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Best Thai Language Cd ?


gobbledonk

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The way I was "taught" languages in the U of California was horrible. We were supposed to memorise a page in Spanish, then memorise the translation in English. Somehow we were expected to learn something that way. :(

 

There was a fellow in my Peace Corps group who had taken a year of Thai at the U of Washington. He told us after 2 weeks of studying Thai in Prachuab Khirikhan that we already knew as much as he did. PC did give us motivation. After the first week, they told us they'd only be feeding us breakfast. We were given an allowance and told to buy our own lunch and dinner. Then after 3 1/2 have weeks in Prachuab, we were told our training was moving to the north of Thailand for the next month. We were told where to go, given enough money to get there, and told they would see us there in 3 days! The sink or swim method has something to be said for it.

 

p.s. It is very important to learn to read Thai script. It wasn't until I started reading that I realised just how much our language trainers had allowed us to get away with terrible pronunciation.

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WOW, that Peace Corp training was certainly a motivating method for learning Thai (to say the least)! I think that's the reason I've hit a plateau with my level of spoken Thai. I don't often put myself in situations where I'm compelled to speak Thai or die :blink: . ..

 

I agree with “Flashermacâ€; I too think it's VERY important to learn to read Thai.

 

It wasn't until I actually learned how to properly "tone" the Thai words I was reading that I realized how "off-toned" my spoken Thai really is. Seeing as reading is mostly done "silently to ones-self" the inability to tone words correctly wasn't a big impediment to my Thai reading comprehension at all. I learned to recognize the differences in spelling between similar sounding (to foreign ears) Thai words by sight when I saw them. Sorta like; ข่าว, ข้าว, ขาว; news, white, rice or เข่า, เข้า, เขา; knee, enter, he-she-they-antler/horn (and mountain, when used with ภู like ภูเขา).

 

One more :topic: thing I will say about the foreigner's I've observed speaking Thai in the various schools I've "toured".

 

Most schools have female Thai teachers, and they have a penchant of over-toning what they're saying so we foreign devils can better "hear" the differences between mid, low, falling, high and rising toned words. Sometimes foreigners, who try to emulate the correct "tone" of a word, will mimic the "key" or "pitch" of the teacher’s voice instead. This can lead to a 6 foot tall, 210 pound white guy speaking Thai in a falsetto where he sounds like he’s Mickey Mouse or like he's inhaled helium :biggrin:.

 

Take care,

Tod Daniels

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PC "motivation" got the job done. It also weeded out the few who weren't serious. But that is what it takes.

 

Reading is what you need to do to expand your vocabulary. You reach a point fairly quickly where you are only speaking Thai in the same situations - traveling, ordering a meal, buying something etc. You hit a plateau and stay there. Reading is the way to get around it.

 

My Thai was probably more fluent years ago before I moved to Bangkok. Upcountry I had to speak Thai most of the time. Here I can often take the easy way out and speak English. I get into my longest Thai conversations nowadays with taxi drivers! But I learn a lot from them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Back on the topic of C/D’s to learn Thai;

 

I have one called "Thai Interactive Language Learning System". It's put out by Courage Software. I couldn't find it here in Thailand, but bought it online. It's really good and I still use it to brush up.

 

The Rosetta Stone C/D which I got at Fortune Town here in Bangkok has like 15 languages on it, including Swahili. Honestly, I didn't find Rosetta Stone particularly valuable as far as learning how to speak Thai, but it is a good resource; especially for the price you can get it here. I liked the feature where you hear a word spoken; repeat it and a graph shows how close your voice is to replicating the 'wave' of the real word.

 

For getting your Thai pronunciation closer to how a Thai would say things, Benjawan Becker who owns Paiboon Publishing has a C/D titled appropriately enough "Improving Your Thai Pronunciation" which is good. The C/D series of hers called “Speak Like a Thai" (of which there are 7 titles now I think) are also very good, especially the ones called; "Contemporary Expressions", "Thai Slang", "Heart Words" and "Real Life Conversations". The "Thai English Talking Software Dictionary" Benjawan put out with Chris Pirazzi is really a valuable asset too. It's available for a variety of operating systems, and has sound files for every entry.

 

Anyway, hope it helped,

Tod

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Hi,

 

"I liked the feature where you hear a word spoken; repeat it and a graph shows how close your voice is to replicating the 'wave' of the real word."

 

It's funny, a lot of people seem to like this and we have it in our eLearning App as well, but it is utterly useless :)

Replicating the wave doesn't necessarily mean having to match what was spoken.

