Tinglish (or Thaiglish, Thenglish, Thailish, Thainglish, etc.) refers to any form of
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
mixed with or heavily influenced by
Thai. It is typically produced by native Thai speakers due to
language interference from the first language. Differences from standard native English occur in
pronunciation
Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...
, vocabulary, and grammar.
[Lambert, James. 2018. A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity. ''English World-wide'', 39(1): 1-33. DOI: 10.1075/eww.38.3.04lam] The term was coined in 1970, and several alternative terms have been proposed since its inception, such as ''Thainglish'' (1973), ''Thaiglish'' (1992), ''Tinglish'' (1994), ''Thinglish'' (1976), ''Thenglish'' (2003), and ''Tenglish'' (2012).
Characteristics and examples
Characteristics and examples (
direct translation) include :
* omission of pronouns
*
zero copula
Zero copula is a linguistic phenomenon whereby the subject is joined to the predicate without overt marking of this relationship (like the copula "to be" in English). One can distinguish languages that simply do not have a copula and languages tha ...
* use of
present tense
The present tense (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present ...
+ ''already'', in contrast to
past tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some ha ...
of Standard English
* non-standard use or omissions of
articles,
declension
In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ...
,
prepositions, and
conjugation
Conjugation or conjugate may refer to:
Linguistics
* Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form
* Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language
Mathematics
* Complex conjugation, the chang ...
.
* addition of Thai final
particle
In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass.
They vary greatly in size or quantity, from ...
s, e.g., ''I don’t know na''
* ''any'' and ''every'' are used interchangeably
* different use of conditional constructions
* no use of
double negatives
A double negative is a construction occurring when two forms of grammatical negation are used in the same sentence. Multiple negation is the more general term referring to the occurrence of more than one negative in a clause. In some languages, d ...
* moving "S" on singular verbs to the subject, for instance "He's talk too much" instead of "He talks too much"
* omission of prepositions, for instance "I wait you" instead of "I'll wait for you" or "I listen him" for "I listened to him".
* "very" and "very much" are used interchangeably, for instance "I very love my daughter" and "She beautiful very much".
Examples of words and phrases
Examples (
direct translation) include:
Pronunciation
As some sounds in English do not exist in the Thai language, this affects the way native Thai speakers
pronounce
Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...
English words, as displayed in loanwords.
Adaptation of consonants
English consonants with corresponding sounds in Thai are simply carried over, while others are adapted to a similar-sounding consonant.
*, , and are devoiced to , , and : "goal" → , "zip" → , "jam" → .
* becomes the affricate : "shirt" → .
*The "th" sounds and are replaced by or : "thank you" →
*Initial is replaced by , but final is replaced by : "level" → , "serve" → .
*Initial
consonant clusters
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...
with followed by a voiceless unaspirated stop do not occur in Thai, so is added between these consonants: "start" →
*Final became in older loanwords, whereas modern adaptation generally favors instead: "grill" → .
*Final consonant clusters are generally truncated to only the sound directly after the vowel: "act" → .
Adaptation of vowels
* Diphthongs and triphthongs are generally simplified to long vowels, such as the in "blade" becoming . Exceptions are diphthongs ending in and , which are instead reanalysed as the Thai diphthongs ending in and : "tie" → , "view" → .
Tone assignment
All Thai syllables must have one of five tones (mid, low, falling, high, rising). English words adapted into Thai are systematically given these tones according to certain rules. English loanwords are often unusual in that tone markers are normally omitted, meaning that they are often pronounced with a different tone from that indicated by their spelling.
* Monosyllabic words that end in
sonorants
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are ...
take the mid tone, while those that end in
obstruents either take the low tone or the high tone, with the high tone predominant.
* For polysyllabics, the nonfinal consonants follow similar rules to monosyllabics, although they always take high tone when ending in obstruents.
* The tone of final consonants that end in sonorants depend on where the stress falls in the original English word. If the final syllable is stressed, the mid tone is taken, while non-final stress correlates with the falling tone being taken.
* Final consonants ending in obstruents take the low, high, or falling tone in descending order of frequency.
According to Wei and Zhou (2002), Thai is a tonal language, whose syllables take approximately the same time to pronounce, Thai people often have difficulty with English word stress. They, instead, stress the last syllable by adding high pitch (Choksuansup, 2014).
When it comes to vowels, there are 21 phonemes in Thai compared with 15 vowels in English; therefore, it is relatively easy for Thai people to imitate the English vowels. However, the two systems have a significant discrepancy: Thai vowels are distinguished by shortness and length, while for English, it is laxness and tenseness. That explains why Thai English speakers perceive and produce lax sounds as short sounds and tense sounds as long sounds, which gives their pronunciation its uniqueness (Kruatrachue, 1960).
In terms of consonants, there are a number of English consonants which do not exist in Thai. This makes it difficult for the Thai to perceive the difference among some sounds and produce them correctly. Instead, they replace the English consonants with the most similar sounds in Thai (Trakulkasemsuk, 2012):
/r/ can be pronounced as /l/ or dropped.
/tʃ/, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ are altered by Thai /tɕʰ/ (aspirated voiceless fortis palatal stop with slight affrication).
/dʒ/ is substituted by Thai /tɕ/ (weakly glottalized unaspirated voiceless fortis palatal stop).
/θ/ become either / t̪⁼/ (voiceless unaspirated apical alveolar stop), /t/, or /s/.
/ð/ is replaced by /d/
/v/ is pronounced as /w/, and /z/ as /s/
In addition, consonant cluster /st/ does not exist in Thai, so they pronounce it as /sə.t/; for example: stop /sə.tɑːp/. Ending sounds are oftentimes omitted (Choksuansup, 2014).
According to Wei and Zhou (2002), Thai is a tonal language, whose syllables take approximately the same time to pronounce, Thai people often have difficulty with English word stress. They, instead, stress the last syllable by adding high pitch (Choksuansup, 2014).
When it comes to vowels, there are 21 phonemes in Thai compared with 15 vowels in English; therefore, it is relatively easy for Thai people to imitate the English vowels. However, the two systems have a significant discrepancy: Thai vowels are distinguished by shortness and length, while for English, it is laxness and tenseness. That explains why Thai English speakers perceive and produce lax sounds as short sounds and tense sounds as long sounds, which gives their pronunciation its uniqueness (Kruatrachue, 1960).
In terms of consonants, there are a number of English consonants which do not exist in Thai. This makes it difficult for the Thai to perceive the difference among some sounds and produce them correctly. Instead, they replace the English consonants with the most similar sounds in Thai (Trakulkasemsuk, 2012):
/r/ can be pronounced as /l/ or dropped.
/tʃ/, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ are altered by Thai /tɕʰ/ (aspirated voiceless fortis palatal stop with slight affrication).
/dʒ/ is substituted by Thai /tɕ/ (weakly glottalized unaspirated voiceless fortis palatal stop).
/θ/ become either / t̪⁼/ (voiceless unaspirated apical alveolar stop), /t/, or /s/.
/ð/ is replaced by /d/
/v/ is pronounced as /w/, and /z/ as /s/
In addition, consonant cluster /st/ does not exist in Thai, so they pronounce it as /sə.t/; for example: stop /sə.tɑːp/. Ending sounds are oftentimes omitted (Choksuansup, 2014).
References
External links
Investigating Thai Loan Phonology Sound Systems of English, LG.236, Lecture 8, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Thammasat University, 8 Sep 2008.
{{interlanguage varieties
Thai language
Macaronic forms of English