Should We Speak Barglish or English?

[pdogg]

In another thread Glasswax said:

And a word to punters, don't talk to a Thai the same way she talks to you. She feels slighted because she knows what correct English should sound like even though she can't always say things that way.

Interesting point!

When talking to most bargirls we obviously want to speak simply and be understood. But this doesn't mean that we have to speak intentionally incorrectly.

Of course best if we can speak Thai. But otherwise should we or should we not go the Thaiglish route?

[Tomcat]

^{keep it simple as possible. If had another lifetime i might learn Thai but Thaiglish gets one through the week.}

^{These things evolve naturally dont they in any event...}

^{there must be around 100 or more versions of English now anway so it doesnt matter a hoot IMO}

[duke007]

I tend to go down Glasswax's route nowadays and did so especially on my last two trips, this is mostly down to young May from Famous, her English is so good I didnt have to speak "pidgeon English" with her.

I agree it doesnt do Thai's much good learning incorrect English, and to speak simply and correctly is the best way.

Its kinda embarrassing hearing myself speaking "Pidgeon" too.

I have helped a few girls with their English down the years (in Thailand and via MSN etc) and its good to see how soon they pick it up, mind you this because they "want" to learn which is a big help, unlike most of us who havent got the patience / too lazy to learn the Thai language

A former g/f used to say to me "Im Thai people" which always amused me but I had to eventually tell her the correct version, however there was a couple I didnt want her to change, e.g. when she said "You want Insert?" or "I want you Insert" (I think you get my drift ), they will be forever in my memory bank

[JaiDee]

I agree with Glasswax 100%.

Whenever I am talking with Thai's I always talk slowly to be sure, but never like I am talking down to them, as if they don't understand English; from my experience, they speak VERY good English! From the girl at the 7/11 who rings up my iced tea, to the hooker in a bar who I am chatting with, I am very appreciative of the fact that they can accommodate me so well; could you imagine a Thai or a Japanese or an Indonesian coming to Boston or Dallas or Seattle and ONLY speaking their language? Not happening.....

I don't think talking to them like they are 5 years old is doing 'em any good and may even be pissing them off deep down. Talk slowly, enunciate each word very carefully, don't use 4-syllable words when a 2-syllable one will do, never use slang from your home country and I think you will communicate just fine with most Thai's in just about any tourist area.

[TTChang]

Listening to expats' phone calls to their LOS dish of the day is usually hilarious. But to be fair, we all alter our voices depending on who's calling.

I once had to remind another BM that I wasn't a thai bar girl .... when he started talking to me like that.

[sailor]

This is a difficult nut to crack - I'd say the level I speak english to them corresponds to their ability to speak english.

With some you'll have to "dumb it down" (No insult intended whatsoever) - with others you can go all out on elaborate english, dry humor and everything else you can think of.

But basically I'd say that it all comes down to whatever level of english she's speaking - you simply adjust to that...go above - and risk a whole lot of misunderstandings, which are not worth it.....

[Foggy]

From experience I have learnt to speak slowly and clearly using easy 'should' know words. I been surprised and found that a lot of Thai's will ask me if they dont understand what Ive said as they are interested in learning.

If a Thai is really bad at English in any form then our time together is limited unfortunately and only physical, I dont do baby talk or sign language.

How many times have u seen a guy sitting in a restaurant with his barfine and 10 minutes later the conversation has dried up and the food cant come quick enough. Probaby played connect 4 in the bar as well and thought she'll be great fun to go to dinner with before the deed. Why put yourself through that and in public too.

Im all for treating a girl well and with respect, but know when to buy noodles on the way home or sit in a public eatery.

Ive made the effort to learn the Thai words I need to know for my local Mammas and Pappas shop and the market as Ive needed to or go hungry but fluent Thai, thats beyond me.

[SiamSam]

I once had to remind another BM that I wasn't a thai bar girl .... when he started talking to me like that.

I think that was me, but it was because of what you were wearing at the time.

[bumblebee]

I agree with not wanting to seem to be patronising them by speaking in broken English when in fact they might appreciate us speaking with simple, clear words. One guy who has mastered the art of communicating what he wants in Los is Dav26. His verbal gymnastics of mixing Thai and English in his distinctive manner is something to witness. It may be pigeon but the locals love his sanook charm it seems.

[Jimslim]

I agree with not wanting to seem to be patronising them by speaking in broken English when in fact they might appreciate us speaking with simple, clear words.

It makes me cringe when I overhear a guy talking to a Thai girl in a restaurant like they are a baby or a halfwit .

Something along the lines of "where your friend go ? /we go your bar ? /tomorrow we go beach , you have bikini ?

They are probably wondering why you are talking like that anyway .

If someone can pick up the main part of a sentence they will understand it anyway without talking to them like they're thick .

If they can understand me (someone who speaks quickly with a strong accent ) then they can understand anyone .

[TTChang]

If they can understand me (someone who speaks quickly with a strong accent ) then they can understand anyone .

