It’s Dinesh D’Souza, so…
Aussie here. I have travelled extensively in Thailand and had a Travellers cafe in Bali where a procession of all sorts of travellers shared stories. NEVER have I heard anyone use anything but TIE.
Dinesh D’Souza sounds like a Sri Langkan name…is it?
Most Indians I know don’t say “thigh-land” /θaɪ lænd/ because Indian languages, including most Indian English accents, don’t have the “th” phonemes ([θ] [ð]). They replace them with dentals ([t̪ʰ] [d̪]).
So the most common pronunciation of “Thailand” I’ve heard from Indians is /t̪ʰaɪ lænɖ/, which to American English speakers would sound closer to “tie-land” (/taɪ lænd/) than “thigh-land” (/θaɪ lænd/ ). But it would be the same phoneme as in “thigh” to someone like Dinesh D’Souza, who speaks English with an Indian accent and himself uses the same phoneme for both.
Indians will usually give the full vowel in the second syllable instead of reducing it (“schwa”). Indian languages, and by extension most Indian English accents, don’t reduce vowels in unaccented syllables.
You can strike the words “kind of” and be even more accurate.
Dinesh D’Souza was born in Bombay and moved to the U.S. when he entered college at 17. He’s lived in the U.S. since then and became an American citizen in 1991. I don’t see any mention of mention of him or his ancestors coming from Sri Lanka. There was one point last year when he prominently talked about a terrorist raid in Sri Lanka.
He’s a Catholic from Goa, as you could guess from the Portuguese name D’Souza.
Aaaahhhhh!. I try to proofread and yet still make stupid mistakes. I wrote “I don’t see any mention of mention of him or his ancestors coming from Sri Lanka” but I meant “I don’t see any mention of him or his ancestors coming from Sri Lanka”
Annd just we’re being clear, we’re saying that if Dinesh D’Souza says something, the odds are high that whatever it’s about, it’s false. Like the Daily Mail.
It’s rare enough that a Thailand newspaper, as a joke, temporarily changed its name to The Thigh, if you believe The Independent.
Best guess is about 10% of the population of India, 125-million, are fluent in English and they are claiming second place for largest English-speaking populace, after the US.
So even if you want to put “proper” pronunciation up to a vote rather than what it is locally, and even if all of India says “Thighland” – yet to be demonstrated – The US trumps (ha!) India.
In 2002 D’Souza pronounced Thailand with a hard T, FWIW: https://twitter.com/femalefaust/status/1291680469130424320?s=20
D’Souza falsely claims that Thailand is pronounced like Thighland in England, Australia and India: https://twitter.com/DineshDSouza/status/1291564123545907200?s=20
D’Souza backpeddles further and makes claim only about South Asian continent: https://twitter.com/DineshDSouza/status/1291616171503091713?s=20
Surprisingly to me, very few with familiarity with English as spoken in India have cropped up to comment either here or in twitter. This is the best I could do:
However an amateur unconfirmed linguistic did provide commentary: https://twitter.com/MarvinDanielson/status/1291685778771152897?s=20
Because it is the third most important presidential distraction of the day I’ll weigh in on the #Thighland controversy. It pains me to say D’Souza has even half a point, but it’s only half. Notes on Indian consonants, a thread:
As a high-schooler at St. Stanislaus in Bombay, young Dinesh was probably told by the Jesuit fathers that he was learning the Queen’s English. Which is true, as far as it goes: many convent-educated Indians speak English far more precisely and beautifully than Americans.
What Anglophone Indians were not learning was British – let alone American – pronunciation. They were taught to pronounce English words with the consonants available on the Indian subcontinent.
For most words containing the letter “t” (Tommy, tomato, Toyota) this means a hard palatal ?, pronounced with the tip of the tongue on the roof of the mouth. It has a very exciting pop! Our American “t” is much softer and, frankly, sloppier.
Other words, especially proper nouns or items with foreign origins (pasta comes to mind) receive a different treatment. They get the soft dental ?, softer than an American “t” but not all the way to a “th.”
Now comes the hard part (because it’s even softer). Every consonant also has an aspirated sibling that’s made by adding an exhalation afterwards – not only “th” but also “gh,” “bh,” etc. (here on the west coast we even get a lot of “mh”).
So for words like “Thailand” most Indians’ typical pronunciation is the soft ? plus aspiration = ?. It includes an outward breath but the tongue is still pinned inside the teeth, not sticking out.
Because my name is Matthew I hear this transliteration many times daily. It’s different from how I pronounce it, but then I‘ve always been a little embarrassed by having to stick my tongue out of my mouth to pronounce my name, and the ensuing spittle.
Most Indians would not, cannot and should not pronounce “Thailand” like @realDonaldTrump did. They‘d be embarrassed to stick their tongues all the way out of their mouths…
He summarizes:
Most Indians do indeed pronounce “Thailand” differently from Americans. That’s because they pronounce everything different from Americans. Many consonants in English do not have a precise equivalent in Indian languages.
Another unconfirmed linguist says something similar:
https://twitter.com/VasundharaNLP/status/1291640538857238530?s=20
Hello? (Points up)
I just watched some of those clips of D’Souza. He doesn’t really have an Indian accent. And he pronounces it like an American would.
As I said above, however, it remains true that in most Indian English accents, “Thailand” and “thigh-land” will likely be pronounced the same as each other, but differently from how Americans would pronounce “thigh-land.” It’s not comparable. Even if Trump did learn the pronunciation from an Indian, he wouldn’t pronounce it the way he did.
I stand corrected Acsenray: you also provided solid answers. What I meant to convey was that there are oddly few Indian residents active in English twitter or the SDMB for that matter. (I seem to recall that you are a US resident; I hope I’m not mistaken. If I am, I apologize in advance.)
Did It used to be pronounced ‘shy-am’?
30 years ago we smoked Thai stick. Only if someone was clearly joking would they ever call it thigh stick.
To deduce the population of Thighland, just count the number of feet and divide by two.
Uh, no. D’Souza is a liar.
Tie-land (Kiwi)
Also, same pronunciation can be heard in Chess “One Night in Bangkok”:
Get thai’d, you’re talking to a tourist
Whose every move’s among the purest…
Even back in West Texas, we all knew it was “Tie-land” and not “Thigh-land.” If nothing else, we all knew it was “Tie stick” and not “Thigh stick,” plus there were plenty of ex-GIs running around who had stories of R&R in the country.
I have never, ever, not once, heard it pronounced “Thigh-land” for real, just in jokes. It is true that Thai does not have a “th” sound.