KenW Posted September 28, 2012 Author Share Posted September 28, 2012 I shouldn't need to write this post, for surely you all know. But just in case a few of you don't, let me emphasize that loan words don't just go from a culturally dominant language like English to a receiver language like VNese. Here's a few loan words English has adopted: restaurant mignon vin ordinaire hamburger consul menage a trois fin de siecle vignette smegma lecher flaccid spaghetti rouge gin glans anus etceteewaaaa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pdogg Posted September 28, 2012 Share Posted September 28, 2012 flaccid spaghetti If cooked al dente, I suppose the linguini would have a semi. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KenW Posted October 4, 2012 Author Share Posted October 4, 2012 Pronouns. One of the things I enjoy most about Asian languages is the place given to speakers and listeners by personal pronouns. We are brought up in the west - in English speaking contexts anyhow - full of individualistic bourgeois values of I I I me me me my my my. It is an I - you culture. Or a me - you culture if you like. The languages of Asia are structured differently, yes hierarchically, full of deference, respect, and situationally contexted. So here I am as a young man in Vietnam speaking to various. I am: con when I talk to my parents chau to grandparents anh to my younger brother em to my older brother toi to the policeman on the corner tao to my best friend at school. It takes a while for foreigners to adjust from the I I I culture to a contexted set of pronouns. These dualities relate and underscore the collective rather than the individual I. It is all about us, the we. The you and I but you and I in context, not just an individualist I for every occasion. Humbling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pdogg Posted October 4, 2012 Share Posted October 4, 2012 But it is interesting to see just how far you can get in an Asian language with one of sorts, that is, loan words. Seems there's a bit of controversy re how loan words will be presented in the new dictionary. THE NATION October 4, 2012 1:00 am The Royal Institute yesterday said up to 90 per cent respondents to a Net survey disagreed with corrections to the spellings of 176 words borrowed from the English language http://www.nationmul...s-30191659.html http://www.nationmul...s-30191505.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KenW Posted October 5, 2012 Author Share Posted October 5, 2012 So there's no mispronunciation or misunderstanding with English - or am I experiencing reading comprehension problems? I'd say that's a bit of misunderstanding on the article writer's behalf. It's a mistake by the way, to think as that writer does, that English does not have tones. All languages are tone inspired; it's just that what we refer to as tonal languages are the ones that formalise (cement up) their tones with marks. Sloppy languages like English have non-formal unmarked floating tones. Consider the following using our most loved verb as example. 1. Reply to the question: so what did you do with your LB? Answer: fuck. (flat or nil tone - a simple descriptive response) 2. Exclaim when you hit your thumb with the hammer. Answer: fuck! (tone is exclamatory and usually a down tone) 3. Exhale in awe when your mate tells you about his new job and million buck salary. Answer: fuck (with an uptone or if really amazed a down up tone ~) But we don't formalise any of these with tone markers like Thai or VNese or Mandarin do. In those languages the 3 versions of fuck (above) would be seen as different words, each with their own tone marker. Maybe that's why the Thai dictionary compilers are having problems with the loan words. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pdogg Posted October 6, 2012 Share Posted October 6, 2012 Let's look at things from a different perspective. Suppose there was a Thai movie with the name "My Teerak" And suppose it became a big international hit such that many Anglos knew the word "teerak". Teerak could just as well be spelled tirac or tilac or tirak. It probably would enter English dictionaries however it was subtitled in the movie. Romanized names of cities have changed since I was a kid when I learned about Bombay and Peking. Though Beijing still has the airport code, PEK. What I really don't understand is why Anglos renamed cities such as Roma or Napoli? