I recently posted a comment on New Mandala which included a reference to the structure of Thai language. It drew a mixed response. Here I would like to expand on the two central points of the post. The first is the question of scriptura continua, or writing without a break between words. The second is the ideological content of Thai language courses aimed at foreigners.
Firstly, then, an extract from Nicholas Carr’s book, ‘The Shallows‘ (Chapter 4, p. 61-63):
It’s hard for us to imagine today, but no spaces separated the words in early writing … in what is now referred to as scriptura continua …
By the thirteenth century, scriptura continua was largely obsolete. Punctuation marks, which further eased the work of the reader, began to become common too …
It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these changes … The placing of spaces between words alleviated the cognitive strain involved in deciphering text, making it possible for people to read quickly, silently, and with greater comprehension.
Such fluency had to be learned. It required complex changes in the circuitry of the brain, as contemporary studies of young readers reveal …
As the brain becomes more adept at decoding text, turning what had been a demanding problem-solving exercise into a process that is essentially automatic, it can dedicate more resources to the interpretation of meaning …
By altering the neurophysiological process of reading, word separation freed the intellectual faculties of the reader …
Readers didn’t just become more efficient. They also became more attentive.
It is common knowledge that Thais are not great readers. Might this not be due in part to the difficult way the language is organised? Abandoning scriptura continua would, in my view, be a win win situation for Thais and foreigners alike. Thais would be better prepared to tackle individual words encountered in English and other languages, whilst foreigners would be assisted in understanding Thai language and culture.
Now, of course, language and culture better understood come under an ever intensifying spotlight, which brings me to my second point. Peter Jackson in The Ambiguous Allure of the West (previously reviewed on New Mandala) alerts us to the micromanagement of the Thai language by the powers that be (p. 200).
I was constrained to comment on the content of many Thai language courses when I read a link from the always excellent http://2bangkok.com/ It bore out a suspicion that I had incubated since finishing a seven month Thai language course last year. Of course it does not apply to all courses.
The link, posted on 6 April 2011 took me to a lesson on Kreng Jai (เกรงใจ- being considerate). The lesson itself was well enough structured by a teacher using the Skype system. However, when you start to deconstruct what is going by following the links on the page you get a different picture.
When describing herself, the no doubt excellent teacher begins by informing us that she was born in Bangkok, so therefore her accent is Bangkok standard. This provoked a series of posts from foreigners on the question of accents, interesting enough but without any apparent appreciation of the social status of different accents in Thailand.
The concept of Kreng Jai is presented as a characteristic of all Thai people as a whole. This was illustrated in a bizarre fashion when I followed another link that told me the following:
Being flexible… in not doggedly forcing and asserting one’s own desire at times of potential differences and conflicts, is of prime importance in the Thai society. Besides, showing of Nam jai (literally means `water from the heart’, ie., kindness, consideration, and sincere concerns) in being Kind and helpful, is something to give out without any expectation in return. The Thai are not calculative in the showing of kindness and help. This is why it has been overtly observed by foreigners that Thai interactions are usually smooth pleasant, and “often accompanied by genuine kindness and an interest in the well-being of the other.”
There are countless daily examples to illustrate this Thai social interaction behavioral pattern. This pattern retains even at unusual events, like coup d’état. The coup d’état in Thailand, as often as we have, are not like anywhere else. As expressed by the Japanese ambassador to Thailand in a television interview, they are “friendly changing of government leaders” or Palace guards, hardly bloody. The deposed Prime Ministers were often escorted out of the country to live for a period of time, before they were allowed back.
The following exchange from the interview with the teacher is quite revealing:
But Kreng Jai ( เกรงใจ) is not just for juniors showing respect to seniors. Doesn’t it go in the other direction and between equals as well?
Yes, เกรงใจ is also a consideration between equals and someone lower than you. (My emphasis)
Kreng Jai is being represented as a universal interaction when in reality it is no more than an option for the powerful. When talking about this concept with members of my Thai family they were adamant that although an underling may on the surface be displaying Kreng Jai, more often than not the underlying motivation is fear.
For a whole number of reasons many foreigners do not have the time to reflect on the content of their Thai language courses. I am not aware of any academic studies on this issue. Perhaps someone can add information to the debate.
In living here I’ve seen Thais act for more disrespectfully and directly than anything I’ve seen back in my home country. Kreng jai can be sincere or it can be survival. Thais often suppress their rage, disapproval, angst only to explode in an orgy of vitriol. They can also step outside their system and use a farang as a scapegoat for their rage thinking that in “farang culture” one can say anything and get away with it.
Thai culture is based on inequality and the Thai food chain is the mother of all food chains. Kreng jai or not, beware those who step out of line.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the near future when the very top of this pyramid is gone.
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I recently enrolled in a 6 month Thai language course at one of the major Bangkok language schools. Most of the students were either evangelical Christian Koreans, Russians who wanted to work in Pattaya or Americans/Europeans in their 20′s who desired to live in Thailand for a while as a kind of “cross-cultural” experience.
While technically, the teachers and school were OK and many of the students actually became quite developed in their Thai language skills, throughout the course the teachers, many of whom seemed to be strong supporters of PAD/Yellow and anti-Red Shirt, constantly made negative comments about rural Thais, Thaksin and the Red Shirt movement.
They also filled the classrooms each day with all the standard Thai Tourist Authority constructs about what Thailand “is” and who the Thai people “are”, always polite, everything in Thailand is “suay” (even Walking Street in Pattaya which I kept inisisting to the various teachers’ constant annoyance, was not actually “suay” at all, in fact downright “ugly”, and there is a “proper” way to say and do everything which is the “Thai way”.
Basically, it was a complete and total, albeit possibly unconcious, indoctrination/brainwashing into the rightwing/royalist construct as to what Thailand is, Thailand’s history, and who the Thai people are.
