Debunked Part 2: 'Thai is the World's Most Complicated Writing System'
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ธ.ค. 2020
- Why doesn't Thai use spaces? Surely it would be easier to read if spaces were put between words? Really? ... maybe you'll have a different opinion after watching this clip.
If you haven't watched part 1 yet, here's the link
• Debunked: 'Thai is the...
The Part 1 'Debunked' clip caused so much discussion ... and a little controversy, I decided to re-record the 2nd part here (Note...the 5 o'clock shadow). While some believed that doing 'debunked' clips of this nature is cruel to the creator of the original clip, the fact that many mentioned that indeed that original 'Thai is the Most Complicated Script in the World' clip by Xidnaf did either make learning Thai harder for them, or just put them off learning together.
In this clip, I summarise some of the more important points from the first clip, then jump into where we last left off.
#Thailanguage #Thai #CrackingThaiFundamentals
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In this clip I refer to a few links -
My Clip on Hangul / Phags-pa / Sanskrit
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pki1o...
My TEDx talk on Chinese in Kuala Lumpur- linking the same system
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nF9w...
'The King's Letters' - Korean movie on Hangul Script and links to Sanskrit
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E__Z...
The original clip 'The World's Most Complicated Writing System' that I am responding to in this video :
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKVtp...
![fellow fellow - Proud [OFFICIAL MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9uZF7BlUQPE/mqdefault.jpg)
xidnaf's videos were how I got into linguistics, TH-cam was still young in those days and while it wasn't the most informed video ever I'm sure it may have drawn some people to Thai who could've wanted a challenge, since he portrayed it as such a difficult language.
nevertheless, it's very refreshing to see the video from another point of view so many years on.
btw: I believe it's /ˈzɪdnaf/ - he purposefully never pronounced his name and then put it to a vote, there's a whole video about it on his channel
Interesting. I think for polyglots, they'd probably take it as a challenge. Problem is here on the ground in Thailand, that clip along has probably stunted many people's learning of the Thai language. I've heard (false) facts quoted straight from Xidnafs clip as excuses as to why it's futile to even try and start to learn
@@StuartJayRaj people who make excuses will always find them somewhere. if xidnaf's video didn't exist, they'd find someone else to quote.
@@graf I detect a xidnaf fan not like his particular ox being gored. Xidnaf spoke a lot of bollocks in that video. It deserved the thorough running through it got here.
I remember that video, that was fun coz i had be wondering for so long how to say the thing
@@StuartJayRaj I fully agree with you Stuart, I for one had decided - after many months of deliberating whether to learn Thai or not to just forget about it as I too thought it was too hard and that was without even watching Xidnafs clip. Now, had I actually seen his clip, I guarantee you that I wouldn't even bother learning it, but since I am looking at living in Thailand as soon as the borders open up, I through I'll do more research and thank goodness (and you Stuart) I came across your videos and now for the first time I am very eager to start learning Thai and am also looking forward in learning a few other S. E. Asian languages - just from the information I received from you. So, thank You for this new love for the Language and I think the Xidnaf no matter how young he or the internet is or was, he has no right to destroy people's desires before they have even fully matured by incorrectly stating "facts" which are NOT facts but his interpretations of what little he knew of them, just because he bombed out for whatever reason but certainly cos of his hubris as you put it so correctly. As for Graf - trying to salvage the guy's credibility by suggesting youtube being "young" that's NO EXCUSE, in other words if I went out and stole something, I could be excused for not knowing stealing was a crime? listen to yourself man! As for "drawing some people to Thai" - are you for real? it would alienate 10+ times more people from learning Thai! just lame excuses man. Stuart THANK YOU for enlightening me and I'm sure many others who see your videos.
I’m Thai and I think Thai language is easy. When you learn some rules and remember them and that’s it. We don’t have so many tenses like English. We just add some word after every verbs such as “laew” that is our past tense. Easy as that. We add “Ja” before every verbs that is future tense. No need to remember 3 verb changing each for each tense, which is hard for Thai. And the tones are just remember high, medium, low class. Tones for Thai language are just five note in music like do re me fa sol, no more than that. That’s how easy our language. And we don’t have ending sound like -ed, -st. That’s make it so easy to pronounce the words. Sorry for my bad English.
Your language's consonants with same sound confuses me.
@@Summertimessadnessss Yes, it is confusing at first. I think it requires familiarity.
I love your comment!! Gave hope that I can learn your beautiful language 🙏 Satu Satu satu
@@politanene keep fighting. Susu na
I'm so grateful for your channel and content in general. I've just started learning Thai. Simply marvellous and intriguing. Let's spread hope and rational clarifications for future learners of allegedly "hard" languages. If the human brain can process it, anyone can do it with a little more time. Looking forward to more videos :)
Agreed :)
Thank you! I saw the original video 5 years ago, and as someone who had already learnt the Thai writing system, knew it was almost complete non-sense. The Thai writing system is the most logical and straightforward of all the languages I know (and even takes just a month or two to learn).
