Comments on: Scientifically Proven: The Good Farang

By: Catherine

Catherine — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:23:45 +0000

MongerSEA, your snarly retort was a surprise so I googled “MongerSEA.” Seems that slamming people in the comments is a hobby of yours, so I will leave you to it.

By: MongerSEA

MongerSEA — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 07:09:36 +0000

Catherine, to digress into etymologies is disingenuous and irrelevant. But since everything seems to be relative in your paradigm (and I pity you for that) I’ll play along and ask if I can get your endorsement of a plan to refer to Thais as “slopes” 41% of the time? Most Thais wouldn’t care, most English-speakers in Thailand wouldn’t be fussed, the word has an innocent meaning, and there is a historical precedent …

By: Catherine

Catherine — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:01:00 +0000

41% confirm that they will continue using the term farang as it has been used this way for a long time and seems hard to change their familiarity with the common usage.

If Westerners are not in agreement that farang is a derogatory word, then I can see why some Thais would not be fussed enough to make a change.

I have not been on the (negative) receiving end of farang (yet). Most any words can be turned into cuss words. In turn, you can use cuss words as terms of endearment. So in some cases, is clearly down to the intentions (good/bad/indifferent). But in others, ignorance.

We have also been talking about this subject on WLT. The conversation is rather interesting as Rikker shared even more thoughts on the possible history.

By: Thailandblog.nl

Thailandblog.nl — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:58:42 +0000

Many expats don’t like the word farang. It doesn’t matter for me. If they now my name, I don not accept the word farang, that is not polite.

By: Talen

Talen — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:02:19 +0000

Excellent article and some very interesting results. I have to wonder about the people that would prefer to be called Caucasian though.

I think the word for the most part is used in a non offensive way but there will always be those occasions where it is meant offensively.

I do agree though that farang should be used indirectly not when the farang is around. While the Thai family all call me by name the extended family still point at me and ask if the farang is hungry.

By: MongerSEA

MongerSEA — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:13:39 +0000

“… most of the Thais are quite careless of racist issue as 61% feel neutral if they are called Chinese when they live aboard. Some of them say that it is fine to categorize them as Chinese because they both look similar while some feel that the word is not offensive.”

Might it simply be that since the Chinese quite effectively colonized the Thai merchant and political classes, that a statistically disproportionate percentage of Thais with the wealth to travel abroad actually have a Chinese heritage and a desensitizing effect is at work?

One suspects that if you reframed the question of misidentifying Thais abroad as Malaysians, Laotians or Cambodians rather than Chinese, one would get greatly different outcome.

By: Farang or not to farang

Farang or not to farang — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:08:43 +0000

The word farang has fairly ancient roots because it is rooted in Sanskrit and much of Thai language comes from Pali and Sanskrit. In Hindi, I think the word for White foreigner is ferengi (like the Star Trek characters), though it is probably a little dated now.

I think a good analogy is the word Yankee. It all depends of the tone and use. Yankee in itself is a neutral word.

Non-Americans don’t understand that Yankee doesn’t describe all Americans, only Americans from the Northeast. Californians are not Yankees. Hawaiians are not Yankees. And Southerners are definitely not Yankees.

But many non-Americans describe all Americans as Yankees. This is the same type of blanket yet harmless ignorance when Thais lump all Europeans together as farang. The word becomes sort of an epithet when used with a nasty tone.

So, in the final analysis, farang is both neutral and an epithet in the same way that jek (Chinese) and khaek (Indian) are neutral and used as racial epithets.