The result sort of washed over the evangelical Christians, bounced off the worldly and cynical Russians and seemed to be enthusiastically accepted by the young and naive Americans and Europeans.
But it gave me a clear impression of what it must be like for the average Thai child to spend 8 to 12 years in the Thai government schools with day long brainwashing/indoctrination into such a twisted, untrue and rightwing/royalist views of where he/she lives and who they “are”.
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#1 QUOTE It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the near future when the very top of this pyramid is gone. UNQUOTE
We don’t seriously think that this is going to happen, do we? The current farce really does go no further than sacrificing gun fodder in t-shirts for the sake of those already rich who want to exploit the succession to cement their own power. Revolution might happen, but we will still be stuck graynjaiing a bunch of talentless parasites.
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Putting spaces between words in written Thai would indeed be a win-win for both Thais and foreigners, and I agree that the evidence seems to suggest that the changes in the neurophysiological demands for reading would allow readers of Thai to become more efficient and lead to increases in automaticity that would let them be more attentive to subtleties of meaning. It might even increase the amount of pleasure derived from reading, thus leading to higher rates of reading among the population at large.
I was therefore surprised (actually shocked) by the level of vitriol this suggestion generated when proposed in the Bangkok Post a few years ago. It taught me that there is a deeply conservative, some might even describe it as reactionary, ideology among the gatekeepers for the Thai educational system. Is it no wonder then that the just released O-NET scores were at an all time low for Matiyom 6 students, with the majority of students receiving failing grades on all subjects, and scores for Mathematics and English abysmally low (14 percent and 17 percent)?
What would happen if we could start a mass movement for language reform? By “we” I don’t mean foreigners, but progressive elements in Thai society. I think beliefs are so entrenched among the elite that there would be a crackdown against it, with laws passed criminalizing the writing of Thai in anything but scriptura continua format by the powers that be. Then writing Thai with breaks between words would become a revolutionary act.
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That’s a fascinating point about punctuation that’s worth exploring further.
I’m a much better reader of Thai than I am a speaker, mainly because I find it easier to learn a foreign alphabet by rote than grasp the intuition necessary for learning to speak. Even so, the lack of punctuation in Thai makes no sense to me. There is nothing inherent in the Thai alphabet that compensates for these constraints. Thai is just as difficult to read as English would be without punctuation and the separation of words and sentences. To obtain fluency in written Thai one spends much more time learning to identify patterns – or consistent ‘pictures’ within the text, if you will. This seems to me to be a highly inefficient structure for extracting meaning and progressing discourse. Most European languages (I can’t speak for other language groups) rely on punctuation to enhance meaning and subtlety – a well-placed comma, for example, can remove ambiguity.
I wonder how this inherent constraint in written Thai has influenced the socio-political development of the country? Has it, as the contributor seems to suggest, hamstrung the lower classes and allowed the elite to control society?
A study of how Thai society has been influenced by its language would be a fascinating read.
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To be honest, Thai language is not really optimized, especially the scripting (44 alphabets, with loads of duplicates just to mess with the spellings). Though the grammar is simple enough, conversational Thai could be mastered fairly quick*.
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#2
I can confirm that the 8-12 years mandatory school curriculum was really a prolonged brainwashing program.
For example. We were taught that we maintained our sovereignty/independence (เอกราช) throughout our history, though the “history textbooks” were so keen on emphasizing the facts that Burma occupied us twice, and skimmed a bit on Japan also.
The same “history textbooks” did not really mentioned the fact that we took over our current neighbors and did what to them, the text just kept showing the fact that we gave it to the farangs (Farangcais! and British) due to gunboat treaties.
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* = Does not include the Royal Thai and the Holy Thai reserved for particular audiences/objects. That, even Thais cannot really master.
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To even suggest that the Thai Language is any more difficult to read and/or comprehend because there isn’t any spacing between words is one of the most ludicrous things I’ve heard in a LONG time!
The same goes for the less than astute observation that Thai has ‘no punctuation’.
Given Thai is a totally tonal language; words in spoken Thai cannot be emphasized like they are in engrish to carry emotive value. You can’t raise the tone of the last word in a sentence and have it carry an interrogative meaning, because you’d be saying a different word entirely. Hence the many “question word” tags which mark both spoken AND written Thai as a sentence construct which is a question.
Not coincidentally, Thai has a plethora of words which can and do convey the emotional context of what is being said, be it; interrogative, emphatic statements, denial on many levels, urging, and outright commands to do something. These all sync up to emotions commonly expressed in spoken engrish by the different toning of words and in written engrish as punctuation. What is the reasoning behind advocates who say written Thai should adopt punctuation marks when the important punctuation markers already appear as WORDS in the sentence construct?
Sadly, it would appear foreigners making these comments aren’t quite as clever in reading and understanding written Thai as they make themselves out to be.
Oh, BTW, this is posted in my real name; Google it, and if you’re not gonna post this at least have the balls to let me know via email.
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Tod (7)
There really is no need to be so defensive. I doubt anybody here is attacking you personally, real name or not.
My point was not that a lack of punctuation affects meaning; rather, that the lack of punctuation affects comprehension. There is a difference, and I’m not sure you have grasped this distinction.
Punctuation can indeed be used to convey meaning, but its much more common use is to improve comprehension. It’s a fact that a well-punctuated narrative using words, sentences and paragraphs is easier to read than a dense and unpunctuated block of text. As a newspaper editor I spend the best part of my day making it so.
Written Thai does not make use of punctuation. It does, as you say, use particular words for meaning, such as ไหม, but this is common to most languages that I know of, including English (e.g. “right?”, “isn’t it?”). These extra words in Thai do indeed convey meaning, but they are not punctuation, and are not intended as a replacement for punctuation as far as I can see. Rather, they are a function of the spoken language and serve no additional function in written Thai (as opposed to punctuation in English, for example). The use of tone in spoken Thai also famously conveys meaning, but that hardly negates the need for punctuation in written Thai either.
