Flashermac Posted November 14, 2006 Report Share Posted November 14, 2006 Steve, the Rosetta Stone CDs are very good for listening practice. They are not much conversation, but are good reinforcement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Hippie Posted November 14, 2006 Report Share Posted November 14, 2006 I'll add, that if you use the full reading and listening feature in RS, it will help you learn reading and pronounciation, which will help you look up new words, and learn the pronounciation...it does for Thai. It will also help you learn grammer and sentence structure... But yes, Flash is right, RS is not really great for conversation, no tape set is in my opinion... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coops1967 Posted November 14, 2006 Report Share Posted November 14, 2006 are some words spelt the same but said completely different depending on the sentence? no, different tones - the transliteration system used differs so how the 5 tones get 'written' in roman script will vary on each site/book etc. I originally started with linguaphone - pretty good and has exercises to get you used to the tones. Tones are the biggest hurdle for westerners i think, and to make it worse there's no way you can say it properly until you can hear the difference between all 5 tones (and short and long vowels for good measure). So i'd recommend lots of listening first - lots! Once you genuinely can hear the difference it'll be worth starting to speak.... Pimsleur is good (not tried the thai version tho') but the Russian course encourages speaking straightaway for reinforcement. Linguaphone has conversations, exercises etc and a good writing course too..... Maybe a copy of Ong Bak with Thai sound and english subtitles.... coops Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
belfastish Posted November 14, 2006 Author Report Share Posted November 14, 2006 ...what does mai pen rai mean?it wouldnt come up for me on my learning site is it what you know or something ? It means' date=' "no problem".[/quote'] What ever. That's life. What can you do. Never mind. You're welcome. this is what gets me ,how can mai pen rai mean all these? never mind and your welcome are completely different Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mekong Posted November 14, 2006 Report Share Posted November 14, 2006 MPR can be used for Your Welcome but "Yin Dee Khrap" is a better phrase Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
preahko Posted November 14, 2006 Report Share Posted November 14, 2006 ...what does mai pen rai mean?it wouldnt come up for me on my learning site is it what you know or something ? It means' date=' "no problem".[/quote'] What ever. That's life. What can you do. Never mind. You're welcome. this is what gets me ,how can mai pen rai mean all these? never mind and your welcome are completely different all languages can communicate the same sophistication/subtlety of meaning, but many do it quite differently than others...try to get outside the box of thinking there's a one-to-one correspondence for words (or phrases) across languages. SEAsian languages like thai communicate a lot of subtlety based on word placement, conversational context and use of final particles; languages like English do this more by word choice, adding words and features like intonation in a lot of ways, you can say thai does "more with less"...but both thai and english get the same meaning across in the end in the hands (mouth) of a capable speaker. the trick is learning how to manipulate things in the new system. thai grammar looks deceptively "simple" at first glance, but it's not simple at all...it takes a while to learn how to use context and word placement to communicate subtle nuances... preahko Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shygye Posted November 14, 2006 Report Share Posted November 14, 2006 ...what does mai pen rai mean?it wouldnt come up for me on my learning site is it what you know or something ? It means' date=' "no problem".[/quote'] What ever. That's life. What can you do. Never mind. You're welcome. this is what gets me ,how can mai pen rai mean all these? never mind and your welcome are completely different Context. If you say thank you, kop kun kup. The other person may respond mai pen rai. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
belfastish Posted November 14, 2006 Author Report Share Posted November 14, 2006 these small lessond are helping a lot,i think i need to buy some sort of tape or download something onto my ipod for tones!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted November 14, 2006 Report Share Posted November 14, 2006 Thanks Flash and OH for your help. I'll certainly pick it up. I've heard of Rosetta. Getting back to the original thread. One day I'd like to be fluent. My preferred way is to live in LOS and be fully immersed in an area where little english is spoken augmented with classroom instruction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shygye Posted November 14, 2006 Report Share Posted November 14, 2006 Does someone have a list of the 100 most common words in Thai? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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