In the comments, I posted a long rebuke, which resulted in around 110 comments and 131 likes-I hope that helped a bit. Sadly, Xidnaf's video has nearly 2 millions views. All that because he had difficulty with studying Thai. Your two videos will probably help bring some light to this half-researched and highly biased video. Thanks.
Yeah. Sadly, I think that original clip discouraged way too many people from learning Thai.
One to two months is a long time. Cryllic took me a day and hangul took maybe half a week. Thai might not be as hard as it was made to seem but it's definitely in the upper echelon of complexity, just relatively speaking.
I am really glad you have done this video it helps a lot of people to really understand many real aspects of the Thai language in properly way. You are knowledgeable. Thanks to your deep comprehensive information. Please keep doing this. I shall fully support.
Thank you. I think I'll also do one in Thai.
Thanks for putting this video up. As a language learners myself (I am currently studying Japanese), I am drawn towards Asian languages with beautiful writing systems.
Perhaps one area I find quite challenging in Thai is pronouncing what some would describe as an "unrounded O", both the short variant (example word: เลอะ) and the long one (example word: เธอ). Hope I could figure it out soon.
i would love to learn more about how the thai language has changed over the years. You gave a few examples in the video. Are there any books or other sources where your knowledge comes from? Is there a book you can recommend?
Great video by the way.
I will do some more clips on this - actually if you go into my archives on youtube you'll find a lot too. You may find one I did a while back on Khmer links in Thai.
I was looking around at learning Thai content and found his video and it was one of the first I watched and it terrified me off learning Thai and luckily I saw yours in the recommended as I went to close his video and was curious so I clicked and now I feel like maybe I do have a chance, think I am ready to begin so thanks for taking the time to make these videos they definitely helped me who was scared off by his video and was going to give up on even starting.
I do still worry I am too dumb to learn it but only one way to find out I suppose!
The abugida thing is not that scary. As a Thai, I notice Xidnaf's Thai knowledge is limited when he commented how he did in his video.
@@wiputjat Do you talk to people often who are just learning your language? I am really worried to learn and embarrass myself in front of native speakers especially going to a tonal language when I have only known English all my life, I hear you can make really big mistakes pretty easily.
@@TheOnlyDamien I saw lot of foreigners speak Thai fluently, such as those Finns and Swedish. I would say that you don't have to worry about learning Thai and speaking to native speaker; Thais love and are very welcome when we saw foreigners speaking our language. Don't worry if you don't get the accent, just speak slowly and take your time; Thai could actually understand what you really want to communicated.
I'm a Japanese and find superb your presentation of Thai writing system's sound block (or syllable) to be understood by the native speakers in a way "imagination" (which you visualize in 3D graphic) or instinctive reaction.
I am grateful that you kindly share the keypoints on TH-cam, though the video comes as a rebuttal to Xidnaf.
I am still a beginner but love Thai language. I am learning to read aloud Thai with tones.
Sometimes, I transliterate Thai into Latin alphabets for my own private purpose, using CAPITAL LETTERS as tone-markers, such as V (low) H (falling) Z (high) X (rising) Q (glottal stop), for convient typing on mobile phone or on PC.
Since you asked, I'd love to see a video on Lao. There's not a lot on the internet and I find Lao's tones much less distinct than Thai's and haven't found a video that makes it any clearer. This is made trickier by some being based on Vientiane pronunciation and some on Luang Prabang pronunciation, with the latter having one tone more than the former. (If I recall correctly). You could of course include Isan in the same video.
I'd also love to see a video on Northern Thai, especially on the script, which seems both more beautiful and more complicated than the Central Thai one.
And I'd love to see a video each on Khmer and Burmese. Do you have any tips for remembering the shapes of the letters in the two Khmer scripts, and the two sounds that every written vowel has? For Burmese, that's the one country I keep managing not to visit so the language and script is still a bit of a mystery.
And what about the minority languages of Thailand and the related languages in Burma and especially in Southern China? Especially Shan, Zhuang, and Dai?
Sure - I can do that... I think I have it in one of my clips from several years ago. Actually, if you look in that chart I have in this clip, you can see the Lao tone comparison - the Isaan one is pretty much the same as Pakse, and then I have the Vientianne ones there. Luang Prabang are quite different contours - and in luang prabang, ໃ is pronounced as aɯ rather than aɪ
@@StuartJayRaj Also curious if you have much knowledge about these 'minority' languages - in particular Tai or Hmong?