Very true!

[JaiDee]

Another phenomena some of the newer guys may not have encountered yet is the selective levels of understanding English by Thai people. Say you are dating a young Thai, or just like some bar girl and want to keep seeing her. You will notice that when you first meet she speaks perfectly fine and understands everything you say; but say something down the road that she doesn't want to hear, as in "I saw you with another man last night when we had a date, what happened?" and she will suddenly lose all her ability to speak English! "Alay na? What? I no speak English too good, solly" when just a day or 2 earlier she knew every word you said, especially if they included keywords like shopping, gold, shoes, handbag, money, etc.......

It's quite amazing to see, actually.... and also happens with non-professionals; bottom line, if someone doesn't want to help you or doesn't like what you are saying, their ability to speak your language suddenly just goes away.

[Kahuna]

Ain't that the truth...When the conversation turns the least bit serious...They can indeed lose the ability to understand English...

I also find it interesting that they have no idea how to place our accents...You can be from Australia or Austria, Canada or Czechoslovakia and they usually can't tell the differences in our accents...We could all be from the moon as far as they know...So that's what I usually tell them...

[4:17]

.... and also happens with non-professionals; bottom line, if someone doesn't want to help you or doesn't like what you are saying, their ability to speak your language suddenly just goes away.

Heh, I think that happens everywhere you have people mixing with different nationalities; I'd wager that is hardly unique to the Thais. I have had that happen to me in Japan, China and France, among other places. And not just playing romance, but in a professional setting, too. Hell I've done it myself; once I had a French girlfriend, and whenever she wanted to talk about something uncomfortable, suddenly my ability to speak French went to shit

I also find it interesting that they have no idea how to place our accents.

As for accents, I agree with Kahuna. But it's a two-way street. Here in Viet Nam, for example, I find it very difficult to distinguish a north accent from a southern accent, unless they say certain words that are pronounced differently in the north. My Vietnamese friends think that's crazy, because to them the difference is glaring. And most of my British and Aussie friends -- much less any Southeast Asian peeps -- can't distinguish a southern American accent from that of the Northeast, Midwest, West Coast, etc., which, to me, naturally sounds obvious.

[KenW]

Several points.

First, I'd rather see the LBR thread refer to Barglish or Girlglish than Thaiglish. There are those of us who face the same issue elsewhere. Camglish? Vietglish?

But then I guess SEAsia = Thailand, doesn't it, for most of you.

One, I agree with all who have talked about the keep it simple theme.

Second, agree with those who notice things are different for different contexts/girls/LBs/etc.

Third, as said by posters, that implies talk at the level they understand and can cope with.

Fourth, I do not agree at all with those who insist on talking your own version of pure English on the supposition that you are talking down to them otherwise, or they really understand (yeah, who you kidding?), etc.

Five. I don't know Thai not one word. But Vietnamese, Bahasa Indonesia, Japanese (all languages I have formally studied, even if only at introductory level) have completely different sentence and verb structures from English. To talk Barglish is often only to apply English words to their grammatical structure. I cannot see how that talks down to anyone if it facilitates understanding.

If I say to a VNese: motorbike where? OK you put me down saying I am talking down to them. The sentence is a direct literal translation of how they would say, where is my motorbike? They say xe o dau = motorbike where?

For excellent speakers of English I would never do that. But for Barglish it often helps to think not just about the words, but the grammar. If you get the grammar they are familiar with, they will never think you are talking down to them. They will think you are talking normal.

And if you think saying something like: I should have considered all my considerable options before I would have suggested such a thing, treats them with dignity or helps their learning, you may as well stay home in New York or Sydney or wherever you are.

[Tomcat]

For excellent speakers of English I would never do that. But for Barglish it often helps to think not just about the words, but the grammar. If you get the grammar they are familiar with, they will never think you are talking down to them. They will think you are talking normal.

i agree 100%. I was getting theThaiglish and Barglish mixed up. I dont speak any Thaiglish whatsoever , only simple Barglish , unless its my Thai travel agent to whom i speak normal clear English. I dont hear that many guys speaking normal English to the Thai Ladies or maybe i need to get a hearing aid as well as visiting Specsavers

[pdogg]

Tread retitled in deference to cunning linguists Ken and Tomcat!

[4:17]

Gotta throw my two cents in with Ken on this one; he makes an excellent point; even simple grammar and conventions we take for granted can be opposite or dramatically different. Someone who doesn't have the past progressive tense in their native language, for example, probably isn't going to completely understand it when you say "I was riding my motorbike when it began to rain, the pavement got slick and I crashed." They may understand the verb to ride, and understand motorbike and the pronoun "I," maybe even the past simple of "to be" -- but the nuance of a continuing action in the past that was interrupted by something else -- that's going to be lost on them/confuse them, even if they know the verb "to crash." That's because to express the same idea in their language would use totally different verb tenses or the present tense with qualifiers to indicate these actions happened in the past.

