Tinglish

Characteristics and examples

• omission of pronouns
• zero copula
• use of present tense + already, in contrast to past tense of Standard English
• non-standard use or omissions of articles, declension, prepositions, and conjugation.
• addition of Thai final particles, e.g., I don’t know na
• any and every are used interchangeably
• different use of conditional constructions
• pronunciation of silent letters in a word
• omission of the consonant at the end of words ending in a diphthong and a consonant, for instance Mickey Mouse pronounced “Mickey Mao”, white wine pronounced “why why”, and news pronounced “new”.
• inserting vowel sounds into consonant clusters, for instance slow pronounced “sah-low”
• no use of double negatives
• /ɹ/ pronounced as /l/ or rarely as /r/
• ⟨th⟩ pronounced as /t/
• using "N" to replace an "L" sound at the end of the word, for instance "school" pronounced "sah-koon" or "football" pronounced "futbon"
• moving "S" on singular verbs to the subject, for instance "He's talk too much" instead of "He talks too much"
• omission of prepositions, for instance "I wait you" instead of "I'll wait for you" or "I listen him" for "I listened to him".
• "very" and "very much" are used interchangeably, for instance "I very love my daughter" and "She beautiful very much".

  Examples of words and phrases

Pronunciation

• Non-rhotic, e.g., more -> maw, gear -> gia, and car -> kah.
• all syllables are stressed with the same intensity
• omits consonant clusters. "Mixed" is pronounced "mik".
• final consonants are often omitted or converted according to the rules of Thai pronunciation: l and r become n; p; b and f become an occlusive p; t, th, d, s, st, sh, ch and j become an occlusive t.
• Perversely, given the language constraints for d and l among the rules above, l can become r and d can become sh, for instance blood can become brush.
• If there is more than one consonant at the end of a syllable, only the first is pronounced, the others are omitted. "W" and "Y" sounds count as consonants, too. So, "count down" becomes "cow dow", "size" becomes "sigh"
• "sh" and "ch" sounds can be indistinguishable as the Thai language does not have the "sh" sound, e.g., ship/chip, sheep/cheap
• "v" sound is almost always replaced by "w" sound, e.g. "TV" is pronounced "tee-wee" and "video" is pronounced "wee-dee-oh".
• "g" and "z" sounds are usually devoiced, e.g., dog -> dock, zoo -> sue
• "th" sound is often replaced by "t" or "d" sound. Particularly, the voiceless "th" is replaced by or, while the voiced "th" is replaced by, e.g. thin -> tin or ), through -> true, thank you -> tang kyou or, and then -> den.
• ambiguity between the short "e", as in "bled", and a long "a", as in "blade" because both are pronounced as.
• "e " so cherry is pronounced chuhr-lee, error is pronounced err-rer

• start - sahtat
• sleep - sahleep
• speak - sahpeak
• snore - sahnore
• swim - sahwim
• school - sahkoon
• album - alabum