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When Are You Too Old To Learn Thai?


SpiceMan

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I'm not even 50 yet but I have noticed that my memory gets worse every year. I want to retire to Thailand in 10 years time and learn the language. I will have more free time then but learning will be more difficult.

 

Do retirees learn the language after they retire or is it something I need to make time for now?

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Not being at retirement age yet myself, we are around the same age, I cannot talk about retirees learning the Language but I would say the sooner the better.

 

I never took formal Thai lessons just picked it up as I went along, I have been lucky enough that my relationships with Thai women over the past 12 years have been with ones who spoke / speak English very well so it has been a natural learning process. I am far from fluent in Thai but can get by and also share jokes with them. Many of the locals in my apartment building now talk to me because they know I can speak a little Thai.

 

Reading / Writing, there are two schools of thought on this issue, some say it helps where as others say it does not matter, to me it helps if you remember when you were being taught how to speak there were books A=Apple, B=Ball, C=Cat D=Dog etc there is similar in Thai I had my letter chart pinned on my office wall for 7 years.

 

Another factor is what are your current language skills / what other Languages did you learn in your youth? I had Latin forced down my throat for 5 years and now found it has stood me in good stead, I can get by in Mandarin, Korean, Spanish, French, Italian Arabic and German as well as Thai and English, mainly because i have Lived / Worked in countries where that was the native tongue.

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By all means learn survival level Thai. Beyond that is up to you, though I'd say learn as much as you can. It is harder to learn Thai outside of the country though, since you have little opportunity to use it. I began learning the language here in Thailand, where I could not only practice it every day, but actually was forced to use it. Peace Corps stopped feeding us after the first week and instead gave us a daily living allowance. Nothing like hunger to motivate you. Also, after a month on the coast, training moved halfway to Chiang Mai. PC told us where to go, gave us enough money to get there and said, "We will see you there in 3 days." (I spent 2 of the 3 days having fun in Bangkok. :) )

 

Nevertheless, I do see retirees who can barely order a meal or tell a taxi where to go. They seem happy enough, but I certainly wouldn't be. For me the first thing you do in a new country is start learning the language.

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Nevertheless, I do see retirees who can barely order a meal or tell a taxi where to go. They seem happy enough, but I certainly wouldn't be. For me the first thing you do in a new country is start learning the language.

 

Flash

 

Agree with you 100%, may I also add that knowing even a few basic words in ones host country is a sign of respect, most of the world now knows a little English now but knowing a few basic words breaks the ice and also reduces the risk of being ripped off.

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Try using Arabic numerals then DOH!

 

Thai numerals are not used that much, only place I recall seeing them nowadays is National Parks where Farang Prices are in Romanic and Thai Prices are in Thai, at least the bank notes are colour coded but when did the Brown 10 Baht note go out of circulation?

 

On a side note I remember an interesting conversation I had in a Bar in Tianjin China, with my basic Mandarin and their basic English the message came across as "Number Three wants you to go with them" at time it did not make sense at all. Next day I related the tale to my translator and she had a look of horror on her face, my misunderstanding of Number Three was actually the Triads. To this day I am still unsure if they wanted to me join them at a party or if they were trying to kidnap me on the sly.

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Nevertheless, I do see retirees who can barely order a meal or tell a taxi where to go. They seem happy enough, but I certainly wouldn't be. For me the first thing you do in a new country is start learning the language.

 

I've had 26 holidays in Thailand so I feel I should know more of the language than I do. I can give spoken directions to taxi drivers but for the last 6 years I have always been traveling with my girlfriend (now wife) and drivers always want to take directions from her not me. As a consequence, I have forgotten most of what little I knew. Another problem I have is that I am terrible at repeating tones. I know that sai would tell a driver to go left but I haven't a clue what tone to use.

 

I went to the Thai food and cultural festival in Oxford today and had the opportunity to hear Thai speakers from all over the country in conversation. I could hear the tones of the language and the lack of tones from the staff on the southern food stand. But damned if I could repeat anything with the correct intonation, even when said by people from the North. It seems as if the words flow when spoken by others and I have to anchor myself to a word in order to be able to repeat it correctly. The stream moves on and I lose the meaning it carries.

 

I read on this forum about someone being tone-deaf. Is this a real problem that some people have when it comes to speaking tonal languages. Can it be overcome? If so, how?

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