Articles are another one -- there is no equivalent of "a, an or the" in most Asian languages; they simply don't exist. So unless they've had formal training/instruction, even someone who otherwise speaks English well either won't use them at all or often use them incorrectly, which naturally sounds goofy to us.

Sorry to get all nerdy and long-winded, but I find linguistics endlessly fascinating. Seriously, I could go on and on. If I had it to do over again, it would have been my major in college (and may be my masters degree in the future).

Anyway, it's been my experience that if someone has some prior experience dealing with English-speaking foreigners (this includes most bar girls that have been in the trade for a bit), if you grade your language -- i.e. use simply terms like J.D. and others suggested above, and speak slowly, but with a normal cadence, you can generally make yourself understood. But if someone only has a smattering of English words and/or isn't used to dealing with or has little experience talking with English speaking foreigners, as Ken ably stated, you have to resort to structures they are more apt to understand, which sounds like pigeon English to us native speakers, but is instinctively grammatical to them.

Hence: "Yesterday ride motorbike in rain. I crash."

[Tomcat]

The Universal voice transcriptor headet probably isnt that far off. My Guess is 3 years. Then you can have a chinwag with anybody(assuming they shell out for one as well .. some of the big hitters are working on it and i think Apple have a prototype already

as long as they embed it in a pair of Sunglasses ill certainly be in .At least i can tell the Taxi

Driver in Hong Kong that i dont want to go around the block three times before arriving at The Wharney Guangdong

[pdogg]

i dont want to go around the block three times before arriving

Just for the hell of it, I put this phrase into Google Translate and translated it to Chinese, then the Chines version to Thai, then the Thai version back to English.

Kind of like the game of telephone that we would play in school when we were little kids.

Here's the result.

I don't want to go around the block three times before arriving.

我不想去各地块的前三次到达

ฉันไม่ต้องการที่จะไปรอบมาถึงหน้าที่บล็อกสาม

I do not want to go back to the previous three-blog.

[farangbah]

Fantastic fucking thread, Gentlemen. Great points all around. And once again, our man Ken steals the show.

I had wanted to address some of the grammatical points that Ken and 4:17 so eloquently laid out, and I really gotta agree. I spend a lot of time thinking about this subject. It's my education, my craft, and, well, a hobby. And as some have said, it really comes down to picking your spots, and what's best for each situation. What's the end goal of that situation? Is it to better educate that person? Then great, go for it. Or is it to effectively get your message across? If it's the latter, then you should rely on any and all things at your disposal to do that. Fuck fluency, rules, grammar, English.

I'm sometimes left to wonder how much language we really need. 90+ percent of all conversations are less than two minutes. And the majority of those conversations express base need, desire, possession. How difficult is it to accomplish that? You can get pretty fucking far with non-verbal communication. You could pretty much drop me anywhere in the world right now and I could get by just fine.

On the other hand, English is a virus that is consuming other languages, right now, as I type this. English is, as Sarah Palin likes to point out when she takes her foot out of her mouth long enough to try to cover her mistakes, a living language. It's the only language built to keep up with the propulsive trajectory that life is on right now. It's the only one that can truly keep up by saying, "If we don't have a word for it, we'll just make one. Or, we'll take yours."

English is of Germanic descent. Know what they officially speak in the German scientific community? That's right. They gave up on their own language cuz it couldn't keep up. Thai? The government has actual laws preventing you from changing the language. Keeps it traditional. But it's also gonna get it left behind. It's predicted that fifty to ninety percent of all existing languages twenty years ago will be gone in their entirety (from being spoken, that is), in the coming years. So, if your goal is to help someone speak better English for their work and lives, great.

But on the other hand (I think that's about three hands now, innit?), what gets me even more than the phone calls that irk Brother Slim, are the text messages I'm seeing more and more. The other day on the train, I saw the girl next to me rifle through what had to be ten messages on something that looked like facebook. At near lightspeed, she fired off individual replies to all of them consisting of no more than a single symbol, an emoticon, if you will.

More and more this is where communication is going. And I joked about it and alluded to it when we revamped the emoticons on this site. SamplerDoc was a prophet of doom, Gentlemen. Everybody's gonna eventually have their own customized palette of symbols, pointing and clicking them to speak for us (and, of course, those symbols will eventually have logos on them). Who needs translator sunglasses when you can just take out your iPad in the bar and click on: .

Who needs language...

[KenW]

I do.

[Kahuna]

Can't think very well without it...Not that I do that much...

[farangbah]

I do.

Two words, three letters, and he effectively communicated his point.

But with all that effort he expelled in pushing those five buttons (including the space bar and the period key), he could have simply clicked: (and that emoticon would even have said nine hundred and ninety-eight more words!). He is clearly more industrious than the communicators of tomorrow that I see before me each working day, who spend more time trying to copy others' work and pass it off as their own than actually trying to say something.

A cherished talisman of a bygone era is our Ken, to be enshrined right alongside other endangered species like Poetry in the Museum of History, Language wing...