Ajarn jay, your explanation on Thai spelling by using spatial principle is very clear and easy to understand.
I feel your frustration, being an Asian myself, I feel like a lot of learners of Asian languages, especially westerners almost hope that our languages work the same as theirs but it's unreasonable, it's like when Asians hope English or European languages work the same as Asian languages. One reason why I quit one of the polyglot groups is that people aren't opened enough, they just want to stay in their comfort zone and bash our languages.
However, there are some westerners who have grown to love Thai and other Asian languages as they are, those people I really respect, it's true love that doesn't ask to change to suit one's need but loving someone as he/she is.
Thank you for your videos. I've learnt about my language Chinese even by watching your Thai videos, you really get to know the languages the way they are and this is just beautiful. Keep up the good work.
Thai vs. Lao: keeping the original spelling in Thai vs. the simplification Lao has done.
keeping the original spelling doesn't make it much more difficult to read. however it makes the writing/spelling more challenging. however since there is now predictive text that challenge is now mostly gone. given technology there is not much point nowadays to simplify writing systems to make them easier to write. technology is doing that for us.
For me at least, keeping the original spelling makes it even easier to read, as you know exactly which word that's intended from its spelling. As you mentioned - with digital input methods now, it's even easier. The downside - as with what's happening with Chinese, the younger generation are losing the ability to write by hand with the correct spelling - and for chinese, all the right strokes.
@@StuartJayRaj I agree. They help you to understand that the word is being borrowed from another language and that there are pronunciation rules of that particular language that cannot be followed in the Thai language. I do like how the words hamburger, guitar, Singapore are imported words where you are required to write out all of the r's and then put silent markers above them because you cannot pronounce them in thai. Could you imagine if the British did spelling reform and took out the R's from words such as those because the r's are not really pronounced in standard British pronunciation?
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I thought your previous video was fine. I don't see why anyone would have a problem with explaining why his video was wrong
I guess I have to be 'less harsh' in my criticism.
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@@StuartJayRaj hmmm 🤔🤔
@@StuartJayRaj I enjoyed the harshness. Perhaps it may encourage people to be more considerate when making videos.
Just popped in this videos, part 1 and 2, just now. I agree on many things. I learnt Thai at AUA in Bangkok in the 80s, then under J. Marvin Brown, and consummated his literature, as internet was not existent then. Yes, the king who made up the writing system, King Ramkhamhaeng, was not only not insane, but absolutely brilliant.
To understand the system is indeed very logical, but to write everything correct, one would also have to understand Sanskrit as well.
i absolutely like the switches in your Incid consonant compass. would like to have it on my pc, but did not yet find it to download (mobile app is too small for my eyes).
Great work!
Your explanation about Thai phonetic system by using spatial principle is very clear and easy to understand.
The aspiration and voicing being incorporated into the tone system reminds me a bit of what happened in Punjabi, which unlike Thai, had these distinctions from the get go, but over time they developed into its own tonal system. But it is still written with the traditional Brahmic script (or its Perso-Arabic adaptation in Pakistan).
Interesting watch, but I think that you could have made your video better. Several of your arguments against what Xidnaf was saying are vary poor. I don't want to be confused, I am definitely not saying that Xidnaf had good arguments. Rather I am saying that you could or should have had better arguments since you are "debunking" his video. You are coming from the background of teaching Thai and do not even attempt to hide your biases about this topic. It is obvious with how you talked about the video that you went into it already with the idea that what he is saying cannot be correct. You are visibly angry at points which is not something that should be happening if you are trying to debunk a video. You're not explaining that a point is wrong by furiously saying the exact opposite of what was just said. If you want to "debunk" you should provide a structured argument for why a given claim is (factually) incorrect.
I didn't mind or notice you being "too harsh" with your critique, I believe you often were just critiquing the wrong thing. A large portion of what you were saying was a very textbook ad hominem, that is to say an attack on the author and not the author's arguments 9:30 in first video as an example. You seem to suggest that since the author took longer than expected to make the video, that their argument is poor. At that point you called him "humorous" without even hearing an argument by that point.
