Intelligibility of English in Thai street food menus perceived by East Asian tourists

This research aims to determine the intelligibility of Thai English used by local vendors on street food menus for East Asian tourists. To achieve the primary goal, the characteristics of Thai English used in dishes on street food menus, including Moo Nam Tok (Spicy sliced pork salad), Pad Thai (Thai-style stir-fried noodles), Fried rice, Som Tam (Papaya salad), and Tom Yam Kung, were collected from five famous street food areas, namely, Chinatown, Old Town, Sukhumvit, Silom and Sathorn, and Saphan Lueng. The research made use of Ngampramuan’s (2016) framework that divides Thai English features into two types: grammatical features and lexico-semantic features. Then, these characteristics were applied in the survey asking 100 Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean tourists to determine the extent of the intelligibility. Moreover, this research applied nonparticipant observation to investigate the impact of Thai English on East Asian tourists’ decisions to order street food. The findings revealed that the grammatical features had the highest intelligibility mean score, while lexico-semantic features had the lowest intelligibility mean score. This implies that Thai English with grammatical features on street food menus are easier to understand than lexico-semantic features.