Many English tribes

Re: “Teachers won’t come”, (PostBag, Feb 18).

David Jackson opens a very large can of worms when he states that “a good strong native English accent is exactly what students need here in Thailand”. I must chide him for being so imprecise. English is now a global language with a multitude of dialects and accents even among native speakers. Which “native English accent” is David talking about?

Even British English contains within its warm and capacious bosom a number of accents, ranging from the posh Oxford accent to the distinctly unposh accents of Cockneys and Geordies. Venture beyond the sceptred isles and you’ll find that the US alone has a host of regional accents, from the southern drawl of Alabama to the New England twang of Boston, with a whole lot in between and beyond. The Australian accent is in a class by itself, as are its Scottish and Irish counterparts.

I taught English for a number of years at a major university here, and found that, regardless of the teacher’s accent, Thai students have pronunciation problems that no number of drills could correct. Students could manage to pronounce the sounds correctly in the drills, but in normal speech everything that they had learned went out the window. Never mind the “r”, “v”, “th”, and the final “l” and “s” sounds. The worst offender was the “ch” sound. This was especially glaring in the word children. Any Thai who pronounces that word correctly (not “shildren” or, worse, “shindren”) can be considered a master (or mistress) of English pronunciation and ought to get a medal.

I look forward to the day when the Thai education system manages to wipe out English pronunciation problems among Thai students. Then indeed we shall know that da kingdom of heawen has allived.

S TSOW