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When Are You Too Old To Learn Thai?


SpiceMan

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spiceman,

good topic here & for the tone deaf I'm afraid you may have to resort to sign language instead :)

but indeed if you as me can notice the difference with northern, southern dialects etc so really you are not entirely tone deaf hehe.

for me I probably was the most tone deaf in the class when I took formal thai lessons in bkk & I found the 'rote learning' there quite helpful to practice the tones & impossible consonants & wowels! not to mention the written stuff!

surely within 1 year I forgot most of the stuff including the letters but till this day I'm kinda learning again as my kids are learning the languages ;)

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As to tone deafness, there are tone deaf Thais ... yet they speak Thai correctly. As I said before, the most important thing is to be able to use the language all the time. It seems to be much easier to forget a language than it is to learn one. I studied Spanish for years and heard it often enough as a kid in New Mexico, but now I remember only enough to stumble along. The same with French. Even more frustrating is that I started out life virtually bilingual (English and German). After we moved away from the old folks, I seldom heard German anymore and forgot most of it. I have been complimented on my pronunciation, but certainly not on my fluency. The advice "use it or lose it" is certainly true about languages.

 

"Thai numerals are not used that much."

 

I was told that in my Peace Corps language training. Then when I got to my university, the teaching schedules all used Thai numerals! That is still common enough at Thai universities even today. :p

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flasher,

 

here we have the explanation why the education are wasting their time on outdated thai numerals & script while in fact the english programmes are ahead :)

 

"Then when I got to my university, the teaching schedules all used Thai numerals! That is still common enough at Thai universities even today"

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"Thai numerals are not used that much."

 

I was told that in my Peace Corps language training. Then when I got to my university, the teaching schedules all used Thai numerals! That is still common enough at Thai universities even today. :p

 

Thai numerals are also used in the justice system all legal papers must have date in Thai numerals and figures quoted in an indictment must be in the same format as they appear on the original document. Let me explain.

 

Land Register Office uses Thai numerals for the address of the property so if legal case is about property then Thai numerals must be used whereas Land Vehicle Register Office uses Romanic numerals, every vehicle registration plate has Province and 2 Letters in Thai letters but the numbers in Romanic, so there is a discrepancy between 2 government departments.

 

At the courthouse the courtrooms are numbered using Thai numerals.

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