At 20:55 not only did you completely miss what Xidnaf was arguing, you are straight up insulting them for no logical reason. At that point all that Xidnaf is saying is that it is easier for people in general, not just Thai speakers, to stick with teaching the language how it has been instead of changing it to make it simpler or easier for learners. That's why the United States still uses imperial measurements because it would be far more work to change everything into metric than it would be to keep it as is. Similarly why English hasn't had major spelling reforms because it is just easier for people in charge to teach a complicated system than it is to change it into an easier system. *(See bottom)
You also made several other fallacies such as a trues Scotsman after claiming that all Thai people would be personally offended by someone mispronouncing the name of Pho Khun Ram Khamhaeng. Since it seems that you are implying that if they did not find offense then they wouldn't REALLY be Thai. Also saying that it is disrespectful that he can't accurately recreate the sounds of Thai based off an English spelling is preposterous. No one can be expected to know how to pronounce the words of all of the worlds languages. Furthermore you were talking about how Xidnaf did not know "the fundamentals of how English renders Thai" and then corrected pronunciations using a more native and less English pronunciation of the words. Specifically Theravada, in English, is pronounced with a voiceless dental fricative, like he did, and not an aspirated alveolar plosive, like you did. I am more on your side than on his for this specifically because Xidnaf referring to Pho Khun Ram Khamhaeng as "king whats-his-name" is just lazy at that point. Mispronouncing a name is not disrespectful, but choosing something like "king whats-his-name" definitely could be. Also you complained about Xidnaf not learning how to properly pronounce these names but you also did the same since you don't know how to pronounce Xidnaf.
Funny thing from the first part was saying "Thank you for your scholarly and fact-based deductions, [Xidnaf]." Not Funny because your attempt at a joke was good, but because it was ironic that you, again, did the very same thing you called them out for doing.
Listing more things that you complained he did but then did yourself: Complicating unnecessarily (for example, referring to articulations of specific letters), use of unrelated graphics, explaining how several modern letters have the same pronunciations (you gave exactly the same story as to why there are 6 "t"'s but insisted his was wrong because he didn't use your catchphrase "one-to-one correspondence" even though you explained the exact same process), and using strawmen (10:00 "... everything you've just mentioned, that is easily be explained away.").
For supposedly being a "debunking", your word not mine, you spent a substantial amount of time not talking about the video you were supposed to be debunking. This was mostly spent going on tangents only vaguely related to anything that was being talked about and peddling your book. Also I refuse to believe that Thai people view their writing as a 3-dimensional structure and read it back to front. That may be a helpful teaching tool for people that can't process how an abugida works, but suggesting that all people that use abugida style scripts view writing in 3 dimensions whenever they read (27:08) is rather far-fetched. It didn't seem too "scholarly or fact-based" to claim this without as little as a citation to an outside source for this claim.
Again on the historic spellings, both of you explained the same exact process of historic spellings and reasons for similarly pronounced characters, but at the same time were insistent that Xidnaf be wrong and you be right. This is problematic to say the least. How are you supposed to "debunk" an argument if you don't even know what the argument is?
I could go through giving more and more timestamps across the two videos and checking the validity of every one of your sentences, but that would neither be worth my time nor worth yours.
*For example Knight has three silent letters and Queue has four. Also none of; Tough, Though, Thought, Through, Thorough, and Hiccough share a pronunciation of "-ough".
For more examples of English having inconsistent spellings, see the English language as a whole. :)
Also meant to mention that I think Nativlang's "The Hardest Language To Spell" and their video on Japanese being the most difficult give much better arguments for the most difficult writing system, and I whole-heartedly agree that the most difficult is not Thai.
im thai and yeah we didnt view it in 3d and also xidnaf pronounce it wrong because the english spelling is wrong it should be por kun rarm karmhang
- For example Knight has three silent letters and Queue has four
Kinda true, but you're missing a bit. Knight has three silent letters, yes, (k,g,h) but also one unwritten letter (a, missing in nait). Queue has three silent letters (eue), and one unwritten letter (i, missing in qiu). It's similar to the way the name of the letter a is not pronounced with a, neither is the name of e pronounced with e. o is also only pronounced with o in some dialects. So yes, English has silent letters, but don't forget the unwritten letters too!
I just appreciate the way Stuart speaks about Thai with respect. So many westerners dismiss Thai language as silly / stupid (all culture actually - I have heard Thai music, literature and art dismissed as foolish also). I think maybe the part 1 rant was triggered by the disrespect in xidnaf’s video. I get that, when you have been here a while it really irks to hear that kind of superior attitude.
From this vid, I've learned a lot about the beautiful tie between Thai writing system and its Indic origin. I wonder why they've never taught us in our school (national pride maybe?). That consonant grid also makes the alphabet order so much easier to remember.
Please don't listen to people who discouraged you to make this video. If a random "i don't quite undestand Thai" kid can post a video with so much false information then it's perfectly legit to post this debunked video. It should be encouraged, not the opposite.