I’m afraid the the lack of punctuation in written Thai seems to me to be more a case of not having got round to it yet, to its detriment, rather than some self-regulating compensation mechanism nherent in its alphabet, as you imply.
I see you’ve written “engrish” (sic) on at least three occasions which, sadly, rules out typographical error as a plausible explanation. I shudder to think of the alternatives.
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Sorry, I didn’t mean to come off soo defensive especially in regards to defending anything ‘Thai’ 555+. They can do that on their own.
I’ve found I can comprehend, understand, and glean the meaning out of most things I routinely read in Thai. Conversely, if a topic doesn’t interest me I could read it 10 times and not make heads or tails outta it.
There are more than just a few Thai words which when seen in written Thai equal out to a “,” or a pause between parts of a sentence. Sentences are also routinely separated by at single space, but I’ve seen double spaced stuff too. Paragraphs while not always indented are at least usually delineated.
FWIW: languages are ‘living entities’ and evolve based on useage by the people who speak them. I am NO fan of the Thai language purists who insist it’s a benefit to be able to read 400 y/o thai inscriptions like it was written yesterday. That to me is a stagnant language and one doomed to die a slow death in todays ever changing world.
Even a brief perusal of web-forums written in Thai shows how the younger generation is modifying the language to better suit their needs in the inter-connected world we now live in. Using real punctuation, changing spellings to facilitate faster typing or to more closely replicate the spoken pronunciation, abbreviations and slang are all advancing at an astonishing pace out there via M-speak or chat-speak. I dunno that Thais will ever start to space words out, and frankly don’t care all that much, but I am all for a language evolving to meet the needs of the people speaking it. Now should a language evolve simply to make it easier for foreigners who read it have the ability to understand it better; Hmmm no, not so much.
(Yeah sorry about using engrish, I routinely use that spelling so it I don’t hafta capitalize it. Being a native English speaker I don’t see a lot worng , err wrong with it…)
And once again, sorry for the defensive tone of my original post. Thanx for posting it though…
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After the communist take over in Laos in 1975 It was very difficult to get any material in the written language. Sure, there were translations of Lenin and Marx and the party newspaper. How exciting do ya reckon that was? Eventually, 2 books came out, one on Lao history and another on agriculture. In order to stay literate I chose the the one on agriculture, dreading the marxist historical diatribe. More fool me to think that marxism wouldn’t make it into agriculture. The point? Everywhere you turn in Thailand, its the royal family this, the royal family that. How exciting do ya reckon that is?
As for the Lao language, after several ravishings by various unrepresentitive governments, it is now damn near phonemic. This cannot of course be said about either Thai or English. This aspect is much more important than whether or not there are spaces between words or punctuation. Sheesh, next you’ll be demanding capitals at the begining of sentences. I’ve never known a literate Thai or a Lao to suffer brain disfunction while reading their respective scripts.
Pibun did of course try to clean up the Thai script in his own laughably inept fashion. It was an abomination that only that particular clown was capable of. When the amaat finally got control back, what was the reaction? That’s right, they stuffed more historical junk back into the script than had ever been there in the first place. They don’t call them reactionaries for nothing.
Tod Danials #7. My mum was one the bravest people I’ve ever known. In her autopsy there was no metion of her possessing the anotomical appendage that you equate with bravery. You should perhaps reconsider its place in your lexicon.
Tod Danials #9 You are right. Now the only interesting stuff in either Thai or Lao is on the web. Out there, there is much less official control so who knows where it will go. Unfortuately very few native Lao have access to it.
But spaces? Sounds like something Pibun would think up.
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I am trying to take a metacognitive approach to one aspect of the Thai language. Is continuous script an impediment to reading fluency for the average Thai? If not why has it been abandoned elsewhere in the world? If it is then in whose interest is it to retain it?
Making understanding easier for foreigners would be a spin off of abandoning continuous script, not an aim.
There is a panel titled “Romanisation in Thai” at the International Conference of Thai Studies in July. http://www.lc.mahidol.ac.th/thaistudies2011/DeadlineExtended.htm
This is no doubt distinct from “Romanisation of Thai” but could provide an opportunity for informed debate on continuous script. Conference organisers are asking for papers on the subject and it would be really good if someone more competent than I who is reading this would consider submitting one.
On the other issue of language courses I nearly walked out of mine when the teacher informed the class that “Isaan people have smaller noses than the rest of us”(!)
Perhaps we should pause at this stage to consider Not the Nation’s take on government control of the Thai language.
http://notthenation.com/2010/07/ministry-of-communications-bans-over-2000-metaphors/
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According to the United Nations Development Programme Report 2009, Thailands literacy rate is at 94.1 %. That means that 94.1 % of Thai adults are able to read a newspaper and other basic literature.
I would say that Thais not being great readers is a cultural thing, nothing at all to do with their ability to read their own language.
Perhaps if Thai used punctuation there would be a 100% literacy rate in Thailand!!!
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Is sounds stupid, that “putting spaces between words” or “change system and structure of writing” in thai language can changes in the neurophysiological or socio-physiological or any mind set, that causes the way how thais think or increases thais rates of reading. No way! Change system and structure of writing that shows only one of resistance to authorities in writing technique.
I agree with previous comments that putting spaces between words and using punctuation can help writer and reader see each sentences; mass and individual, connection and sequence, that let them more attentive to subtleties of meaning. But that only in writing language.
In general point of view speaking and writing language are separated. In Thai language do not have such idea though they want to have it. Thais write similar to speaking mode (in official on in general). So Thai language is speaking language. But in thai, it can not separate both language usage. Obviously, writing base on speaking permanently. Unconsciously. It shows the way we speaking and talking in everyday. For this reason, such as, formal language (major thai usage), writing can show the way state try to control Thais mind more than show the way we thought. Yes, it reflect technique of cultural control by authorities.
