English with Star Janista Raj - Time - How to Say it in English and Not in Tinglish

Stuart Jay Raj

Oct 20, 2012 — 2 min read

This is the second in Star’s ‘English with Star’ series.

(Click the ‘CC’ captions button in Youtube for English Subtitles)

Why is ‘Time’ Mispronounced in Tinglish as ‘Taam’

In this clip Star teaches us how she finally learnt how to pronounce the word ‘Time’ in English correctly. NOT ทาม ‘taam’ like 90%+ of the Thai population might pronounce it in Tinglish, but ทา+ยีม ‘ta+yiiiim’.

The reason for ‘Time’ being pronounced ‘Taam’ in Tinglish is because in the Thai sound system, a Diphthong cannot be followed by any other sound within the same syllable. So – it can go one of two ways. The /ai/ gets pronounced ‘tai’ but the last consonant doesn’t get pronounced… you hear this in the Tinglish word for ‘White’ or ‘Wine’ … the last ‘n’ and ‘t’ are actually FORCED to remain silent in Thai with the Karan ‘silent marker’ over the last letters – allowing the ‘ai’ to be pronounced – ไวท์= wai(t) ‘white’ and ไวน์ = wai(n) ‘wine’.

For some reason though, ‘Time’ got to keep the ‘m’ … but to do that, it lost the ‘ai’ sound and it was reduced to ‘a’ leaving it pronounced in Tinglish as ‘taam’.

In this clip, Star (and Jesse) teach us the right way to pronounce it … well, the Australian way to pronounce it at least!

Oh The Irony

It is a little ironic in this clip that Star is teaching the correct pronunciation of ‘time’ in English … though in the course of learning English, her Thai pronunciation has been affected and as is heard in the clip, she actually mispronounces the Thai word เวลา ‘wela’ and pronounces it more like วีลา ‘wila’. She used to do this when she was young in Thailand, but where it would have been ironed out at school years ago, it has stuck with her.

Enjoy – please send your comments and suggestions. This is a very good learning experience and confidence builder for Star too … and lets her practice both her English and Thai… as you can hear.. although her mother tongue is Thai and couldn’t speak a word of English 2 years ago, her Thai is getting heavily accented by her English. We will be working on remedying this asap.
I look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions. If you would like to contact me, you can drop me an email via my website – http://stujay.com/contact

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