[LivinLOS]

Originally Posted by JayBee

To my way of thinking, that message seems highly unlikely to have been written by a Thai. Writing Thai words in Roman letters is a practice only used by farangs attempting to learn Thai or by Thais ( or farangs) attempting to teach Thai to farangs. When I have written Thai words in Roman letters and asked TGs about them, they were quite baffled by what I was doing. To their way of thinking if it is written in Roman letters, it is a farang language, not Thai. If a Thai knew how to write Thai words in Roman letters, it would indicate to me that they already know how to speak English(or German or whatever), therefore why write it in Thai, why not just use English. Even if they didn't know English well, it would be easier for them to get a dictionary and attempt to write words in English than to bastardize their own language by trying to write it with foreign symbols.

If you were trying to write something in English to a Thai person, would you use Thai letters to phonetically sound it out? Not likely.

As others are saying thats changing rapidly with mobile phones and SMS's becoming so much the norm.. I know lots of girls whose English is passable but will send SMS's in combinations of english and Thai Roman..

The phones need to have the Asian firmware to display Thai (or rather local firmware for any language pack) but its not unusual for Thai girls whose english is passable to use a phone in english defalt language rather than Thai fonts.. My GF struggles with English so has her phone in Thai but then wants me to 'set alarm' or otherwise work with a Thai only phone.. Always a struggle for me..