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Some comments…
1. On adding spaces /Other reasons why some people don’t seem to like reading Thai.
Thai children’s books, the ones aimed at 5-6 year old beginning readers do have spaces in between a lot of the words. When I first started learning to read Thai 6 years ago, I used to read a lot of childrens books and, at first the gaps helped a lot. Though, after a while you start to guess – and eventually to recognise – where a word starts and ends, even if you don’t know the meaning of it. Its quite strange how easy it starts to become and how your brain learns to recognise the visual patterns that the strings of letters and words make.
But, as to whether the lack of spaces between words impedes Thai people’s fluency in reading written Thai / makes people less interested in reading ???? I doubt thats the reason. I think there are more educational/cultural reasons why a lot of Thais don’t seem to read as much as people in the west.
OK, I’m generalising here, but I think most westerners who enjoy reading developed their love of books from an early age eg. even before they could read they probably had great stories to look at, and parents who could read the books to them. I don’t think I’ve seen that many Thai houses with bookshelves and a collection of books, and I wonder how many Thai children grew up falling asleep to a bedtime story?
Sure, there are a lot of books in Thailand but most people don’t seem to like buying or reading them. (go to one of the 2 big book fairs at the Queen Sirkit centre in Bangkok and you’ll see more Thai books that you ever thought possible… and thousands of people pushing their way through to the most popular stalls… but the book fairs are an exception. eg. they were set up to try and promote reading…) Take a tube in London and at least 2 or 3 of the commuters in the carriage will be reading a book or flicking through a newspaper. Take the skytrain in Bangok and you’ll be lucky if you see one reader. Most people are either staring into space or playing with their mobiles.
Maybe its a cultural thing. Back home, we’re taught that its good to read books, its relaxing, interesting, fun. In my infant school in England (Ok – this is going back 30 years or so) our reward for finishing our work early was to be able to sit in the book corner on a big comfy cushion and to play with the toys and picture books. At one school I taught in in Thailand, when primary school students finished their work early the teacher told them to ‘nang samarti’ (practise meditation…) in other words, sit still, in silence and do nothing… (hardly my idea of a reward) Taking a book (not that there were that many – and no nice ones – to take) and reading it was never suggested.
That was a poor rural school (and an old teacher, waiting for their pension) but, generally speaking, Thai teachers, in the Thai schools I’ve worked in don’t usually promote library based lessons, or do activities that will develop children’s interest in books.
Another reason is probably the actual books themselves. A lot of the books that are aimed at children are moralistic dross (eg. bad translations of aesop etc…) not the kind of stuff they would usually be interested in or actively want to read. When children are given the chance to choose books to read they tend to go for Japanese/Korean style comic pocketbooks, rather than longer stories. Maybe this is related to the fact that the sentences / phrases tend to be much shorter than usual (they’re in speech bubbles… so its easier to make out each phrase) and that, since its a written version of a conversation there are spaces (eg. after exclamation words like ‘wow’) in between some of the words????
Also, in many Thai schools there is still a lot of rote learning. Letters are to be memorised and chanted back to the teacher. Children are taught to read as a class. There are stories, of a kind… ‘the crow has eyes… the crow is in the field.. the crow is with his uncle in the field…’ These are written on a blackboard line for line, and students have to listen to and repeat each phrase until they can remember them all word for word. There are no pictures, and nothing to fuel the childrens imagination. The teacher asks no questions eg. what does the field look like? what does the uncle look like? that might make the students think about what they are saying. In this context reading, for most children is probably not something they find that stimulating or enjoyable.
Also, bear in mind that most written material is produced in the central Thai dialect, a language that a lot of people outside of Bangkok don’t usually speak, except at school, or in formal situations. I taught at a couple of schools in the north and most people, including the teachers spoke kam meuang. When I volunteered at a school in Issan, the teachers spoke Issan Thai or the local Put Thai dialect. For children to speak one language/dialect at home and then to have to read books in another can’t be easy. Sure a lot of the words are the same but the way that they are pronounced (and Thai is a fairly phonetic language) is not. For example, for a child to learn that ‘gin’ (said in a mid tone) ‘khao’ (said in a long falling tone) means to eat (and to be made to repeat this at school everyday), when they actually say ‘gin’ (in a rising tone) and ‘khao (in a short rising tone with the initial k sounding more like a ‘g’) in every day conversation must be confusing… and to see it written one way but know that it is spoken another, even more so.
I’ve no idea know how many novels/books etc. published in Thailand are written in local dialects ???? Maybe if people were able to buy books written in their own local language they’d be more likely to read them???
Also, I’m not sure how true this is but, when I stayed in the north I was told that traditionally Thai culture was very oral based, and that historically the only people who could read were people high up in society, monks and shamans (who were often former monks.) Locals learned about the news in other provinces/how to behave/folktales and stories etc. because Buddhist monks read palm leaf scriptures out to them. Even when ‘normal’ people started to became literate, they still tended to listen to others read things for them, rather than finding things out for themselves (I think this fits in with the idea of thai society being very heirarchical and people lower down not challenging authority etc…)
2. Thai Language syllabuses…
The Thai language syllabus of the language school in BKK where I studied a short evening course 5 years ago was also pretty nationalistic and right wing eg. We were supposed to learn about how great Rama V was, how how Thailand was never invaded (they ‘invited’ the Japanese in to help build a railway), how considerate and polite Thai people are – now, knowing what I do about kraeng jy, I kind of think its the opposite… neither polite nor considerate, and often more of an attempt to avoid being seen as being inconsiderate – how farmers are dumb and don’t want to be educated, how Taksin (this was pre-coup) was a bad leader as he was ‘selling’ the country to Singapore…
But, most of the things we studied (which the Thai teacher seemed to take as absolute truths) were no different from what most Thai school children have to study too. (Taksin aside…)Thai schools really teach this stuff and students, since they are told these facts by Thai teachers (who are never wrong), usually believe it without question.