 

Sanuk!

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Most schools have female Thai teachers, and they have a penchant of over-toning what they're saying so we foreign devils can better "hear" the differences between mid, low, falling, high and rising toned words. Sometimes foreigners, who try to emulate the correct "tone" of a word, will mimic the "key" or "pitch" of the teacher’s voice instead. This can lead to a 6 foot tall, 210 pound white guy speaking Thai in a falsetto where he sounds like he’s Mickey Mouse or like he's inhaled helium :biggrin:.

 

 

I dont think that is restricted to formal classes - one of the regulars here commented that his wife told him he 'sounded like a Katoey' when he spoke Thai, a consequence of having learnt the language from women. Absolutely agree that most Thai wives wouldn't have the patience to teach their partners Thai from the ground up, but are we any different ? Even with people who have the basics of English, trying to lay out all the grammatical rules of a complex language is just hell for both parties. 'Him no have money !' makes perfect sense to me - why fight it ? As long as I dont become the subject of that sentence, its all good ;)

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I dont think that is restricted to formal classes - one of the regulars here commented that his wife told him he 'sounded like a Katoey' when he spoke Thai, a consequence of having learnt the language from women. Absolutely agree that most Thai wives wouldn't have the patience to teach their partners Thai from the ground up, but are we any different ? Even with people who have the basics of English, trying to lay out all the grammatical rules of a complex language is just hell for both parties. 'Him no have money !' makes perfect sense to me - why fight it ? As long as I dont become the subject of that sentence, its all good ;)

 

Well it's not about mimicking - one of my favourite jokes is talking like one of those dub over merchants trying to talk like one of those tough guys in Hollywood flicks - all extremely low and gruff Thai. Never fails to get a laugh that one.

 

I think language learning is all about passion. I learnt to speak Cambodian because I literally fell in love with this girl with no English. Those late night galley sessions of reading, writing the alphabet, speaking to a wall with the confidence of its infallibility were all done in a passion of love. I needed to be with her - and I fought with a fierce intelligence to be able to speak to her - the tv blaring khmer like some strange alternative reality. I crammed - and that word doesn't do it justice, I began to actually think in Khmer - and when that happens, ...well you can only expect that magic will happen.

 

In all my experience there comes the moment when you just kind of find a new awareness and you can actually think in that language - and that's when you can become free. In many ways I scorn the English language - in certain ways it is so limited - like laying prosaic tiles on some featureless mosiac. The globe is losing its lustre. Most people will never understand this, but I'm not disconsolate - ha! far from it. Perhaps I'll elucidate on this later... perhaps not.

 

Perhaps most people are not cognisant or self aware of the reality that surrounds them - perhaps I'm unusually observant - I've always felt this ability to quickly notice things. I never feel the impulse to nefariousness - so to speak lol. Well strictly speaking - that is untrue. Perhaps I'll elucidate later. Perhaps not.

 

Most people say if you are learning a language - then you need to understand its culture. I'll go further to say that you need to be almost obsessively interested in their very own fucking tedium. You are going to be bored - then perhaps if you've got something that might be called a brain - you'll be stimulated. If it fails to obsess you - then drop it, drop it immediately. Because it is not for you. There is no shame in that. That is just the way it is. It's just fucking embarrassing those misanthropes that pour out their rote Thai phrases that sound so limp and horrible and only point out to everybody just how self-deluded they actually are - fucking sad cunts.

 

Anyhow - you've got to love someone, love their culture, love who they are, before you can ever truly be fluent in their language. Sounds like the voice of reason - crazy as it seems - sometimes I think all of this is my fault...

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In all my experience there comes the moment when you just kind of find a new awareness and you can actually think in that language - and that's when you can become free.

I know exactly what you mean.

 

In order to graduate, I had to get to fourth-semester proficiency in a foreign language. After abortive attempts at Russian and French, I punted and did Spanish, leveraging elementary school and high school classes. I got to the point that last semester when I would occasionally, without thought, switch to Spanish, which annoyed the heck out of a friend of mine at the time.

 

The third and fourth semester involved a fair amount of reading of the good stuff. In particular, we read a section from "100 Years in Solitude", in the original. Several years later, in the Fort Worth Public Library branch near where I lived, I came across the English translation, and, out of curiosity, I found the same section. It wasn't the same. The sound, the feel, the sonority (is that a word?), the POETRY ... was just GONE. I realized that some things just have to be read in the original.

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