4 August 2003

Uraiwan Thienthong, the minister of culture, is worried about the Thai language. Teenagers get grammar, syntax and pronunciation wrong. The main problem is they use too many English words. Even teachers do this. The minister puts the blame firmly on the schools.

But really the problem is much broader than that. Kids have English words coming at them from all sides all the time. To understand the messages in just two ad-breaks last night, you needed to know these words: shampoo, body lotion, skin care, fast check, one two call, smooth, cyber shot, natural next step, whitening, yogurt, moisture, active, air, sexy, design, surround, heart, cream, purifying, foam, genius and control. Only one ad (for instant noodles) was totally English-free.

The Ministry of Culture has set up language clinics in every province, and is planning to expand these to every district. The metaphor is intriguing. Poor language is a disease which can be cured by a doctor.

One of the minister’s first patients would have to be her own boss, the prime minister. Sometimes, his condition seems to be chronic. He just cannot stop himself using English words. Here is a passage from a famous speech, with ‘e’ showing an English word and ‘t’ a Thai one:

e-t-t-t-t-e-t-t-t-e-t-t-t-t-t-e-e-e-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-e-e-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-e-e-t-t-e-e-e-t-t-t-e-e-e-e-e-t-t-t-e-e-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-e-e-e-e-e-t-t-t-e-t-t-e-t-t-e-e-e-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-e-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-e-e-t-t-e

This was a speech on technology, so some of the English words were technical terms. But others were catch-phrases which have perfectly good Thai equivalents. And some were fairly simple words: organisation, commercial sense, convert, Indian, work, consumer, speed.

Thaksin is quite capable of speaking continuous Thai. In other speeches he scarcely uses a single foreign word. But he obviously likes to use lots of English. Just listen to his news sound-bites and his radio talks. He regularly uses simple English words (sell, think, develop) which he could just as easily have spoken in Thai. It is part of his image as a modern, international, technological man. Possibly he also thinks he is helping to educate people, get them more used to hearing foreign words, provoking them to learn what they mean.

His Majesty the King has been a strong supporter of efforts to preserve and promote Thai. Yet even he uses English sparingly but with great effect. In his birthday speech last year, he described his now-famous dog as “mid-road”. This is of course not a common adjective for dogs in English. In fact it might be unknown in this context. The phrase works because it is a literal translation from the Thai. The result is witty and endearing, a joke shared between speaker and audience, and very memorable.

But perhaps trying to erect walls around the Thai language is a denial or misunderstanding of the language’s special character. All languages change all the time. Thai has been especially good at absorbing things from other languages.

This started long ago when Thai people and Khmer people were living mixed up together. The Thai language absorbed a lot from Khmer. It took a lot of fancy words which had originally come from the Indian languages of Pali and Sanskrit. It borrowed many simple words like walking, being born, or planting rice. To construct more complex sentences, it absorbed very basic words like: for, or, can, by, because, may. To construct more complex words, it borrowed principles for adding prefixes and suffixes.

So anyone now speaking Standard Thailand Thai is actually speaking a lot of Khmer. If someone from Chiang Mai goes somewhere where they speak another Tai-family language like Shan, Lao, Ahom, or Zhuang, it takes only a little time before the two sides can understand one another. They are both speaking a fairly pure Tai language. But take a pure Bangkok speaker to these places, and there is complete mutual incomprehension.

Not only Khmer has been mixed into “Standard Thai”, but also Mon, Chinese, and much else. Take the first paragraph of the Draft Masterplan of Uraiwan’s ministry of culture. If T means a Thai word, P is Pali, S is Sanskrit, K is Khmer, this paragraph runs as follows:

T-T-K-T-P-P-T-S-T-T-P-T-K-T-S-T-K-K-T-K-P-T-P-K-T-T-T-T-T-T-P-T-P-T-T-T-T-K-T-P-T-T-T-K-T-K-T-T-T-T-K-T-K-T-P-T-T-T-T-K-T-T-T-S-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-K-T-K-T-P-K-T-T-K-T-S-P-T-K-T-K-T-S-T-T-T-T-P-T-T-T-T-P-T-T-T-K-K-T-P-T-T-K-T-P-K-T-K-T-T-K-T-T-K-T-P

About half the words have been adopted from other languages (probably more, but Chang Noi is not an expert). All these words are of course now “Thai”. The point is that Thai has been very successful in absorbing from other languages. The great administrator and scholar, Prince Damrong, reckoned this absorbent quality was one reason why Thai had been so successful as a language, society and culture through history.

Language is a social tool. When society changes, language changes too. In this globalisation age, the boundaries of language are bound to be breached. Between Uraiwan and Thaksin, there seem to be two different strategies or dealing with this, and they reflect different versions of nationalism.

Uraiwan’s strategy seems to be to set up a language Border Patrol Police to hold back the English invasions. Last week, the Ministry of Culture ran a campaign on preserving the Thai language under the title: Love the country, revere the culture, cherish the language. Somehow, this sort of nationalism loves this kind of triplet.

But Thaksin does not seem so interested in the old nationalism which is all about unity and tradition. In a fascinating aside a few weeks ago, he wondered aloud whether Thai nationalism focused too much on symbols (the flag was his example, but language would be another), rather than realities. He had just returned from the US. At a guess, he must be impressed how countries like the US (and most western nations) manipulate nationalism for advantage in the international arena. In other words, an outward nationalism not an inward one. Following his logic, Thais need to be patriotic, but they also need to know English.

Building a fortress round the language is not a good idea. If Thai had been resolutely defended down through the ages, then the minister of culture, Uraiwan Thienthong, would not exist (as it were), since her name is Sanskrit-Chinese-Mon.