Talking Point
Posted By Webmaster on June 25, 2009
As a daily traveller on the BTS sky train, I cannot help but notice the large array of T-shirts with a printed message being worn by my fellow passengers. Usually I lookat the shirts written in English – my native language – but I do often try to read the Thai ones as well, hopefully to improve my slow Thai language reading skill.
The T-shirt texts cover a wide variety of messages, ranging from cute romantic phrases, lines about popular tourist attractions around the world, school events and advertising slogans of every description. The designs of the shirts are just as diverse: some being single colour with words only and others multi-coloured with an eye catching picture, photograph or cartoon.
Unfortunately the written English on the shirts is not always one hundred percent accurate – a little spelling or grammar error has crept in, often causing me to have a little smile to myself. However it is not the fault of the person wearing the linguistically offending item of clothing, so I do not make it a practice to go up to them and point out the mistake!
In fact I actually own and wear a grey T-shirt, chosen because of my earlier profession in the magazine publishing industry,that bears the words:
Coming in your next issue Well come too …
Shouldn’t this read : Welcome to …?
Now and then I see a T-shirt that is not altogether polite, that is displaying a word or expressions that are definitely not to be found in English conversation course-books because they are for many people offensive or taboo. Whether these kinds of garments are good fashion is very much a matter of personal opinion.
There is an old saying: ‘Clothes make the person’, and in the fashion industry you make
‘a fashion statement’. In other words, the clothes you wear are an extension of your own
personality. The wide offering of different T-shirts certainly helps to brighten up the BTS journey and I hope new creative and original messages continue to be printed on the clothes.
By the way, English Click has its own very stylish polo shirt in a range of colours which I wear for special occasions, and these can be bought by our students at a very affordable price.
What do you think about T-shirt designs? Talk to a friend about it – in English if you can!