Tie to Fab Thai ภาษาไทยดี
Language and Identity of the Thai Community in Hong Kong
- ภาษาและอัตลักษณ์ของชุมชนไทยในฮ่องกง
Linguistic landscape
A mixture of Thai and Chinese
Thai language serves as an aesthetic value than a practical value in the Hong Kong context. Also, Thai words are like exotic symbols for Hong Kong people instead of bearing any concrete meanings in them. When shops have Thai written over their menu or shop name, it increases our faith towards the shop of having authentic Thai food or service. Therefore, often can we see at Kowloon City that there are Thai words associated with Chinese so as to attract locals and tourists to consume their service.
At times, it also points out that it targets at both locals and Thais for the message.
This is important to show how Thai serves as an aesthetic value to Thai cuisine in Hong Kong.
A bilingual sign in the shop indicating "Close the door".
Bilingual shop name.
Thai only
While at the same time, Thai only messages were also displayed at Kowloon City. For example recruitment notice outside Thai restaurant (as shown in the picture below on the left), of even a Thai-style salon (as shown in the picture in the middle). These reflected that the messages are intended for Thais only, but not other ethnic groups. The Thai restaurant only want to recruit Thais to work there as it helps creates a Little Thailand in her store and attract more tourists. While the Thai salon is designed to cater the needs of Thais, thus they only advertise in Thai instead of putting Cantonese on their menu too.
Bilingual Menu - Chinese and English
One thing that is interesting is that menus in Thai restaurants, unlike menus of other cuisines, is mainly bilingual of Chinese and English. As Japanese restaurants usually put Japanese side by side with Chinese and English, it is interesting to see that there exists a difference in between. Through the interview with the shop manager, we know that they have Thai only menu catered only for Thais, however there is no trilingual menu that includes Thai, Chinese and English. Most of the menus that we have flipped through at Kowloon City also are also bilingual.
The sign indicating that it is closed temporarily is only in Chinese as it is intended for local customers, while the sign for "No borrowing of toilets" is bilingual in Chinese and Thai that targets at the local community. On the right hand side, we see recruitment notice that is only available in Thai.
