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Learning Thai correctly..


mattwasp

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correct, monks only use "chan" to mean 'to eat'.

 

taek is pretty damn low, kind of like if you said "let's chow down" or "let's stuff our gullets" instead of "let's eat" among polite company in the West. but even that doesn't capture the total vulgarity of it.

 

preahko

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The best way to learn Thai is to practice.

 

Some people may learn languages faster than others (children will learn faster than adults), but there is no substitute for putting in the hours. Even when you live here, it is very easy to get lazy and stop learning the language at a very basic level, particularly if you live in Bangkok, Pattaya, etc.

 

Thai grammar does differ from English grammar, which is why simply learning Thai words won't be enough. Thai has "classifiers", which you generally won't find in English (the only exception I know of is a "head" of cattle). If you don't learn and properly use classifiers, your spoken Thai will be very limited and garbled. For example, the words "that second old house" would be expressed in Thai as: that house + old + classifier for houses [lung, rising tone] + tee + two. To me at least, this is not intuitively obvious, and often a bit of a struggle. (I will understand it when I hear it, but often mangle the order when I try to say it.)

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The first hurdle in learning Thai for a westerner is to recognize and reproduce the tones. This takes time. If you don't make an effort to pronounce the tones correctly from day one, a Thai will get bored after a minute or two of attempting to hold a conversation with you.

 

A human baby will listen for about a year before attempting to speak.

 

The Thai language translates much better on a phrase for phrase and thought for thought basis than on a word for word basis, especially with ideas and concepts. Any attempt to translate it word for word into english will result in a meaningless jumble of words. This is not as evident with a simple subject verb object type of sentence.

 

The final hurdle is learning to think in Thai. There is just not enough time to think a thought in english, translate it into Thai and then speak it. One could never have a fluid conversation in real time with that method.

 

The way I accomplished this was to spend several years thinking every thought simultaneously in english and Thai. It does take some dedication.

 

 

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"Even when you live here, it is very easy to get lazy and stop learning the language at a very basic level, particularly if you live in Bangkok, Pattaya, etc"

 

Very true, that's my personal experience. Maybe I am not convinced that I will get much out of being able to communicate better and read in Thai, compared to if I try to perfect my German and French and improve my Japanese (the latter being a gruesome undertaking)?

 

Has anything really interesting been written in Thai languague?

Especially compared to the glorious canon of the languages of the West or Japan?

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The first hurdle in learning Thai for a westerner is to recognize and reproduce the tones. This takes time.

 

 

This is definitely the most important thing when beginning to learn thai.

 

If you cannot hear the tonal differences, then there is no way you can pronounce them correctly. Don't panic - just spending time listening will let you pick this up, honest.

 

For this reason the AUA method is good for Thai - they specifically do NOT want students speaking Thai straight away or even for months :-0 . You spend your time listening. You will get the 'ear' for the tones along with some vocabulary. Along the way you'll be picking up the general tonal rules without even being aware of it until you reach the writing level.... much later.

 

I'd recommend AUA to start with and later for continued lstiening and comprehension (the writing course was good too) but after a while you may want to go to Unity or others to get a faster track and speaking practise...... but truly several months spent listening at AUA is best,or even to a good CD/DVD course (i used a Linguaphone one).

 

 

coops

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