Culture on Hua Hin Today

Use of Thai Language with new teenage generation

On behalf of a Thai teacher teaching via DLTV nationwide and neighboring countries and all teachers in Wangklaikangwon School must keep up the standard of the Thai language.

When the teachers had an audience with His Majesty the king at Piamsuk royal residence, His Majesty kindly taught the correct way to use prepositions or conjunctions, His Majesty asked which is the correct way.

"This stone doll is made from Italian stone." or "This stone doll is made of stone from Italy." His Majesty showed us a very perfect example and emphasized the correct words and sentences in the Thai language communicated to the people for the correct comprehension.

At the moment, teachers, lecturers, oversea students, and superstars get too familiar with the wrong way of speaking Thai by using Thai with a western accent or compounding their own words like "Ab - Baeow" (a kind of slang, which means being innocent like a child, not found in the standard Thai dictionary), "Jarb" (being wonderful, superb or being in a good way used by teenagers), "Jaem" (to take part in something) and other words. A word created by teenagers at the period of time is called "slang" or "a slangy word". However, slang will finally disappear at the end of its generation.

"The concern of mine and the teachers nowadays is the mistaken use of Thai, some conjunctions are wrongly used to join a sentence. When it is communicated to someone, they may misunderstand and lose the point. The obvious example of the incorrect use of the Thai language is seen in the headlines of newspapers about political reviling. The words used in the headlines become a mouth language and slang. It seems that slang is habitually spoken as if it is normal communication." Teacher Narongrit said.

Teacher Narongrit also added that at the moment, the writing language of mass media is extremely incorrect and it looks only slightly correct when it is spoken or broadcast to the public. For instance, an abbreviation should be pronounced as its full word e.g. "cabinet", "Police Station" and "Professor" should not be abbreviated, they should be fully pronounced.

News announcers on both radio and television, have their own standard language, official language and formal language to present. But now we also found that "Mouth language" becomes popular in certain news reports to get closer their audiences by attracting their attention and therefore boosting their ratings. The spoken language is used in the media as a tool to convey sarcasm and to often cause a feeling of blame and destruction to the listening party. Sometimes, listeners can be disappointed from incorrect use of the language.

We have to understand that the change of language is conducted by "Mass Media" to conform to present news. It sometimes leads to confrontation. The advertisement using the word "Gasohol" is a story about a child who did not pass his exam. They had an accident and it was because they refueled their car with gasohol which did not make any sense to understand at all. The advertisement is quite funny, but it is still incorrect in a linguistic way.