As a Thai. I do agree on how beautifully the writing system is designed and still cover dialects/languages tones. However, it can’t be denied that it is complicated. Apart from sound set (อักษรสูง กลาง ต่ำ}, there is still a tonal rule for คำเป็น คำตาย. There is still some bugs in the writing for not distinguishing short and long vowels in writing. I guess you might have seen the topic of how to spell แซ่บ/แซบ. It turns out the spelling was just changed very recently to แซ่บ to fit the rule for short vowel even though it is written in long vowel form. The confusion doesn’t stop there since the word แรด remains unchanged despite having short vowel pronunciation and could have been reformed to แร่ด following the same rule change.
In short, i still regard Thai writing system as complicated yet beautifully designed. I am still amazed how ancient people could design such a writing system with so many complicated rules on top to make writing looks so nice.
Regarding compatibility with other Tai languages, this too beautiful system makes me wonder whether all the languages just happened to shift every tones systematically to ไม้เอก and ไม้โท rules naturally, or it’s kind of influenced by the writing system to lock the shifting pattern of tones. Why do all Tai languages fits the อักษรสูงกลางต่ำ and คำเป็นคำตาย tonal shift rules so nicely?
I think English should have a letter for every single vowel sound just like Thai rather than use five letters to document 20 plus different vowels
@@alanjyu i think the problem for English is actually about spelling reform. You can also modify standard Latin alphabet to cover those vowel sounds as many European languages do.
Let me take German as an example as I did learn the language. You need to learn just a few minutes to know how to read every single German words (except some loan words) because every vowel sounds are assigned to a specific symbols such as a, e, i, o, u, ö, ü, au, eu.
However, since English has been spread and separated throughout anglophone and became Lingua Franca, there isn’t a single standard pronunciation anymore. Therefore, it’s difficult to make any spelling reform which everyone would agree on.
@@navatouch I think everything that you say is very well explained and I agree with you. I do find it ironic that somebody can use the English language to criticize irregularities of Thai without even studying the language and make such commentary without reflecting upon how other people might perceive their own language (English) as being irregular. I am studying Thai language and I think the language is quite regular but nonetheless complex.
As a student of Thai language, spelling in the Thai language is particularly hard because words that have been imported from other languages often contain silent consonants. For example, when the word hamburger is imported into Thai, you still have to write all of the R's even though you don't pronounce them and then put the silencer over them. It's difficult to remember how to spell these, especially if they are coming from Pali or Sanskrit language, but silent consonants help you to detect the syllable boundaries because they are usually found at the end of the syllable and they help you to know exactly what is being borrowed even if you cannot legally follow the pronunciation rules of the language that the word is being borrowed from. Do we need to remove all of these silent consonants as they had done in the Lao language? Probably not.
intaresting
Mr Raj smashing out the videos again its good to have you back
Helpful and clear thank you .
Thank you. I hope it's helped some people out there.
@Stuart Jay Raj
Thx Mr.Raj for explaining us the beauty of the Thai language & adressing our misguided ignorance.
Always knew that Xidnaf's vid had sloppy or bare bones research, wouldn't've imagined though how false o. halfTrue most of his claims actually were.
Also thought that before (writing≠pronounciation) is dumb, but w. UR example, I realised that I'd actually prefer that more.
We've similar stuff in other languages:
English: bear-bare, be-bee, ate-eight, for-four
German: Yoga, not Joga; Mayonnaise, not Majonäse
+ It's also hypocritical to think that when learning Japanese a. already struggling w. RETRO games, where everything is written in Kana aka. "phonetically" o. liking their writing system
(ひらがな-カタカナ-漢字)
Yeah - I know that Xidnaf means well, but that video in particular has been the cause of so many people's decision to quit learning Thai - or not taking it up in the first place, as they think it's just too hard and non-sensical.
The irony of an English speaker complaining about sounds being represented multiple ways:
Fish, enough, pharmacy, scoff
Have four different ways to represent the f sound, f, gh, ph, and ff, with the reason that ff has to be used in scoff, being that a single f after o is pronounced like v, compare of vs off.
And don't even get me started on vowels in English. We only have five letters for some 14+ vowels (depending on how you count them).
By the logic of this video, the English writing system should be considered far harder than Thai, at least there's enough symbols in Thai to represent the different sounds in the language with different symbols.
Honestly, this comparison to English is what debunks this debunking for me. "Look, it's not hard, it's just like English!" being like English is exactly the problem. All of these, the many-to-one correspondences, the historical spelling, unlike lao's phonetic spelling, is exactly what's wrong with English and is not a good thing. "It's just too hard to change this dumb system so we'll keep teaching our kids these arbitrary rules" applies just as well to English, and as we all know (because we're using English right now) it's not unreasonable. But that certainly doesn't mean it isn't terrible. English sucks, and being similar to English in these ways isn't something to be proud of imo
17.30 when I heard this the 1st thing comes up to my mind is that "นะค่ะ" 555555555555555555
Trust me it does matter, even for a native Thai. Many Thais don't even know how to "ผันวรรณยุกต์" and it comes out wrong, including the meaning because the tone changes the meaning changes also i.e. ขาว and ข่าว and ข้าว They are completely different things.
