#honestly that native speaker was the real mvp waking up at 4am to listen to people butcher his language

[red-hibiscus]

A bit on my linguistic research on LGBT Thai speech

Back in university I took a field documentation course w/ Thai as the target language. My final project was of course LGBT and Thai. The native speaker we researched off of (a linguistics phd candidate) was a gay man himself. So he was able to give me some extra info I wouldn't have been able to find on my own.

He told me that the [x] sound (voiceless velar fricative) can be heard in the northern thai dialect.... or it could be perceived as the speaker being lgbt. [s] is thought to also be pronounced as more dental (closer to tip of teeth).

Also told me that [paŋ] (pronounced bang) is sort of a newer word for trans men. And of course I can't really find info on it just like it was hell finding info on lgbt linguistics in general (worse if it's in a language you don't speak).

Thai does have gendered pronouns and endings. It has a gender neutral pronoun, but it's not really suited for daily use. So yea it can be difficult for nonbinary people. However the native speaker also emphasized that a lot of the time you can kind of get away with avoiding gendered stuff since Thai is a pro-drop language. Plus as I'm sure thai drama enjoyers noticed, people often use their name or title as a pronoun.

The pronoun [lɔ̀n], if used in a certain way, can be interpreted as being from the lgbt community. It’s originally a feminine 3rd person singular pronoun. However now it’s also being used as a 2nd person singular pronoun. The latter is almost exclusively used by LGBT people, especially transgender people. Though gay people may also use it too. So if used in that way, listeners might assume that the speaker is LGBT.

Thats all I have for now. Thai speakers please add things or correct me!! I don't speak Thai myself aside from things I picked up during that class. I took the class a while ago so memory is a bit hazy on some things. A lot of the info I got is from research articles given to me from the speaker, or things he told me during our 1-on-1 meeting. Not that I think he's giving me bad info at all, the man is literally born and raised in Thailand, was in thailand at the time of my research. Just that there's limited info available for me (plus he's not trans himself, just a lovely ally). That and sociolinguistics is not his specialty.

p.s. if any thai speakers (or anyone) wants to talk about lgbt linguistics with me please do

p.p.s teach me thai please and thank you

#honestly that native speaker was the real mvp waking up at 4am to listen to people butcher his language #plus since he is a linguist himself he knew when we were going in the right or wrong direction and would just sit there and laugh #he's friends with my old internship leader and she said that apparently my project was among his favorites so i guess i did something right #lgbt #gay #linguistics #sociolinguistics #thai #bl series #thai bl #thai drama #asian lgbtq dramas #asianlgbtqdramas #lgbtq #transgender #thai language