3. Adding spaces
The Thai media tends to be fiercely posessive of everything Thai… Every year, (usually arounnd soonthorn Phu / Thai Langaue Day) there’s normally some group ranting off about how the Thai langauge is being destroyed… how todays teenagers are illiterate or about how they are ruining the beautiful Thai language with their use of farang words, ‘tinglish’ and text speak… Just the suggestion that they should think about adding spaces to make the language easier for non-Thais to understand would probably upset these people even more.
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It is the authoritarian nature of Thai education that leaves Thai students unwilling to explore the benefits of reading. Rote methods of learning which are taught throughout the kingdom fail to emphasize creative and critical thinking which is important for the evolution of any language. That the language hasn’t evolved grammatically may be attributed to the particular kind of nationalism taught in the country. The results of which can be seen when Thais learn English, very few seem to master speaking it orally as Thai teachers of English don’t emphasize the importance of phonetics in the language.
Hopefully the internet age will be able to break down the brainwashing that for decades has isolated the country. The Thai dinosaurs that have kept the education system the way it is to keep the populace under control will crumble. There is no way in this day and age to stop the flow of knowledge.
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I have studied Thai language for over seven years now mainly for my own social research into the culture but also for the benefit of interacting with my own Thai family.
I studied the course through a university in Sydney. It was extremely challenging especially in getting answers to varied questions. Questioning Thais can be difficult at the best of times as your left to decipher a sometimes quite unfamiliar answer.
The most difficult aspect of learning Thai in Australia was actually finding people to use it with. This is where I found the negative aspects to ‘kreng jai’ would appear. Thai people I would meet would say they were willing to help me and then never return my calls or would be baffled by why I would want to study the language in the first place.They continually tried to put me off. Having a ‘farang ruu maak’ always lead back to some sort of ‘kreng jai’ as I’m constantly reminded now by my Thai family. Apparently farang like to question everything as we do.
I persevered and and eventually met a Thai friend who helped me understand how the language worked within the social aspects of the culture, especially those dealing with class, status and hierarchy. All the rules with so many been broken and distorted drove me insane but yet I was fascinated how the language an culture mirrored each other. I couldn’t give up learning more as it mirrored my own artistic research.
My Thai teach emphasized an important thing; that is, when learning any language, if it is to be taken seriously it must be a lifelong pursuit as you will never learn everything, even in my own mother tongue of English.
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Scriptura continua may not be an insurmountable problem but it is still curious as to why it has been retained in Thailand for so long. One reason may well be a negative impact of “not being colonised”.
Children must be encouraged to explore and enjoy books from an early age. Given the opportunity to choose on a regular basis from stimulating stock they will soon move on from comic books to more substantial fare.
Available figures show there are currently 26 public libraries in Bangkok and 33 in the whole of the North East. These include libraries in Universities and government offices. They are not facilities to walk in to off the street.
Reading books encourages a more thoughtful and self reflective society. In whose interest is it to keep the Thai public glued to the daily diet of propaganda and pap which describes much of free to air Thai TV?
Anything that might encourage children to read more is worthy of serious study, and that includes the question of scriptura continua.
With recent figures showing the Vietnamese reading thirty times as many books as the Thais (http://www.viet-studies.info/reading_habit_way_behind.htm), all avenues to improvement should be actively explored.
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sam deedes @ 17 and others:
Wouldn’t it be colonial to insist on Thais to change their language to suit us? What of the Chinese and Japanese languages? Certainly much different than European languages, but they seem to get on (at least in math and the sciences!). I’m currently visiting China and have had the most interesting chats about Mandarin with a Chinese man where he showed me two characters that combine to mean something and then can be completely swapped with other characters to convey endless meanings. Do these languages have punctuation? Spaces? Are they more impoverished?
Thai historically has been an oral/aural language and its literature a poetic one, recited at royal courts just like the Ramayana, the well from which Thai literature draws much of its form and inspiration. It was precisely this aural aspect that enabled the Thais to retain many of the traditions and rituals of the Ayuddaya after all of these written materials were torched by the Burmese. High priests were sought for their memory of the language of Ayuddaya.
Is Western literature all that different in the long shadow of history? The Old and New Testaments? The Iliad and the Odyssey? These are oral traditions. The novel was a new concept in the very recent 19th century.
Still, this opens up big questions for those of us who remain interested in all of the questions we have regarding culture and language. Taking on the Thai language and analyzing it in light of European languages would be a great research area in contrastive linguistics.
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As a native Thai who no longer reads or writes Thai on a regular basis (for about 40 years), I do find when reading Thai now that it is not a smooth and seamless experience and I attribute that to being used to spacing in the English language. For what it’s worth, I would welcome the abandonment of scriptura continua. Using punctuation marks on the other hand is trickier and may not be readily embraced.
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I would like a reform to the extent to what they did to Lao; 100% phonetic. No silent letters, rules, etc. Just 100% how its spelled!!
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Nok #20 Yes, right right on the money. One letter for one phoneme. This one thing would do more to ease language learning than any of the other ill informed jabberings suggested on this thread. For another example take a look at Bahasa Indonesia, there is just no quibbling about how letters may or may not be pronounced. In Thai this problem could be cleaned up easily by any enlightened dictator. Though, how about our enthusiastic reformers try applying this one to the English language? Oh yeah! That’s a dirty little swill pit that nobody has the courage to descend into.
In fact, I don’t know why the reformers, who appear to be a bunch of farangs and a Thai who hasn’t read Thai for forty years, are so reticent. Why not go all the way, spaces, punctuation, upper case, lower case, capitals, heck, may as well get rid of those funny squiggly characters while you’re at it, they just clutter a keyboard. Be brave, go for it! Just don’t claim your doing it for the kiddies, oh, pity the poor kiddies. Please.