And btw, once you mentioned the original word/form from Sanskrit or Pali or something like that and you assumed that Thai would know the meaning, trust me, it's not. Many of us don't even know that original of many words. So it doesn't mean that when we see this word and we can guess the meaning without actually learning/asking from someone/books etc.
Yes, I agree that Japanese writing is very complicated because of the three scripts. Your videos are always really interesting. It is clear how passionate you feel about Thai. Though, I am not sure I have come away thinking Thai writing is not complicated but I understand it is logical and beautiful.
Actually, the use of three scripts is a simplification. There was a time when Japanese used nothing but Chinese characters and it was awkward because the two languages are not even related and Japanese has linguistic features that Chinese characters are not designed to capture. What I like about Japanese is that verbs come to at the end and all other words have a tag that tell you the function of the word in the sentence. Those tags are called particles.
@@alanjyu
The general structure of Thai and Japanese is kind of similar - substances (nouns and adjectives) and verbs are slightly modified with suffixed particles (to show cases, topicalization, highlighting, emphasis, moods, various emotional nuances positive or negative). I hope I can find a detailed Thai-Japanese lexicon, covering colloquial expressions for daily practical uses as well as literary vocabulary of the elevated styles to crackdown academic, administrative or religious texts. Because such a lexicon is not available in Japanese, I am using a Thai-Chinese dictionary published in Thailand 新編 泰英中辭典 (蔡文星Bunchai Chattawamich著) 泰京南美有限公司, 1998
@@joshyam4026 I see similarities between Thai and Chinese but not necessarily between Thai and Japanese.
I admit that I believed Xidnaf's original video when I saw it years ago. I remembered and internalized his spiel about adherence to multiple linguistic origins somehow resulting in a very confusing and complex writing system. I have even repeated this ignorance to others once or twice. *sigh* I have believed (incorrectly) for years that Thai was one of the most complex languages because of that video. THANK YOU, StuJay, for these debunking videos. I now feel less inhibited about taking up Thai someday!
I think he deserved to be called out on it because he was making very ridiculous claims and did not really study the language and it showed. I'm studying Thai language, and of all the 10 languages that I have studied, this language comes out as my favorite for many reasons.
@@alanjyu To be honest, Stuart would deverse a call out as well. For the horrible IPA usage he had. At least if you guys want to attack a language themed entertainment channel then do not make blatant mistakes. Like as callening a Voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ as "palatal". Or using a question mark for glottal stop instead of the actual /ʔ/. But even worst when he used a Voiceless palatal plosive /c/ to represent the Voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate /tɕ/. Not to mention when he called an /r/ as semivowel which is clearly not. Because the trill /r/ is a Rhotic consonant that in english can make vowels to be rhotic (which is not really the case, but english write those vowels with an extra "r" either ways).
And i know you guys may feel like "the big strong man" for "calling out" someone to attack a channel that shouldn't be taken seriously anyways. But it kinda can give an idea of the concept of the script (not the language) even if the video is not a scientifically accurate 1000000% serious study material.
@@tovarishcheleonora8542 Oh, of course, because when it comes to evaluating language proficiency, IPA knowledge is definitely more important than, say, being able to order pad thai without embarrassing yourself. Obviously, a misplaced diacritic mark is far more egregious than some random person who doesn't know Thai spreading misinformation about the Thai language. :) Have a nice day!
@@alanjyu The original video wasn't even about language proficiency. It was about the CONCEPT of the script with some extra context (okay, the context wasn't godly perfect but still). But having funcional media literacy is luxury nowadays it seems from your reply. That video never meant to be a teaching material for how to read.
And also it's very hypocritical to call out a random entertainment video when he in his own call out video makes blatant mistakes with a lecturing attitude.
@@tovarishcheleonora8542 So, spreading falsehoods is now considered a form of entertainment? Well, slap my knee and call me entertained! Who knew ignorance could be so entertaining? If you are allergic to linguistic insights and informative lectures, you should probably stay far, far away from Stuart Jay Raj's Thai language masterclasses. Both content creators portrayed themselves as experts in the Thai language,. However, it's evident that one possesses far greater knowledge than the other. Yet, as an online creator, once you release content into the digital realm, you assume responsibility for every statement made, subjecting yourself to critique. You cannot simply claim the luxury of error and then retreat under the guise of entertainment.
I wonder if you have seen the video "The Hardest Language To Spell" that seems to be in a similar vein but it is about the Tibetan writing system.
