Accents and dialects

[Dr.Winston]

Correct me if i'm wrong but don't all schools in thailand only teach 'thai language' i.e. bangkok thai? so people only speak their regional dialect at home with their families and/or friends?

 

If that's right then why bother learning a regional dialect if everyone (bar the people that didn't go to school) speaks thai?

 

I met some guy in a bar in patts that was speaking a little issan to the bg's but had lived for 4 years in bangkok, when i asked if he could speak central thai he said only a little bit (which he was right about), didn't get that myself, งง.

 

There's a whole generation where a large percentage might have been educated by the monks at the temple but you're right about Central Thai being taught at schools and personally I'm convinced that learning central Thai is the way to go. For one, once your Thai reaches a certain level people will judge you on it, if you speak a dialect they might just assume that you married a country bumpkin and picked it up from her (I'm playing devil's advocate here. It's not my way of viewing things).

 

As I said before, once your central Thai is good it's pretty easy to pick up enough of the dialects to be useful.

[Dr.Winston]

pum yak ut toot puop kun..... dai mai krup?

 

5555

 

You stay away from my arse! Yet pet

[herds]

by my calculations i'll probably be fluent in 20 years, so the dialects can wait

[lincslad]

There's a whole generation where a large percentage might have been educated by the monks at the temple but you're right about Central Thai being taught at schools and personally I'm convinced that learning central Thai is the way to go. For one, once your Thai reaches a certain level people will judge you on it, if you speak a dialect they might just assume that you married a country bumpkin and picked it up from her (I'm playing devil's advocate here. It's not my way of viewing things).

 

As I said before, once your central Thai is good it's pretty easy to pick up enough of the dialects to be useful.

 

Thats true, sometimes when I spoke with BGs they were not familiar with certain things I said, it took me a while to realise that it wasn't just my Thai being wrongly pronounced but the fact I was speaking central Thai. I would often complain to the missus, who is from BKK, that she was teaching me wrong. BGs had often asked me where I had learnt Thai and I told them I picked a majority of it up from the missus. They'd ask where she was from but they still never explained to me why they sometimes they never understood me.

 

I agree with Doc here and BKK thai is the way to go or people will think you are just a prostitute.