I think it’s also important to notice the context of a given sound in one language versus another, even though the sound might be exactly the same. I don’t know about Thai, but I’ve coached many people on the tones in Mandarin. The easiest way for me to get them to understand is by pointing out that we have exactly the same tones in English, but we aren’t used to applying them in the same way the Chinese do.
I tell them to think of Mandarin’s first tone (high and flat) as the “bored” tone. Somebody keeps asking you repetitive, boring questions, and you keep saying, “Noooo, noooo, nooo” in an exaggerated tone of ennui. That’s the first tone.
The second tone (high and rising) is “disbelieving”: The clerk responds negatively when you ask if he’s stocking toilet paper today, and you say, “No?” like that’s the most incredible thing you’ve heard. Notice how your voice goes up at the end? That’s the second tone
The third tone (low and falling, then rising) is “dodging the question”: “Mr. Clinton, did you have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky?” “Uh, well, no . . . depending what your definition of Lewinsky is.” Your voice is low, goes down and then up slightly: that’s the third tone.
The fourth tone (low and falling abruptly) is the defiant tone. “Can I borrow your lawnmower?” “No!” Imagining thrusting your finger at the ground as you say “no”, sharp and downward: that’s the fourth tone.
I hadn’t realized how close the two sounds were until you mentioned it. Of course, having sat in the office mouthing these noises, I have a whole different problem now.
Northern Piper.
I have noticed a similar thing although not with French. There are some concepts in Thai that need quite a bit of verbage to explain in English. This particularly applies to family relationships and some aspects of a relationship.
As an example, if you and I repeatedly went to a restaurant and you always paid the check, AND if I had any self respect at all, I would eventually refuse to go. In Thai, I would “Glang-Ji” you. Being unable to return your kindness I would refuse to accept any more.
Yes, exactly. English is an intonation language, in which the tones have a meta-linguistic meaning, imparting information about the sentence as a whole. Mandarin is a tone language, where the tones define the meaning of individual words. Same mechanism, different uses.
It’s amazing - well, it is to me - how much even a basic knowledge of this stuff helps when it comes to learning a language. I remember a painful session with a German language assistant trying to get the plural of “Buch” into me. “Buecher.” “Boosher.” “Nein, nein! Buecher!” “…Boosher?..” Couple of years later, after taking introductory phonetics classes: “Oh, she meant a high front rounded vowel, followed by a palatal fricative!”
Or my old French teacher telling me (in his broad Yorkshire accent): “Parlez courrament, Monsieur Droit!” Speak how? Quickly? Fluently? What? These days I know that he was talking about French being a syllable-timed language (each syllable takes more or less the same time to say) while English is stress-timed (the time between each stressed syllable is the same, no matter how many unstressed syllables come between them).
All this stuff would have been enormously useful to me in my future career in foreign languages, if I’d had one instead of drifting into computing…