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Originally Posted by Citan
I think I can give a pretty good example of what Mister Fixit was talking about here...
A big example, as notated famously by Eric S. Raymond, is that English is the language of choice when talking about technological things and explaining technology within the technology circle, because of its rich vocabulary, especially when it comes to technical things. Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, comments his code in English, and notes his English speaking ability played a large part in drawing attention to the project and getting people to help out and such in the beginning.
Furthermore, as Eric S. Raymond notes that that many people who speak the same language will switch to English when needing a more technologically capable description or some such. This makes its best showing in the hacker community, which is by and most almost exclusively, based on numbers, English speaking when it comes to software, warez, code, and technological things.
Even in China where the people tried so hard to use Chinese only for computer things, the government had to adopt the standard language for information (IE: calling it a firewall or DNS or DHCP instead of whatever Chinese name they had for it) just so people could keep up with those Chinese who were already tech savy thanks to their runs in the underground.
I think this is at least one, I think it a good example though, to illustrate the point.
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Having a rich vocabulary to begin with does facilitate English's ability to describe these technical terms, but that is secondary to the following reasons (for English being used in the technological community):
1) English native speakers have contributed greatly to the foundations of computing and all of its technological baggage.
2) Non-English speaking inventors/developers/programmers give their new ideas an English name because they want their idea to be accessible to the widest audience.
Thai or Chinese names could be devised for all these terms. Just string enough words together.
Back to the topic, this is something I've been thinking about lately...
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeS
The mismatch between spelling and pronunciation in English can cause many pronunciation problems for Thais speaking English. Another problem can be that English words can be misspelt in Thai, and then the user has trouble adjusting to the correct spelling.
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I spent some minutes in class telling my M1-3 EP students that the way most English words ("top sop") are written in Thai does not correspond to the closest pronunciation possible given the sounds available in the Thai language.
An example is "cartoon". It is spelled กาำร์ตูน which is pronounced "ga-dtoon". Thai, however, is capable of pronouncing "ca-toon" if you use different letters: คาทูน.
I'm sure there are postings covering this topic in depth.
It is all well and good when they speak to each using the butchered loan words, but each time they learn a new English written word, they butcher it in accordance with this system.
Some info here regarding systems we use to transliterate Thai into our alphabet.
thai-language.com message boards: New page about romanization/transcription systems for Thai