtida Noona Sophon’s movies on the Malaysian Astro TV channel (with subtitles). Malaysian TV channels don’t voice-dub their TV movies, so Noona is still heard speaking Thai and when her English comes out once in a while, the Malaysian girls go into a frenzy over her silly Thai-accented English. 

I propose an obsequious method to improve the Thais’ English: de-insularise them! Make him or her feel inadequate being monolingual. The Malaysians are naturally bilingual (English-Malay) since they are toddlers and that is the minimum! Many are trilingual! The biggest “threat” to the Thais now is that Malaysians are learning and are speaking Thai as a fourth language, at school level! Malaysians know the remotest parts of Thailand while most Thais know nothing of the south of Sadao and Golok! Make them feel that it is not chic to keep speaking in that unrollable tongue with a thick accent in the other languages, be it English, Malay, Lao, Mandarin or Indonesian! Think Asean and you will be all right. In the meantime we still love you all very much (and that’s to your disadvantage!).

Nadzru Azhari

Kuala Lumpur