If you think Thai is all too hard, just take a little trip east for a refresher in Khymer 101, that’ll really make your eyes bleed. Enlightened, progressive leadership in language reform? Hasn’t happened with English, Thai or Khymer, better hope for a historical accident.
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@laoguy, I think you might just be just the person who is qualified to invent a whole new language
Seriously though, the problem with language reform is while it may make it easier for new adopters, it actually requires relearning for the majority remainder. And that alone may make it a non-starter.
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laoguy (21)
I’ve re-read the comments here and I don’t think anyone is suggesting that Thai should undergo some kind of formal revision.
Languages are best left to evolve at their own pace without a central authority dictating those changes. French, for example, is famously controlled by a central government authority – to its detriment, I believe. English has no such cental authority – and as a result is immeasurably more adaptable and flexible. Indeed, this flexibility and ‘democratic’ structure is at the heart of its power as a global lingua franca.
I have a post-graduate degree in English grammar (very boring, I know) and I’ve spent most of my career as a newspaper editor (a bit more exciting), and I still spend hours debating with other well-qualified editors the use of a simple comma. There are no set rules, and there is no central authority dictating it use. This is not a weakness of English; in fact, it is its strength.
Thai will evolve too. Without punctuation, there is simply no way that modern Thai can accommodate the agility of a fast-evolving society. I believe it will naturally select, over time, a set of punctuation and other hallmarks of an advanced modern language. If it doesn’t adopt punctuation – or is forced not to – then it will lose its ability to reflect and progress the increasingly compex discourse of Thai speakers as they transform from a rural agrarian society into a much more literate enterprise economy.
Thai’s stolid written structure may well suit the ruling elite in so far as it keeps the dumbed-down “Phrai” in their place. This is exactly why it’s better not to have a formal review of the language by a central government authority (God forbid). It’s better that the language evolves at its own pace as the society transforms.
Incidentally, Mao Tse Tung famously dictated monumental changes to written Chinese as part of his “Great Leap Forward”. I’m no student of Chinese, but I understand the attempt has robbed the language of a great deal of its richness and flexibility (Perhaps someone here can talk more about this?). My guess is this process will reverse as China continues along its path of modernisation and individuals seize more control over their language.
You can’t stop progress. And language is a reflection of that.
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Dan D #22. Actually, I really don’t mind the Thai script at all. I am a conservative in this regard as I really appreciate the thought put into the system by the original grammarians. To me, it only needs a little housekeeping to simplify. However, these small changes would see the foaming right wing emerge from their burrows. It happens everywhere, it’s why nothing has happened in English, it’s just not worth the political pain. I am not holding my breath on this one.
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@laoguy, as a matter of fact, there was an official reform of the Thai language following the 1932 revolution. The redundancy and multiplicity of the words for the first, second and third person (I, you, he/she) was to be simplified and the use of royal dialects (raja sap) eliminated. Unfortunately, these changes failed to take hold. The ‘Thai way’ prevailed, so here we are.
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stuart # 23 Yes, languages develop all on their own. However, written scripts are much more conservative. They remain largely under the control of conservative factions in society. These groups unconsciously (most of the time) reinforce each other whether they be political, social, religious or academic. Yes, academic, just try handing in a PhD written in twitter English to test the flexibility of our great institutions. Written scripts are not free to meander like the spoken language.
Dan D # 25 You are right. That was a fabulous train wreak, I referred to it in
# 10 of this thread.
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laoguy (26)
Yes, that’s my point. Written Thai hasn’t changed much, possibly because many of the conservative institutions you mention have had control over it. Written Thai is still mostly used by a small class of elites. Outside of the ruling class, written Thai has been used to communicate only in the very basic terms necessary to support a largely rural agrarian lifestyle. That, of course, is changing quickly as Thailand’s society transforms into an enterprise economy. That process has only been taking place in earnest the past two or three generations, which is not a long time in terms of language development (In English we’ve been debating the Oxford comma and the split infinitive since the early 18th century!)
What I’m saying is that, right now, the structure of written Thai is not sufficient to support the higher level of discourse necessary for this transformation to continue to occur. Like the tectonic plates, somebody somewhere is going to have to give ground. Even the perfidious French have given up their fifty-year fight against ‘le weekend’!
As for the educated elites, have you ever tried discussing the structure of written Thai with a PhD student? I have. I host at least six of them at my home every Christmas on an exchange program. Almost every one of them (42 so far) is as frustrated by their written language’s inability to cope with complex discourse as I am with learning it!
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I don’t know if it’s just me, but the critical problem I encountered was less to do with the spaces between words, and more to do with the absence of anything worth reading in Thai.
As you start to master French (or Russian, or Bengali, or Japanese, I’d imagine), a limitless new world opens up to you: literature, poetry, drama, films, philosophy, opera, political theory, semiotics. After learning Thai for about four / five years, I realised one day that all the books I was actually reading were from Western literature, translated (often poorly) into Thai. There were no films I particularly wanted to understand, and no theatre at all. The newspapers are vacuous; the ‘academic’ literature …
My enthusiasm sagged, and now I rarely read Thai, but I hate giving up on any project, so I’d genuinely like to know: what do you other non-native-speakers actually use your Thai reading skills FOR?
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John W said ‘the critical problem I encountered was less to do with the spaces between words, and more to do with the absence of anything worth reading in Thai.’
For a similar reason, my enthusiasm sagged in learning to speak Thai.
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John W > “a limitless new world opens up to you.” I used to think this way with the Thai language, but have become rather bored by now.
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This is one of the most interesting, worthwhile posts I’ve ever seen on NM.
Many good points, requiring lengthy explanation.
But I’m surprised nobody has made this simple point, namely :
that Thai has an extremely limited vocabulary.
