Quote:
Originally Posted by LivinLOS
This also applies to many other aspects of asian psychological makeup also. Thais are not it seems (as) able to apply deductive reasoning.. That sounds extreme but it is shown time and again in dealings.
If your trying your thai, you can get 99.9% right but that last .1% they dont hear then they cannot process what it was.. Even if your talking about something with a limited set of possible options, they dont seem to apply the list of possibles and realise one of the words you said was close to it.
Just yesterday I go into a hardware store that sells the heavy duty rain ponchos.. Thai guy comes out sees its a farang and immediately goes into stammer and panic mode (why I dont know) I ask for a rain coat.. Blank look.. hmm ok so I start to improvise.. Pinch my shirt and mime 'fon tok' and pretend pulling up a hood etc.. Blank look.. mime pnocho wearning.. more just flat blank no idea.. Erm remember shirt is sua.. So now ask for sua (hopefully not pronouncing it like tiger GRR I hate tones) fon tok.. Blank look.. OK fon tok sua.. Blank look.. I happen to know they are in a drawer behind the counter so I just said excuse me, went to the drawers opened it and got one out. When I get home I ask the missus and apparently it is sua (something) fon tok.. How hard could that be ?? Anyone thats been here any time will have 10's if not 100's of these situations where they simply dont apply any possible / probable / deductive reasoning to things.
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Guess you could say thai's are very ridged in there willingness to understand imperfect thai.
For whatever reason, there is common acceptance that you can bastardize English all you want to try and get your point across. And it works. for example, after a few hours in Singapore my ears can tune into "Singlish" and follow along. I'm willing give up how english should sound so
Singlish turns from sounding like
gibberish into something like
English. (how do you like that rap throw-down)
Seems thais are at least less willing to do so. Or perhaps able. Somewhere else you mentioned lack of problem solving skills and to some degree comprehending a mashed-up language takes problem solving skills.
If you look at how thais are bad with English, it is partly pronunciation. That is partly them forcing in some tonal aspects. I think this is partly because english words adopted into thai are given a tonal treatment (on thai tv and such). Second issue is they can't wrap there head around the new grammatical structure. Third they have a lot of trouble with plural, tense, and pronouns. Why is it that no matter how well a thai speaks english, they always mix up "he" and "she"?
Part of the reason I don't bother with Thai anymore. Just easier to speak broken english.