There's actually something to that ...but actually no different to say french or Burmese. Letters don't always sound like one would anticipate at face value, though the patterns are fairly consistent.
@@StuartJayRaj Thank you for your content. I watched Xidnaf's video 6 years ago when I was 16 and was completely put off learning Thai I already had the "system" of thai and prefect pronunciation due to having a Thai mother and living over there when I was a small child. Still I was convinced that it would be a waste of time to learn the script and use it to improve my thai as I thought if it was as arbitrary and as removed from modern Thai as Xidnaf made out then it would be a waste of time.
Tibetan is relatively easy. If one knows Sanskrit or Hindi, it's even easier. The difficulty with Tibetan is the need to understand Buddhist ways of thinking and explaining. Written Tibetan has not changed over 1300 years, which makes reading texts from very different periods simple.
Why is /k/(unvoiced velar plosive) the IPA for "ก"? I'm a native Thai speaker and I had been quite confident that "ก" was pronounced /g/(voiced velar plosive), however, after some quick google searches, I have lost that confidence entirely.
จริงๆ นักภาษาศาสตร์หลายคนให้หน่วยเสียงหลักคือ /k/ แต่หน่วยเสียงย่อยคือ "[kᶢ]" ครับ
Because I know Devanagari, learning Hindi and Sanskrit, Thai writing system is so simple.....As you said, Japanese is much more hard to write/learn but I still do it.
Yeah - I really believe that if you master just the base system, it opens you up to so many more languages - and also gives you a good understanding of how the mouth works.
I like so much your channel 😍
Thank you so much 😀
great video! I admire your criticism on that mislrading video. great job!
Xidnaf is the kind of person who says, "Math is hard." It isn't, but that's fine with me. Thai is no different. Beautiful and logical.
why ได้ and ด้าย sound different? like ไม่ได้ vs ไม่ด้าย?
ไม้ vs มั้ย?
It can't be harder than a logographic system because if it were, you could still simply sight-learn the words and be no worse off.
Yes, Ajarn Jay. Thai, the same as other languages, has places and maners of articulation. Moreover, Thai has prosody which function on its own under the name of "Wannayook", and it also applied to consonant. So, Thai consonant has high, middle(moderate), and low tones.
If I can learn it, anyone can. :)
Great video! I'm surprised about what you said about the Isaan dialect. To me, the spelling sometimes matches the pronunciation and sometimes not. Is there any video or other resource shedding some light on the logic behind Isaan tones and the spelling?
I'll put a video together to show how it works - the chart that I included in this clip actually shows you how to do the conversion. Of course there are also consonant and vowel shifts, but they're also pretty straight forward.
@@StuartJayRaj Thanks. The chart is a bit tricky to decipher so a video would be awesome. From what I've seen so far, Isaan people sometimes keep the Thai spelling (น้ำ), sometimes change it a bit (ฮ้อน)and sometimes change it a lot (เข่า). I've also noticed that the tone seems to be less important or can have variations, for instance ซา (tea) can be pronounced with mid or high tone.
Don't take my word for it though. I'm just a beginner learning Isaan mainly from people around Udon Thani and nearby provinces.
Just stumbled to this video and while I think Thai is definitely not the hardest writing system (easier than English), It is not as easy as Stuart Jay Raj tried to make it out to be. Average people aren't gonna care about how the writing system came out to be. They only care that they can spell/read the words that they say in everyday conversation and for that purpose the script is pretty hard. Also FYI we didn't learn that way-too-complex-for-elementary-schooler tone table.
พี่ครับมีซับไทยไหมครับ
ยังไม่มีครับ แต่กำลังคิดอยู่ว่าอาจจะอัดอีกคลิปหนึ่งเป็นภาษาไทย
@@StuartJayRaj ครับ ผมจะอ่านสับไทยและฟังสำเนียงจากพี่ครับ
If anyone doesn’t know, Xidnaf made most of his videos from that time while he was still in high school. That’s why they sound like a poorly researched high school paper that accidentally patronizes people even though it was made with good intentions. Most of his videos are like that- where it’s clear that the research came mostly from Wikipedia and googling and not actual research of scholarly, peer reviewed materials.
I say this not to be mean but to clarify as I’ve seen many people tear his videos apart and ridicule them. Yes they are poorly researched but he was also literally just a bored high schooler when he made them. When you know that it makes a whole lot more sense as to why the content is so brazenly wrong so much of the time.
yes. When I put this clip out I honestly had no idea of his age. I was reacting to it as this single clip had been the reason so many people that I know had referenced when speaking about why they there in the towel learning Thai or decided not to learn all together as they thought it would be just too difficult and frustrating
Just months into thai, i found the language writing and spoken relatively easy.....
