Danny's Weblog

This section is for articles which relate mainly to the Thai language. As with the rest of my site, the articles are presented in *reverse* chronological order. Also, they tend to represent things which I have discovered or speculated about which *supplement* the standard materials: this is not intended to present a free teach-yourself-Thai course. You may also be interested in articles which refer to Asian languages in general: Asia/Language-misc

2004 Jan 26 [ Mon ]

Review of "English-Thai Bar Guide"

This is a blue pocket-size book. The cover has "Bar Guide" in big white letters and a cartoon of a plump farang in a bar wowing the bargirls by being able to say "phom rak khun mak mak".

I bought this book even though several problems are evident from a glance.

1. Not only does the romanization not indicate tones, it has no pronunciation guide at all! So probably most hapless customers will pronounce "phom" "fom".

2. The slant of the marketing seems doomed to failure. Guys may assume bar girls will like it when you try out your Thai on them, but they will smile and laugh *whatever* you say. Actually, you will probably do better pretending you speak no Thai at all. The makers of the book are probably aware of this.

3. The book is not very well organized. The book is divided into sections, but many phrases could fit into several different sections. I don't have "Thai for Lovers" in front of me, but I was not conscious of that problem with TFL. In other words, it's hard to guess which section to turn to if you need a particular phrase (even if you remember seeing it).

4. Background information is scattered through the book. The locations chosen are not terrible but again not particularly helpful. There is a list of contents which gives the section titles, but again this is not very helpful. How does one *know* one would like to read about "Soi Thaniya" unless one happened to be there? Likewise, many newcomers won't know what "bar fine" means (any more than "bar beer") and won't check it out in advance, which they definitely should.

If it were up to me, I'd collect the background info sections together but provide *references* to them, in the phrases sections.

5. I got the impression the background info sections were located to fill up white space. For instance, what is the info on "katoeys" doing in the "you're so cute" phrase section? They got so desperate they threw in a full-page ad for another (equally shoddy) book on p133. That's *in addition to* three pages of ads at the rear of the book – where the designer has sloppily allowed the chapter heading "bar pickup phrases" to continue to run as the page heading!

6. Despite making such efforts to fill white space, the layout is inefficient and there is little material per page.

— — — — — — — -

So why did I pay money for it? Because the phrases themselves are not bad, and the price at 195 THB, while exorbitant for such a small and badly-produced book, made it an impulse buy.

I certainly wouldn't recommend it for *any* first-time visitor to Thailand, though.

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