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stealth007 Posted October 6, 2012 Share Posted October 6, 2012 @KenW I have lived in the phillippines for 5 years and i have learn for two years ( Tagalog ) and i am planning to continue my language course as soon as i become a expat... I have scare the shit out of my girlfriend when we meet last June 2012.... We went to eat in a very exclusive restaurant at the Mall Of Asia to celebrate my girlfriend birthday.... One of the waiters girls was giving " Rubi " a hard time which was getting on my nerves and i got more and more irritated by her arrogant attiude by the minuut.... At a certain stage she pass by us and she said to the other girls , who the fuck she think she is coming in to this place where we normal people are and tray to be like us..... Well those words where enough for me to explode , i raise my hand and call the floor manager to my table and i told him in Tagalog to get that fucking bitch as far away from my tabel as possible before i brake her neck. And i demand to have a other waiter or waiters that was not a rasist.... Everybody where looking at me as if they saw a fucking ghost , it was priceless... On our way back to the hotel " Rubi " ask me is there anything else i need to know ??? Greetz , Stealth 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KenW Posted October 8, 2012 Author Share Posted October 8, 2012 I enjoy other people's skills. Good to hear from guys like Stealth, for instance. At a village birthday party last week, some people from my village and their family friends from elsewhere, a woman I know well (not in any erotic way) said to me in VNese: had I married you, I bet by now I would speak English very well. I could only agree. This is a 40 year old, married for the second time with 2 kids, and 2 more by a disastrous marriage when she was very young. A highly intelligent woman, she worked with Mandarin speaking Taiwanese businessmen here a decade and more ago. She speaks more than competent Mandarin as a result. This is the sort of stuff that made me raise this topic. Not to put any FMs down for being only English speakers. But to acknowledge those who have made the effort. One thing we often forget, and need to recognise, is the number of locals - be they VNese, Thai, Khmer or whatever - who have made serious commitments to study of a second language in order to communicate with us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KendoUK Posted October 8, 2012 Share Posted October 8, 2012 I'm working on my Thai but just struggling to commit enough time to make a good go of it, After every trip I set a target to work on my Thai between trips but end up only going back with a few more phrases then what I left with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KenW Posted October 17, 2012 Author Share Posted October 17, 2012 At the street party I featured images of in the Saigon skylines & scapes thread, I met up with a girl, 30 year old mother of 2, who spoke excellent English to me. I have known same individual for several years now, as she is wife of a guy I do quite a bit of drinking with, but had only been on nodding terms with her. I had no idea her English was of such quality. Apart from that and her native VNese, she speaks "Chinese" (not sure which of the Chinese languages; she didn't elaborate), and had studied Japanese too (though like myself, she has largely forgotten it through non-use). Aint that something? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bartman Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 I speak Spanish (because I live in Texas and have to for my job) I have been going to a Thai Wat one day a week (2hr) for eleven years. Always I am the only student, the teachers change every 90 days. Some of the teachers speak good English and some dont speak English at all. And I must say it is a hard language to learn. Anyone can learn 10 or 20 phrases and the Thai people really like it when a foreigner tries to speak Thai, it shows them that you are trying to understand there culture and ways (as strange as they sometime are) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4:17 Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 I speak Spanish (because I live in Texas and have to for my job) I have been going to a Thai Wat one day a week (2hr) for eleven years. ... OT, but I have to ask: there is a Thai Buddhist Wat in Texas? Really? Whereabouts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kahuna Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 Easy Dude...Check this link...........There are actually Thai Buddhist Wats all over the USA...And if you are amazed at the large number in SoCal it is because the largest population of Thais outside of Thailand, live in the Los Angeles area...Dumb Fucks... http://www.dharmanet...r/thai-wat.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4:17 Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 ... There are actually Thai Buddhist Wats all over the USA ... the largest population of Thais outside of Thailand, live in the Los Angeles area ... I knew there was a large Thai expat/Thai-American community in Cali, but had *no* idea it was that widespread beyond California; that's really cool. Thanks for the link. