3am Thai Movie Speak Khmer

[John]

Iwas given a T-shirt at a hotel I stayed in Phnom Penh which has Khmer writing on the front. What amazes me is that not one Thai that has commented on it seems to know that it is Khmer? They say what is that ? !

There are a fair few similarities in the characters* , however you wouldn't get a Thai admitting that their writing system came from the Khmers in a million years even though the Khmers were 'writing' some 3-400 years before the Thai alphabet allegedly came into being...

However in answer to your question, Would a Thai be able to understand a Khmer in full flow as they may be able to follow a Lao? No. Would they be able to read Khmer as they may be able to read Lao...no...

Whereas Lao is 'easy' for most Thais to read, speak and write as the twain are closely related, Khmer is miles away and the only links are through (mainly) religious and ceremonial Sanskrit content and a shared orthography (open for debate).

Richard, with all due respect, I seriously doubt that even widely used for magical tattoos script would be identified with something other, than magical tattoos with most of Thai people. Anyways, I've got a bunch of Thai friends, who are perfectly capable of identifying Khmer, Burmese, Lao, Singalese scripts with no problem. Thus OP's opinion is not quite statistically correct.

I am also puzzled over that none of your Thai friends recognize the Khmer script. Most Thais should have no problems identifying Lao, Burmese and Khmer, although they'll usually won't be able to read it. (except for Lao, which I'm pretty sure most Thais should be more or less able to read, at least phonetically)

Regarding tattoos, I'm pretty sure most Thais who are vaguely interested in these things will know what kind of script is used on the particular tattoos. The most common is Khmer when done in north-east and Lanna when done in north.

NO

I base my assumption on that these are neighbouring countries and most Thais would have had some exposure to them at one point and should be able to recognise them. Especially Lao and most probably Khmer.

I think it is your own assumptions which are not quite right.

Besides, exactly what do you mean by "Gaelic" is it Irish, Scottish or Manx? Would you for example be able to distinguish between them?

Personally, I have had almost none exposure to the Gaelic languages, so I would not be able to at a glance recognise it, but I'm pretty sure an average Brit would recognise, albeit probably not distinguish exactly which of the Gaelic language.

Also, what does it has to do with this for me being a native Thai, to be able to recognise Gaelic has to do with Thais able to know their neighbour countries scrips??

Do you think an average Brit would recognise Cyrillic?

What would your response be if I came to a British forum and complained that none of my British friends knew my cool T-shirt from Kiev with Cyrillic written on it was and then assumed that this was the case with most Brits.

Would you rather question the intellectual capacity of the group of my friends instead perhaps???

Also, I'm probably not the average Thai, but I can identify many scripts and most written European language (or at least guess it's approximate geographical location) as well as identify many spoken language. However I don't have slightly clue what they mean.

I base my assumption on that these are neighbouring countries and most Thais would have had some exposure to them at one point and should be able to recognise them. Especially Lao and most probably Khmer.

You are Thai - and obviously well educated - so you will know that the education system here isn't really geared up to giving too much credit to outside influences in modern Thai culture...? Any exposure to these outside influences is only ever explained as a result of Thai supremacy...

Also, I'm probably not the average Thai, but I can identify many scripts and most written European language (or at least guess it's aproximate geographical location) as well as identify many spoken language. However I don't have slightly clue what they mean.

Distinguish between written German and French should not be of any problem for the average European. Some people may have problems distinguishing between French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, or German and Dutch.

But this all depends on their interest and level of education. The higher educated the more likelihood is that they should know the difference of these languages.

Why should your average Bangkok Thai be able to recognise Khmer and Burmese or even Malay or Jawi for that matter, just because they are from neighbouring countries which share a degree of historical cultural merging?

We're not talking about that high level of education are we? Even in secondary school level people will get the option to have either French or German or Spanish and would be able to recognize them or at least tell which is and is not.

I'm not saying this is a question of ignorance. I'm just confused as to why the OP expects people to be able to recognise a different script to their own in spite of similarities and common influences.

Nobody in the world would be able to identify a different script just based on relation alone with no prior experience or exposure of it.

This is why I compared to somebody in Britain would be able to instantly recognize Cyrillic.

However, a person who has spent their life in Thailand would have one point or another have some exposure to it enough to be able to identify what it is.

This would be the same as somebody living in Britain would recognize Cyrillic or Gaelic for that matter because they would have had enough exposure of it to know by merely spending ones life in that country.

The same would be in Thailand that somebody would also know the other scripts. But a native East-ender may not really recognize Gaelic as much as a native Klong Toey residence would Khmer.

I think you may have misunderstood OP's intention. His question was not whether Thai should have automatically recognized these scripts based purely on their relationship. But that his assumption is that majority of Thais are so ignorant to know about this based on his experience that none of his friends was able to recognize his t-shirt has having Khmer script.

But as many in this thread (me included) has pointed out that this is not the case and most Thais should be able to identify the various neighboring scripts because they would have been exposed to them at one point in their life.

As I said, nobody would automatically be able to know such thing without prior knowledge about this first.

There is no way for somebody to be able to even guess that this is Greek or Khmer purely based on the similarities of them to Latin and Thai respectively. The only way to know is to have prior knowledge.

Script recognition generally goes by shape. Cyrillic in capitals is recognised as looking like the Roman script until one suddenly notices things that don't fit. Strange styles make things look unusual. German black letters (as originally loved by the Nazis) actually look stranger than Cyrillic in capitals. I'm not sure one would immediately recognise a Thai Khuen font as being for the Lanna script - it lacks the swirls and swashes so beloved of the Northern Thai style.

For example, the Burmese script is generally recognised by its love of circles. As a result, I can rapidly recognise Burmese on banners as Burmese, though possibly I would possibly misrecognise other things as Burmese. Now, whether Thais can reliable tell Shan from Burmese is another matter - the tone marks are the obvious cue.

As to recognising Gaelic, it's probably more a matter of recognising Gaelic 'script'. In a normal face, the giveaway for Scots Gaelic is the great many 'h's. Welsh is recognised by its lack of vowels - 'w' and 'y' are very common vowels in Welsh. Any other cues rely on a knowledge of the languages, as when one tells Spanish, Portuguese and Italian apart.

At a glance Shan and Burmese should be more or less alike since it is after all the same characters, exept some additional letters respectively. I'd say it would be like comparing German to Polish or Farsi to Jawi.

Instead of expecting Thais to know Khmer, I think you should campaign on the right group such as foreigners who have lived here for years and have no interest in learning Thai. They are real ignorant people, not us.

I believe almost every Thai will recognize khmer script (but they can't read or understand it). Even I, just by living here for a few years I can recognize it and I've never read any book about it nor have I been to Cambodia . It's just around everywhere and it's often seen in a religious context. There's a huge difference between recognizing the script and knowing or understanding the language.

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