It's Look Like Rain

It’s look like rain.

More on Teaching English in Thailand

A 6^th grade student stopped by my desk one morning with a Thai/English phrase book and pointed to a sentence she wanted me to see:  “It’s look like rain.”  It did look like rain that day – it was the rainy season.  I complimented the student for learning English and told her how to say the sentence correctly:  It looks like rain.  She gave me a blank look and pointed to it again.  I said, yes, it looks like rain, fon dok, rain means fon dok.  This seemed to satisfy her and she went on her way.

The sentence illustrates a common mistake in Thai English. The fact that it appeared in a published phrase book suggests that Thai speakers don’t easily notice or correct this error on their own.  Maybe it reminds you of Americans trying to sort out its and it’s – but that’s a different kettle of fish. Those two words are pronounced alike, so you can’t really get them wrong in speaking, only in writing – or when blindfolded, as in the cartoon below, (from Mrs Milarch’s Class Website, http://mrsmilarch.weebly.com/funny-grammar-d.html).

 Back to the topic:  As so often happens, once “It’s look like rain” had crossed my radar screen, I started to hear similar errors rather often; here are a few examples:

a) It’s mean “really,” jing jing. 

b) What’s was the last country to join ASEAN?

c) Yes, the capital city, but what’s country?

I heard sentence (a) from a Thai speaker with a good command of English who was explaining vocabulary to me.  Sentences (b) and (c) were from Thai English teachers quizzing students about ASEAN (= Association of South East Asian Nations). The sentences are jarring to an American ear (at least, to mine) because the word “is” shouldn’t be there, not even in a contraction. Thai students of English learn these contractions early in their language instruction, in sentences such as:

d) What’s your name?

e) What’s this?

f) It’s hot today.                                

g) It’s raining.                                                           

                                   

Teachers reading this will probably agree that it makes sense to teach the contractions “it’s” and “what’s” because the sentences sound more natural than “What is your name?” or “It is raining.” In the process, some learners may not realize that the contractions actually stand for two words. Even if the grammar of “it’s” and “what’s” is explained to them, learners may easily forget it again, just as Americans (such as Yours Truly here) constantly forget the tones in Thai that signal important differences in meaning. It’s hard for us to remember the tones because English doesn’t have them. It’s hard for Thais to learn to use “is” because many common expressions in Thai have no equivalent for English “is.” Thai versions of the above sentences, if translated word-for-word into English, look like this:

d) What’s your name?                                 Your name what?

e) What’s this?                                              This what?

f) It’s hot today.                                             Today hot.

g) It’s raining.                                                 Rain.

Sentence (g) illustrates another Thai/English difference: Thai verbs don’t add endings in the he/she/it form.  Not surprisingly, Thai people usually omit this “s” when speaking or writing English (as in the sentence “It’s look like rain”).  Moreover, there is no difference in Thai between “it’s raining” and “it rains”:

g) It’s raining.                                                            Rain.

h) It rains every day.                                                Rain every day.

So, are the teaching of contractions and the different rules for when to use “is” the whole reason why Thai speakers use “it’s” and “what’s” in English sentences where the word “is” doesn’t belong?  Maybe.  However, looking at the sounds [t] and [s] made me think that other aspects of English and Thai may come into play as well. 

First, the two sound systems don’t match up well. The sounds “t” and “s” are not identical in Thai and English; that is, what Americans hear as “t” in English, for example, may not sound like a “t” to Thai learners, who have a different kind of “t” stored in their mental warehouse of speech sounds. I can cite many examples from teaching to illustrate this, e.g., the students say “foosball” and find it very difficult to imitate my correction to “football,” or they say “saut” for “sauce” and again find it hard to produce a more correct pronunciation.  I think the difficulties are due at least in part to the imperfect match between the Thai and English sounds.

Another possible factor is Thai spelling:  the Thai letters that correspond (more or less) to English “s” are often pronounced “t” in syllable-final position. For example, consider the following words, first spelled letter-for-letter from Thai to the English alphabet, then written as pronounced.

English                        Thai in English spelling          Pronunciation

Hello.                           swasdii                                   sa-wat-dee   (ee as in see)

Country                      pratees                                   pra-teet (ee as in entrée)

Religion                      sasna                                      sat-sa-na

I think this aspect of Thai spelling could be another source of confusion to learners struggling with a new language and a new alphabet. Anecdotal evidence that might support this theory comes from students trying to write their names or nicknames in English spelling. For example, a student who told me her nickname is “Net” signed her homework paper “Nes.”  Another student, whose name is pronounced “Suparat,” signed her homework “Supalas” (for r/l substitution, see the post “Sound Barriers” from several weeks ago).  Besides the difficulties that Thai people have pronouncing words that end in the sounds –s and –t (often interchanging the two), I’ve heard some speakers add “s” to words that didn’t need it, so it wouldn’t have been necessary to make the effort (e.g., “I thinks it will be in the afternoon.” “The students go with their grandfather to works in the field.”).

Baffled by all this, I started telling my fellow teachers what I was hearing and asked if they had any insights to offer.  Two Thai colleagues, independently of each other, gave an answer that surprised me. The gist of it was that Thai people think, if you add a lot of “s” you are speaking English.  –  Hmm, I thought, that’s not a very kind thing to say.  But then I thought about how much “s” there really is in English:

·      -s to make third-person singular verbs (he/she/it lives, runs, gets, etc.)

·      -s to make nouns plural

·      -s for possessives (my parents’ house)

None of the above patterns are at all similar in the Thai language. As mentioned above, Thai verbs don’t add endings for the he/she/it form. Thai nouns don’t add endings to form the plural. The possessive isn’t formed by adding an ending, but with a preposition (similar to “the house of my parents’). All these uses of “s” in English must be a never-ending thorn in the flesh of Thais learning English, making it really hard to remember when you should and shouldn’t use it.

So, given all the above sources of confusion, maybe the comment that you should use “a lot of ‘s’” when speaking English isn’t unkind or totally far-fetched. Who could blame Thai speakers struggling to learn English if they followed an unofficial rule along the lines of “when in doubt, add –s.” 

Why not?  It’s could be right!

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Disclaimer: As always, please remember that my descriptions of learner errors are only descriptions, not criticisms. Also, while I’ve tried to be accurate in choosing my examples, this is hardly a scientific study, so feel free to poke holes in my analysis but try not to take the conclusion too seriously.  – Or, as some of my Thai colleagues say:  Don’t serious.