frame|right|Tinglish is even widespread on official signs in Thailand.
Tinglish (or Thaiglish, Thenglish, Thailish, Thainglish, etc.) refers to any form of English mixed with or heavily influenced by Thai. It is typically produced by native Thai speakers due to language interference from the first language. Differences from standard native English occur in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. The term was coined in 1970, and several alternative terms have been proposed since its inception, such as Thainglish (1973), Thaiglish (1992), Tinglish (1994), Thinglish (1976), Thenglish (2003), and Tenglish (2012).
- , , and are devoiced to , , and : "goal" → , "zip" → , "jam" → .
- becomes the affricate : "shirt" → .
- The "th" sounds and are replaced by or : "thank you" →
- Initial is replaced by , but final is replaced by : "level" → , "serve" → .
- Initial consonant clusters with followed by a voiceless unaspirated stop do not occur in Thai, so is added between these consonants: "start" →
- Final became in older loanwords, whereas modern adaptation generally favors instead: "grill" → .
- Final consonant clusters are generally truncated to only the sound directly after the vowel: "act" → .
- /r/ can be pronounced as /l/ or dropped in final position.
Adaptation of vowels
When it comes to vowels, there are 21 phonemes in Thai compared with 15 vowels in English; therefore, it is relatively easy for Thai people to imitate the English vowels. However, the two systems have a significant discrepancy: Thai vowels are distinguished by shortness and length, while for English, it is laxness and tenseness. That explains why Thai English speakers perceive and produce lax sounds as short sounds and tense sounds as long sounds, which gives their pronunciation its uniqueness (Kruatrachue, 1960).
- Diphthongs and triphthongs are generally simplified to long vowels, such as the in "blade" becoming . Exceptions are diphthongs ending in and , which are instead reanalysed as the Thai diphthongs ending in and : "tie" → , "view" → .
Tone assignment
All Thai syllables must have one of five tones (mid, low, falling, high, rising). English words adapted into Thai are systematically given these tones according to certain rules. English loanwords are often unusual in that tone markers are normally omitted, meaning that they are often pronounced with a different tone from that indicated by their spelling.