Why don't Thais like reading?

[visionchaser45]

My wife reads newspaper and magazines, but, again, no novels. I read primarily scientific journals. I don't bother with novels either. My wife has not had much formal schooling, and she takes pride in her ability to read Thai. She also knows her ABCs and does word search puzzles all the time. When her restaurant switched from hand-written to computer generated tickets, she learned to recognize the words on the slips within a few days, and prepares the orders almost flawlessly. Everyone at the restaurant was quite impressed.

If one is intelligent formal schooling certainly provides an advantage, but schooling doesn't automatically make one intelligent. Conversely, a lack of schooling does not automically mean someone lacks intelligence.

To me, most novels are boring and I only watch TV to give my brain a rest from all the academic stuff. It helps to get stupid once in a while. My wife reads to stay in touch with what is going on in Thailand and to pass the time a bit.

[FaranginPhetch]

My wife watches news on TV in Thai, but she has many duties at her school, They have shinn sat. which might explain why she works on her computer here at home until midnite most evenings setting up teaching scheds. and doing downloads on her handy drive to transfer to school computers, so she gets very little time for reading as a hobby or for enjoyment, now if they had someone running the school that wasn't drunk by noon each day and could do his job, she would have more free time.

I read about anything that is available, I read novels, but mostly history or engineering based stuff that have actual roots and info in the real or historic world. I never went to school much but am able to do design engineering and drafting of prototypes used in actual construction and work.

I can do many things and have invented and designed equip. and machines for specialty jobs and got the education from reading to be able to do this, reading anything in print is never a waste of time and sometimes comes in handy in life situations.

[Chaychana]

I agree with what was said by Jerome about the Thai value of community.
Living in a more rural setting, my attempts to spend time at home alone reading are constantly interrupted by people inviting me to do things. And I believe they aren't inviting me because they want to spend time with me, but rather because they are afraid I am lonely.

Even when my fellow teachers (all Thai) drive by my porch, they don't say, "What are you reading? Look kids, reading is good!" they say, "Always reading! You are lonely!"

Regarding the offerings of Thai TV, there are plenty of decent educational programs on the most basic UBC <800 baht a month packages, which come in Thai and English. But walking through a neighborhood, I usually catch people watching the telenovelas on the local stations, even when they have cable or a satellite.

I just have to defend TV a little bit. I did a little work in television in the US and there is so much good programming if you can sort through the goop.

[Somanea]

What web browser are you using? You should be able to set your encoding so that it renders Thai characters correctly.If you are using IE go to "view" in the menus and choose "encoding". Here you should be able to choose the correct encoding to allow you to view Thai script.
Hope this helps

i am assuming that it rendres them correctly.
i am using ie6, but it doesnt matter because i cant c them anyway. its my screen reading software that reads them as blanks. it reads everything else correctly, but when it comes to the thai script, it doesnt tell me if there is anything is on the screen.

[Somanea]

Somanea is blind, so she may have some extra issues with her screen-reading software...

Maybe she can get it saying "gor gai..." sometime soon

heheh smiles lol. i hate jaws 7.0. there is a japanese version that i installed a few years back. boy was that a fiasco lol. i finally had to reformat my hd to uninstall it lol. because the thing was saying unknown function bla bla bla. it wasnt funny at the time, but now i find it hilarious rofl.