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KenW Posted March 18, 2013 Author Share Posted March 18, 2013 These past 5 weeks in Australia, in Melbourne's southeast suburbs, have been fascinating for a listener to Asian & other foreign languages. This area is now severely multicultural. On the 2 or 3 occasions each week I had reason to go to the nearest big shopping complex cum market, I was fascinated to sit, silently, in a centrally located table complex, and listen to what was going on around me. This is Australia, my native country. But nothing like the Australia I grew up in. That one was Anglo (Irish etc too), English speaking to a fault. The only languages available to us in curriculum at junior high school were German & French. (Those at the posh upper class private schools got Latin as a third alternative.) Indonesian? Nah. Thai? Never. Vietnamese? The commie enemy. Now I would sit, eating a pie or having juice or cold water, listening. Around me I could hear Cantonese, Vietnamese, Khmer, and subcontinental speak, other Asian speak, African speak, and behind me, every day, a group of aged coffee drinking Caucasian men speaking something that was most likely Bosnian or Serbian or somesuch. Fascinating. Made me realise once again the enormous value of language learning, and what advantages it brings to cross cultural interaction and understanding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiamSam Posted March 18, 2013 Share Posted March 18, 2013 As you well know Mr. Ken, nothing stays the same. Not even us. Every time I look in the mirror I wonder who the hell the guy is. The image I have of me in my head is totally unrelated to what those lying fucking mirror(s) are reflecting. This is the reason I like going to Thailand. The Thai girls don't lie like the mirrors. They see me as I see myself. You know, hansum, sexy, and dashing. You've seen me so you know exactly what I am talking about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KenW Posted March 19, 2013 Author Share Posted March 19, 2013 Yes Sam, in 5 weeks in Oz I added about 5 kg to my bloated belly. Things do not indeed stay the same. To myself in my mind's eye I still see this naive teenager about to embark on life's fascinating journey. But in the mirror I see each day a fat jowled ugly old codger with wild eyes, straggly hair and Shane McGowan's rotten broken teeth all over the place. Who is he? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiamSam Posted March 19, 2013 Share Posted March 19, 2013 Exactly!!! So you have lying fucking mirrors also!!! It's a conspiracy I say, a conspiracy!!! It's perhaps an interesting topic for a thread. How we see ourselves in our mind's eye versus everyone else's perception. Kinda like listening to your own voice on tape or seeing the back of your bald head for the first time. It's always a shock. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woofer1 Posted March 23, 2013 Share Posted March 23, 2013 Lived in Jakarta for years, Learned the Language, one of the easiest to learn (NO GRAMMAR) therefore being so similar to Malay, Sama Sama, I discovered I spoke Malay, well say 75%. Thai Few words enough to embarass myself with wrong prononciation, but Pricelsss look on the faces. Japanese, 15 words at most. Chinese 2 words (Most importants are My Bill and THank you) I am not shy to ask, even pointing at things to ask what it that, and eventually in my thick skull some will stay there Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wangsuda Posted March 24, 2013 Share Posted March 24, 2013 How many? One. After 10 years in BKK, I can speak Thai (but my son is a much better speaker). I can also read and write Thai, albeit slowly. I tend to hide my language skills as bar staff tends to avoid me once they learn I can understand them LOL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azza33 Posted March 24, 2013 Share Posted March 24, 2013 How many? One. After 10 years in BKK, I can speak Thai (but my son is a much better speaker). I can also read and write Thai, albeit slowly. I tend to hide my language skills as bar staff tends to avoid me once they learn I can understand them LOL I sometimes go the other way... if i think they are being a little cheeky behind my back i give them the impression i know a bit and they tend to mind their manners. Except those tricky Issan folk who just switch to Khamen or Laos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wangsuda Posted March 24, 2013 Share Posted March 24, 2013 ^I like the surprise element - here they are chatting away and then I bust in to some Thai and answer back to them. the look on their faces are priceless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KenW Posted March 24, 2013 Author Share Posted March 24, 2013 one of the easiest to learn (NO GRAMMAR) That's cheered my drab Sunday morning up a little Woofer. Good joke. A human language without grammar - I must remember to use that as a charge against enemies sometime. I'd never thought of that as an outrageous put down before, but it's a beauty, in that "her shit doesn't smell" kind of genre. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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