It is an exceptionally compact language.
I don’t mean this in any derogatory sense (indeed compared to English verbosity, it’s a blessing!).
But this does explain a lot about how the reading system works.
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#31
You’ve clearly never studied linguistics…
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chris beale – 31
Thai has an extremely limited vocabulary.
That is simply not true Thai has all sort of weird word and hard to pronounce vocab (if not more than English since we have both the language or ordinary man AND for the royalty). However, like any other language, it got simplify overtime and become more friendly to use and so on.
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1. Sam Deedes “With recent figures showing the Vietnamese reading thirty times as many books as the Thais (http://www.viet-studies.info/reading_habit_way_behind.htm), ”
If true, then Vietnamese can be looked at as a ‘natural experiment’. I know they have adopted a Romanticized writing forms. Whether this change also included making phonetic consistency, I don’t know.
The point: A large part of this most interesting group discussion centers around whether or not changing Thai spacing, etc. would result in an increase in both the quantity and quality of Thai reading and writing output.
To the extent that Vietnam’s startling reading stats can be traced to a before and after literacy increase tied to before Romanizing and after, would be suggestive of what might happen here.
Can one argue on the complicated facts of their language reform, that reading increased as a result of or at least, reading increases were associated with the reforms?
2. As to the social class or feudal social caste arguments as to why serious modernization has not occurred in Thailand, I agree with much of the various arguments made.
To put it in political terms: Their are those at the tops of bureaucracies, etc., whose INTERESTS are advanced by keeping language reform at bay. They clearly are not thinking or acting in terms of the general interests of modernization Thailand nor of reconciliation with the countryside nor creating a common culture that works together, rather than operates as a linguistically divided Babel.
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This post had longer legs and covered wider ground than I anticipated, for which I am grateful. I’d like to thank Stuart for his resolutely calm responses to various comments.
I also thank him for his key point:
Thai will evolve too. Without punctuation, there is simply no way that modern Thai can accommodate the agility of a fast-evolving society. I believe it will naturally select, over time, a set of punctuation and other hallmarks of an advanced modern language. If it doesn’t adopt punctuation – or is forced not to – then it will lose its ability to reflect and progress the increasingly complex discourse of Thai speakers as they transform from a rural agrarian society into a much more literate enterprise economy. (#23)
Some further questions about the Thai language which seem worth considering are:
1. What are the implications of there being in effect three separate Thai languages?
2. What are the difficulties (if any) of the dichotomy between spoken and written Thai words?
3. Why, according to Thongchai Winichakul, are Thais, including scholars much less fluent in European languages than,say, Filipinos and Malaysians?
4. Why, again according to Thongchai, has translation as a scholarly endeavour been much less valued historically in Thailand than in countries such as Japan or China?
5. How, in the absence of a historic figure like Kemal Ataturk, will the Thai language make necessary changes in time?
I quote from page 139 of “Jungle Book” by Chang Noi, referring to comments made by Thirayuth Boonmi, who was a leader of the student revolt against military dictatorship in October 1973. He says that “After Thai people’s history of absolutism and dictatorship, even the words for civil society are not available. All the Thai translations of ‘citizen’ are words invented by the state to enforce duties on the people, not rights….There are no good Thai terms for things like decentralization. If Thailand is to have a civil society, Thirayuth suggests, it first needs the vocabulary. And his self-appointed job is to create it. Despite the slow progress, Thirayuth is still involved.”
Further down the page, in describing Thongchai Winichakul as “the most feted Thai historian in the international arena”, Chang Noi goes on to say that part of Thongchai’s role is to “remind the optimistic reformers just how difficult their task truly is.”
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#34
I recall an essay by Susan Sontag, written in the ’60s I assume, reporting on her trip to North Vietnam during the war. She makes great play of the extremely literate culture of the Vietnamese. So this is evidently not a new thing.
p.s it was republished in “Styles of Radical Will”, if I’ve got the title right…
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Vietnamese Latin Based Alphabet/Writing
Sorry, in doing a little goggling, I found that the origin of the Latin alphabet in Vietnam astoundingly begins in 1527 (Wiki). Therefore my idea of comparing pre-adoption reading rates with post adoption ones, as a ‘natural experiment showing the impact of Romanization on literacy use’, does not after all seem possible there. Romanization has been developing for centuries there, making a pre/post comparison moot.
There is a non-substantiated claim by the Wiki writer that the Latin alphabet ‘facilitated’ the impressive Vietnamese reading rates . But, as stated, this has no more factual value than one of our own blogging speculations that it would help here.
“the adoption of the Vietnamese [Latin based] alphabet also facilitated widespread literacy among Vietnamese speakers—whereas a majority of Vietnamese in Vietnam could not read or write prior to the 20th century, the population is now almost universally literate.”
One student of the transition from the Asiatic writing form to the Western form factually claims that in time, the ability to read the old Asiatic literature was lost, and thereby cultural heritage was lost. Certainly this must be a prime fear among the conservative guardians of language purity here.
“Scholars like Pamela A. Pears who study the effect of French Colonialism on native peoples assert that the French, by imposing Roman alphabet on the Vietnamese, cut the Vietnamese off from their traditional literature, rendering them unable to read it.[2]”
VALUE: What seems to be of possible use value to be gained here, from their hundreds of years of Latin adjustment there, are the technical mechanism adopted in writing. Vietnamese follows a 6 tonal form, yet they have developed “an exact phonemic transcription” ability, etc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_alphabet
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/vietnamese.htm
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The posts in this thread simply do not establish any casual links to anything from anything. So much is being claimed to be caused by one causal factor – script.
The Vietnamese didn’t go from one alphabet to another; they went from characters (Chinese-based) to an alphabet. Full use of romanization Vietnamese wasn’t completed until the French forced it in 20th century. And the cultural differences between Theravada SEA and Vietnam go back ages. The French complained about the ‘lazy’ Indianized Khmer and brought in Vietnamese to do the office work etc before Romanization.
