On Reading in Thai...
Oct. 2nd, 2012 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranSo, I'm in Bangkok on a business trip and I'm staying in a fancy hotel way beyond my normal station. I've run out of toothpaste, but luckily this is the sort of hotel where all sorts of amenities are supplied. I open up a box marked "Toothbrush" and, sure enough, as well as a toothbrush, there's a tiny tube of toothpaste inside, and I realise it says "Colgate"...
So, was it worth learning the Thai script in the end? Definitely! It does take a few weeks to learn, but, if you've got the time, I can thoroughly recommend it. The first time I went to Thailand, several years ago, I decided to skip learning the script and to just concentrate on the spoken language. This time I put the hours in to learn to read and it really paid off. It made me wish I'd done it from the start.
There were only a few times when I found text in Thai that I needed to read that wasn't also in English, but the main advantage was knowing how to pronounce Thai words accurately. For example, from the Romanized script in the sign below, you might guess (if you knew about the difference between "TH" and "T") that the place was pronounced "Ta dtien", but only by reading the Thai script would you know that the first syllable would be in a falling tone and the second in a level one.
After learning the basic script though, the next challenge, after coming to Thailand, was learning to read all the modern fonts used in signs and labels, which can look quite different from the classical script.
For example, the character that looks like an S in the label below is actually a stylized ร, giving an "r" sound. I was quite pleased to find this label was actually in English. It says "Crystal".
See?
There are also lots of other characters that have morphed into similar looking roman letters. For example, ท, giving a "t" sound, often appears as "n" and น, giving an "n" sound is written as a "u". ม, giving an "m" sound is also written as a backwards "u". This all took me a little while to figure out, but luckily I had lots of signs to read while riding the BTS and also I had splashed out on the Paiboon Talking Thai dictionary for my iphone, which helpfully gave examples of words in different fonts.
Being able to read Thai menus and signs was also a big plus, even though there were often, but not always, English translations available. The following is a sign from the back of a taxi. The columns list numbers to call to book for a trip to Bangkok, followed by distance (ระยะทาง) and price (ราคา).
In fact, the first time reading came in handy was when I was on the taxi in from the airport and fumbling for change for the toll-booth for the expressway. I knew the coins came in both baht and satang, but I didn't know what they looked like. Fortunately, the coins in baht were all helpfully labelled with บาท in Thai (I don't think I actually saw a coin worth less that 1 baht the whole trip).
So, was it worth learning the Thai script in the end? Definitely! It does take a few weeks to learn, but, if you've got the time, I can thoroughly recommend it. The first time I went to Thailand, several years ago, I decided to skip learning the script and to just concentrate on the spoken language. This time I put the hours in to learn to read and it really paid off. It made me wish I'd done it from the start.
There were only a few times when I found text in Thai that I needed to read that wasn't also in English, but the main advantage was knowing how to pronounce Thai words accurately. For example, from the Romanized script in the sign below, you might guess (if you knew about the difference between "TH" and "T") that the place was pronounced "Ta dtien", but only by reading the Thai script would you know that the first syllable would be in a falling tone and the second in a level one.
After learning the basic script though, the next challenge, after coming to Thailand, was learning to read all the modern fonts used in signs and labels, which can look quite different from the classical script.
For example, the character that looks like an S in the label below is actually a stylized ร, giving an "r" sound. I was quite pleased to find this label was actually in English. It says "Crystal".
See?
There are also lots of other characters that have morphed into similar looking roman letters. For example, ท, giving a "t" sound, often appears as "n" and น, giving an "n" sound is written as a "u". ม, giving an "m" sound is also written as a backwards "u". This all took me a little while to figure out, but luckily I had lots of signs to read while riding the BTS and also I had splashed out on the Paiboon Talking Thai dictionary for my iphone, which helpfully gave examples of words in different fonts.
Being able to read Thai menus and signs was also a big plus, even though there were often, but not always, English translations available. The following is a sign from the back of a taxi. The columns list numbers to call to book for a trip to Bangkok, followed by distance (ระยะทาง) and price (ราคา).
In fact, the first time reading came in handy was when I was on the taxi in from the airport and fumbling for change for the toll-booth for the expressway. I knew the coins came in both baht and satang, but I didn't know what they looked like. Fortunately, the coins in baht were all helpfully labelled with บาท in Thai (I don't think I actually saw a coin worth less that 1 baht the whole trip).
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no subject
Date: 2012-10-02 12:38 pm (UTC)My husband would be so heartened to hear this: he's always trying to get students to understand the benefits of spending time learning to read, as well as speak, Japanese.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-02 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-02 11:54 pm (UTC)You make it sound easy to learn Thai script. It's very encouraging. Maybe I should take it up. I lived in Thailand for a couple of years some decades ago and altho I did manage to speak enough to communicate with my babysitter and the market vendors (including counting to 100,) I never got to learning to read! I would love to learn though, and maybe you can give me some helpful tips. Did you go to a formal class or is there a computer program that you used?
I'm the same with Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, Bahasa, and a number of Philippine dialects. I never get beyond basic conversation. I'm such a dabbler. Pitiful.
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Date: 2012-10-03 07:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-04 10:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-04 10:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-05 04:53 am (UTC)