Yes, Ajarn Jay. Thai spelling system is a kind honred the language of origin. It's a kind of citation in research.
[ -็ ] is a shortened sound symbol.
BTW spaces between words are quite a modern invention. Writing was meant to be read aloud, and only when people began reading silently, did they decide to put spaces between words to facilitate the process. Which (for Latin and Church Slavonic) was in the late Middle Ages.
Yes. It get's frustrating sometimes seeing learners of languages like Thai - even after many years of learning to find ways to insert spaces in normal texts. Word segmentation is mainly useful in the initial stages when you're learning vocabulary and are learning to delineate syllable boundaries.
As a Thai and amatuer linguist, I guarantee that you are right. You can be called a Tai language scholar.
Thank you Stuart! You're da best !! (^0^)/
พูดถึงเรื่องจำ อ่าน และเขียนคำศัพท์ ภาษาเขมรเหมือนจะง่ายกว่าภาษาไทย สำร้บคนที่จำหลักภาษาแล้ว
it takes 2 days to read korean, 2 years for thai and 20 years for japanese
I have seen Xidnaf's video like 4 years ago and at that time, I really gave up on learning Thai. But, since last year, I have met few Thais here in Malaysia and tried to pick up the language as fast as I could, of course the writing system as well. Even they could barely teach me how since they said Thai is freaking hard 😂
I think I am lucky that I have developed my own writing system based on abugida from the Filipino's Baybayin 7 years ago, plus learning Tamil writing system also helped me a lot in Thai. So, these lucky gradual learning experiences made it easier for me to learn Thai writing system, I guess.
Learned Korean Hangul by myself more than 10 years ago. So, watching your 1st video of debunking Xidnaf's video, it does make more sense to me. I just wished I've stumbled upon your videos earlier tho 😂
Before finishing your video, I was about to write that I would like Lao spelling more because it is easier. But then, you have convinced me that Thai IS much better 😂 because it is easier to understand just by looking at the spellings
why does japanese not abandon all kanji and use only katakana, hiragana
So many people firstly reject, then admit and finally love. Just look at small kids who say no in English or “mei you “ in chinese.
I don't understand script from temples .... or northern Thai script.
We can still read Middle English.
This guy does not know that English in 16th century or Shakspere's era is also different from nowaday English.
Language changes is also a subject in Linguistics. Ithink Xinaf is not a lingist, and he does not understand Thai (Tai).
I said to my young friend planes use tbe ground to navigate, he googled and said yes landmarks, yes the fucking M1 is a fucking big landmark, we was both correct, dont think to much x.
18:44 "something sound more complex"? That's literally just the linguistic name of the /t/ sound. There is no "making it to be more complex". At least do not comment on something if you can't say anything smart about it. Especially not in a "call out" video.
Why not comment on this video then:
th-cam.com/video/CVsJ5-RBBW8/w-d-xo.html
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Thank you.
We are busy with gcse and papers, but he was a father, and didnt think the M1 was a landmark, he was thinking Nelsons Column, ya get me know, teach.
When i google, i allways look at 3 or 4 options, i think to our young it would be the same i hope, and i think they do, they are that clever, so dont think to much, its life, sky tell me lockdown, but i still check the bbc, its the same x.
Not different from English as it is now.
I am going to tell you sir, when your clever and you age, things that wernt important annoy you, but its all part of life, and people work it out for them selves, its not write but its not badly wrong, but its not hurting people, and people have to find the correct, and they allways have, its raining, from my dad i dont look, from my friend, i just check first, its the same, internet is lime a car, can we not drive coz they have died in one, no, we cant, and my mum said, dont worry about them, worry about you.
เมียยยย
Thats the beauty of Thailand, they check the phone for the time, but the sat nav, but they would also look out the window, the world must also be prepared to look out the window, coz the phone might be foggy one day, Thais would still get home, not sure we would.
Hes goes home sais landmark, and M1 as a example, his children get clever, and we move forwards, its called life, and they holiday and they tell their kids whilst sitting on that plane, but how did i know, the dambusters needed a clear night, thats how i knew, not M1, a river, but passed on to our future x.
And if its foggy, thats the kids now getting involved, i will leave it there.
I think your commentary on the Thai language is interesting, but your intro showed a complete lack of self awareness. You’re not just “introducing another point of view” you’re using charged language like “what a load of rubbish” and there are bits where you straight up make fun of him for not understanding. It’s so easy to not do that. You can pick out inaccuracies without ridicule.
You know what’s also easy? Not putting out a video about a language you clearly know nothing about with shoddy/third-rate “research” in the first place :)
'xidnaf' reminds me of those who complain about 'illogical' English spellings. (only, he's more neurotic).
I can not buy that book from China ,so sad🥲