ศาลาชุมนุม

[pensive]

Excellent! Thank you very much. The Monitor Hypothesis is interesting - I find myself unwilling to produce out put in Thai; and so is the Input Hypothesis - I can see it sort of working in that the presence, for example, of มา in a sentence seems about to crystallise into something meaningful.

[Richard Wordingham]

Hmmm, I'm not convinced. Firstly, if there were a need for spacing in Thai writing, it would have been invented. That's just evolution.

Useful things can come and go. Traditional punctuation has vanished - and is now being replaced by western punctuation! Perhaps choosing the word boundaries was too complicated and it was safer not to bother.

One curious feature I've noticed recently is the presence of spaces between words in Pali in Thai script. What's the reason for that?

[Nan]

An answer from a native speaker.

Spaced or unspaced is not a problem to read for Thai people, the problem is if you leave space in the wrong place, the meaning of that sentence might be changed. So, it's hard to understand the meaning if it's unspaced in some sentences.

For example;

อย่าไปเที่ยว บอกคนอื่นอย่างนั้นสิ - Don't go out (go around for pleasure). [You have to] tell others like this (tell other 'don't go out').

อย่าไปเที่ยวบอกคนอื่นอย่างนั้นสิ - Don't tell others like that. (spread around some rumors)

Both sentences have different meaning as you can see.

[Torae]

Just like khun Nan said. Spacing doesn't really matter much to the reading speed. It has a HUGE impact on context though.

I read the spaced example in the first post a lot slower than the non-spaced one, not because spaced text is harder to read but rather that it was parsed awkwardly.
You learn pretty early on as a kid that you have to read by context. I remember encountering ตากลม before 1st grade. Without context you really can't tell how to parse 'ตากลม'. Is it ตาก-ลม: exposed to the the air. or is it ตา-กลม: round eye ? 5555

Another funny joke about spacing that you might have heard is the ไม่ได้เจอกันตั้งนานนมโตขึ้นเยอะเลย.

So yeah spacing might help you learn to read faster but they are kinda like training wheel on a bicycle, eventually you will have to read unspaced text and your spacing software or website might not parse it correctly which could lead to a whole lot of trouble when reading

[Toffeeman]

Another funny joke about spacing that you might have heard is the ไม่ได้เจอกันตั้งนานนมโตขึ้นเยอะเลย.

I guess that means: Long time no see, wow your breasts have grown!

Quite funny in itself but what am I missing about spacing. Is there another meaning I am missing?

[simonbournemouth]

Quite funny in itself but what am I missing about spacing. Is there another meaning I am missing?

นานนม = นานมาก


"ไม่ได้เจอกันตั้งนาน นมโตขึ้นเยอะเลย" or "ไม่ได้เจอกันตั้งนานนม โตขึ้นเยอะเลย"

[tod-daniels]

I'd hafta agree to disagree in the premise "those that read Thai well generally speak well too". I know foreigners who can read a Thai sentence and replicate it nearly flawlessly tone for tone, yet have abso-tively, posi-lutely NO idea what they just read. While they can say the words correctly, know the tone rules inside, outside, upside-down, they don't have those words tied to a meaning in their heads yet. Sadly, that ain't reading. In my mind reading equals comprehension.

I've studied Thai for going on 3 years (mostly self study). I taught myself to read Thai and now can pretty much read most anything which catches my attention or I find of interest to read. Conversely, things which don't pique my interest (thai culture, anything nationalistic, buddhism, the history of the world according to the Thais, etc), I could probably read 4 or 5 times and not understand it.

My spoken Thai is pretty horrifically toned with a HEAVY foreign (American) accent. Then again, being a foreigner it should come as little surprise to the Thais that I'd speak Thai with a foreign accent, especially given their definite "Thai accented engrish".

The interesting fact is, until quite recently, (the middle of last month to be exact) I couldn't tell you with 100% certainty the tone of any Thai word I saw written (well maybe a few but not really). I could tell you exactly what it meant in English. I could read and comprehend Thai sentences and back translate them in English too. I did this by word memorization. I memorized the composition of a Thai word, consonant, vowel, tone mark and all, and tied that configuration into a meaning inside my head (as well as on high frequency words sometimes even knowing the correct tone, lol).

