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Showing results for tags 'means of expression'.
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I've thought about this a lot during my experience of learning Thai and it seems to me that Thai is an overly vague language. By that I mean, English is a very precise language. We have specific words for every variation or even change of state. Thai often lacks more descriptive words to express a more detailed idea. For instance, the lack of plurals in Thai. One is never sure if one or more than one thing is being discussed because there are no plural nouns or adjectives. Lack of future and past tense. Although other words can be added to clarify the context, by itself, there is no past or present. All verbs are in the present tense. And if that wasn't hard enough, the language seems to make use of general terms or classifiers instead of precise words. For instance, many Thais will refer to any booze that is not beer as whiskey even though English speakers commonly refer to a specific type like rum, bourbon, Scotch, Irish, etc. I was wondering about this because one thing I've noticed when Thais speak English is that they tend to make a point and then keep expanding on that point rather than using the correct English descriptive statement. For example. I go shopping with my friend Oh Oh drive Oh drive us in her car Oh's boyfriend go with us. In English it would have been said: My friend Oh and her boyfriend drove us to go shopping. In Thai it seems like adding additional detail provides the context. Are other people confused by that too or is it just me? It might be easier for people learning if they explained this as a feature of the language. I think a lot of us who learn Thai tend to try to construct complex sentences like we're used to in English when maybe what we should learn is to simplify and then continue to add more and more detail. Or am I crazy?