Romanization made the Vietnamese literate and readers? Are the Japanese and Chinese illiterate societies today? Were they in the past? If so why? And the Koreans?
How are the literacy and reading rates in all of Central and South America and Africa? The all have been forced to use roman alphabets and spaces between words. Central and South America even speak European languages. How have oppressive governments faired there?
Classical Greek and Latin used scriptura continua so most of the Greek and Roman philosophers using it. Wasn’t democracy conceived using scriptura continua? What about the Christian philosophers before11th century? Socrates didn’t like writing, so I suppose he was not promoting reading either.
How about all the Hindu and Buddhist philosophy and wisdom written in Bramhi, Nagari, Devanagari etc scripts all using scriptura continua. Word spacing is relatively modern in Indian scripts and one might just as easily argue triggered a decline in philosophical thought.
All evidence (according to Richard Gombrich) points to writing being almost unused in India at the Buddha time and that the Buddha probably couldn’t read.
Was scriptura continua discontinued because the elites wanted to free the oppressed people in Europe? Oppressive governments lasted in Europe centuries after scriptura continua was stopped. And the ‘Dark Ages’ rolled along quit nicely too for a while. Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union both used spaces between words (but two different scripts). Shall we argue that Nazi Germany was less oppressive because it used the roman script while the Soviet Union used a Greek-based script?
Why the desire to make it a roman alphabet, just reform the Thai script. Should we make the Russians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks go roman too? Why not make Europe use a reformed Thai script or Arab script. Why does everyone always have to change to suit the roman West?
Maybe there is nothing interesting for some of you to read written by Thais because you actually do not like Thai culture or understand Thai thinking. Rather you like Western culture and understand it.
Just because you love reading doesn’t mean the Thais have to.
The people writing on this post all are using roman alphabet and have spaces between the words, but their argumentation is frequently neither logical nor factual. And it is frequently pejorative and insulting.
I end by saying that you can change the Thai script and writing system in any way you want, but this I can guarantee, it will not help you understand Thai thought in the least.
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@John W#28, I appreciate your frustration. However, let me point out that, while many available reading materials in Thai may fall in the category of being not very worthwhile reading ( this includes many mainstream journalistic media articles, contemporary fiction/nonfiction books, etc.), there are indeed very high- standard Thai literatures which require more in-depth knowledge of the language than what one can achieve from four to five years of studying.
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The placement of vowels, tone marks, consonant silencing diacritics and a few other such markers in Thai allows for construing virtually all of the information about word boundaries that spacing adds for a language like English. It’s a non-issue.
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I am a professional Thai-to-English translator (NAATI No. 70040) processing around a million words a year.
Reading Thai in its current form is easy. Just think of it as a succession of circular syllables, arranged in sequence from left to right, with each syllable centred on the initial consonant. All you have to do is identify the initial consonant of each syllable and the rest just falls into place. Short gaps separate phrases, longer gaps separate sentences. No need for English-style punctuation or word separation.
An excellent introduction to the very wide range of reading material available is given in Thai Cultural Reader Books One and Two and An Intoduction to Thai Literature, published by Cornell back in the 1960s and 70s and yet to be equalled for someone who wants to learn sufficient Thai to undertake research from primary documents.
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# 39
Excellent. That’s exactly what I was hoping for.But could you be explicit, please? A few key authors, for example (not the obvious ones like ชาติ กอบจิตติ of course).
That will be really appreciated, and might get my reading back on track, which is what I’m aiming for.
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@John W#42, as stated in my disclaimer (post#19), I hardly do any Thai language readings these days. What little contemporary materials that I come across I find to be either carelessly written, hard to grasp or just plainly unimpressive. As I was never a serious reader even back in the days, I’m afraid I’m not qualified to give you any recommendations. Sorry.
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John W:
I can give one great recommendation:
“Mother, dear” by Anchan (Anchalee Vivathanachai)
This story comes from her 1990 SEAWrite award winning Jewels of Life. This is the only short story so far that I have come across that I have been impressed with. My Thai is not good enough to read it in Thai, but if it carries a fraction of the artistry of the English version it would still be great. Actually I’d love to hear back from someone whose Thai is good enough.
Gave to a colleague to read and she said she was in tears at the end. Kepner, a well known feminist critic, dismissed it as too idealized of motherhood, but in my opinion, as art, nothing I’ve seen so far comes close to it.
So for those of you who can read Thai, read this one.
Another thing, I also enjoy the chants and the musicality of Pali and Thai. I love the sound of certain looktung lyrics. This is also literature…
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RE:
John W // Apr 17, 2011 at 9:29 pm
#31
You’ve clearly never studied linguistics…
:Scary; I’ve heard this a million times as an English teacher in Japan for over 7 years. Always from some person that is desperate to share that they have studied linguistics, yet lack common commuinication skills. Perhaps the two go hand in hand.
If you have studied linguistics; anybody; I recommend study life skills, because the two don’t seem to mesh. And get a friend that hasn’t studied it, so you can learn about real life.
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I agree with Arthurson that adding spacing between words would be helpful for all, and though I respect John G. and others who say the writing rules make it obvious enough where one word ends and another starts, I respectfully disagree. It is definitely not a “non-issue.” I am another professional translator, and still find it obnoxious to have to parse the words myself. I may get to the point where it’s six of one, half-a-dozen of the other, but look how much time it will have taken me to get there! Spaces are completely unambiguous. In fact, though, there are many places where word combinations could be read in more than one way. Besides that, as Arthurson notes, punctuation has value. Thais are using it (With the western symbols!) more and more, but there’s not much clarity in their use, or systematization. Let’s face it, in many ways this language has not reached a high level of development. I say that as one who loves it very much.
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