Initially as children we read letter by letter, UNTIL we make the leap in recognizing groups of letters carry a specific meaning. That's when we truly begin to really 'read'.

Remember, few if any people read out loud (and yes, in Thai classrooms where I’ve been called upon to read aloud, the thais almost cover their ears at my ‘rendition’, but my tests scores bear out that while I can’t replicate tones, I can certainly comprehend what I’m reading just fine).

Most reading is done silently to yourself. While it might be some slight benefit to read the word silently in your head with the correct tone, I am able to read far faster solely by word recognition and the context it's used in than I would if I pronounced each word in my head correctly.

As far as spacing Thai script; (a topic which was beat to death on New Mandala) I think the longer you stick with it, the easier it gets to read. I don't find the lack of word spacing an impediment much at all anymore. The way Thai books are formatted they pretty much space out script on a page to keep the compound words together, get the line breaks correct, etc.

Learning to read Thais just like learning to read English, word memorization, lots and lots of it.

Strangely, even as horrific as my spoken Thai is concerning toning and my American accent, almost universally the Thais understand what I'm saying (except those wanna-be-hi-so-thais who think a foreigner obviously can't speak Thai and therefore they can’t understand me).

Now I did put a LOT of time into vowel length, sentence structure and word order which I think makes up a little in comprehension for my off tones. So I’d say, reading for comprehension has little to do with spoken pronunciation or correct intonation of words. Instead reading is recognizing a specific group of Thai characters carry a specific meaning in your head. I’d imagine a person could even learn to read and understand written Thai quite well, yet NOT speak it at all, simply by character recognition tied to meaning.

Still this is an interesting thread.

Sorry if my reply was off-topic, it seemed the thread was meandering some, lol..

[Toffeeman]

I am going to stick by my comment that "those that read Thai well generally speak well too". I find tod-daniels comment very interesting but in a way it bears the point I am trying to make. He has achieved a goal that I am still working towards but has done it in a different order to me.

I have set out to speak Thai as best as possible with the most accuracy as possible. In my learning I very quickly realised that means learn and use the tones. Poor tones equals poor speech and in many cases ununderstandable speech even though the Thais tell you they understand you and how well you are doing. I know this from the way they speak behind the backs of some who try hard but cant seem to master the tones.

I also realised that if you could read Thai properly with all the tone rules that would help with accurate speech as you could self correct yourself. Oftentimes I will hear a new word from a Thai friend and try to repeat it but get the tone wrong as Thais often speak with such subtle tones that I couldn't pick it out by ear. So I would ask them to spell it and instantly I could say the word correctly.

So for me reading Thai is an aid to communicating as clearly as possible in the Thai language rather than being all about comprehension. Having said that I am now trying to work towards the goal of comprehending what I am reading which is difficult but proving to be fun and fulfilling at the same time.

[DanR]

I'd hafta agree to disagree in the premise "those that read Thai well generally speak well too". I know foreigners who can read a Thai sentence and replicate it nearly flawlessly tone for tone, yet have abso-tively, posi-lutely NO idea what they just read. While they can say the words correctly, know the tone rules inside, outside, upside-down, they don't have those words tied to a meaning in their heads yet. Sadly, that ain't reading. In my mind reading equals comprehension.

Would they have understood the Thai had it been read aloud? It just sounds like the text was beyond their level. Reading doesn't make you perfect but it's almost certainly going to make you better since, generally, practising any language skill is going to be good for the others. Besides, being able to pronounce entire sentences flawlessly is speaking well.

As for the speed question, I would certainly expect that it would be slower to read Thai written without word breaks than with but it's hard to test since if you ask Thai-speakers, they already have huge amounts of practice and an accompanying set of beliefs about reading continuous script. Likewise, English-speakers have a parallel set of practices and beliefs about discontinuous script. You'd need to get some, say, Chinese-speakers in a lab and do some experiments with them, though that'll no doubt bring its own set of problems.