communication with your g/f

[Pescator]

> There's something I'm curious about. When I started learning Thai my progress was about 3-5 times slower than it would be with a Euro language, like Spanish or Dutch.

 

 

 

I noticed the very same thing.

 

In school I studied Latin, french, german and english. And they all have lots of common (or similar) words (also with my native danish language), so that would make it kind of easy to learn new words. A number of them I would be able to guess the meaning of although I had never actually heard them before. Especially when it comes to foreign words. Take the names of the month for example. Now we are talking about 12 different names but they are very similar and I will only take a short while to memorize the differences. No so with the names of the months in thai.

 

When it comes to thai language there are no "free rides". It is all up hill and the only words you get for free are the english "loan words". You know like hamburger, check bin, khon serp=serve, footbun etc.

 

And to add to that thai is predominantly a monosyllabic tonal language where the only thing separating the meaning of Khaa, khaa, khaa, khaa, khaa or mai, mai, m.... is the tone.

 

Learning mandarin, japanese would probably be just as difficult for a european.

 

 

 

> one would be able to read a newspaper without any effort; that one would have no trouble holding a political conversation

 

 

 

Sure doesn`t happen in Thailand. I have met very few - 2 or 3 - who would be able to measure up to this level. But then again I don`t associate with farang professionals living and working in Thailand for extended periods of time. I guess there should be quite of few among those.

 

To be fair I don`t know any thai living in Europe who measure up to that level either. That is unless they came here as a kid. So the same applies to thais coming to live in Europe, not exactly surprising.

 

 

 

How to come around this? I think there is no easy way, just hang in there and as you get to build more vocabulary it does somewhat speed up the learning process. Let me give you an example. Thai pronouns can be very long and complicated and if you encounter an unfamiliar one in the middle of a conversation it can make you stop wondering what the heck does "prapapansawisit" mean? Now if you already have a decent vocabulary you will quickly be able to figure out that this is indeed a pronoun and you don`t have to make that stop you wondering what it means.

 

Before unfamiliar pronouns were a constant source of confusion to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REgards

 

Hua Nguu.

 

 

 

 

[markle]

<How long did it take you to get there? And also, what did it take to get there (osmosis, self-taught, courses, etc.)?>

 

 

 

I've spoken/communicated in Thai on pretty much a daily basis for over 14 years. Never done a course or any formal lessons. But then again I cheated by being an exchange student. That first 'sink or swim' year makes all the difference. Study method? Bit of everything really, osmosis, self taught, the odd tutorial. I recall becoming a couch potato for 4 month in front of the TV (no UBC) and watching everything. Really expanded my understanding, especially for social situations (from lakorn) comedy (from stand ups) and formal speech (from news).

[Pescator]

>I recall becoming a couch potato for 4 month in front of the TV (no UBC) and watching everything. Really expanded my understanding, especially for social situations (from lakorn) comedy (from stand ups) and formal speech (from news).

 

 

 

I admire you. In fact I admire anyone being able to watch thai soaps for more than 10 minutes without dislocating their jaws.

 

 

 

 

Hua Nguu.

[Guest]

Hua Nguu: "> one would be able to read a newspaper without any effort; that one would have no trouble holding a political conversation

 

 

 

Sure doesn`t happen in Thailand."

 

 

 

OK, let me follow up. Is it that farang do not buy and read Thai newspapers and watch news on Thai TV?

 

 

 

I would think that doing so consistently for 3-6 months would bring a person with a decent language background up to near-fluent level. I mean, if we can pickup some of the BG lingo it shouldn't be that hard to do it in the language of politics.

 

 

 

Btw, these are not academic questions; hopefully I'll be moving to Thailand sooner than later and improving my very meager language skills is one of my top priorities.

[Guest]

I have to disagree. I doubt tonality is truly significant here.

 

 

 

English is vastly more similar to other European languages than it is to Thai (or Mandarin). This is true in terms of vocabulary roots, syntax, word order, etc. I think this is probably the major factor accounting for more rapid progress of English or European language speakers with learning other European languages vs. learning Thai or Chinese. (Yes, it's true that European languages can appear diverse relative to each other, but that diversity is small relative to differences to other language groups.)

 

 

 

I already spoke solid Japanese and a smattering of Mandarin before I ever got to Thailand, and this helped along similar lines. For example, the pervasive use of classifiers for everything (i.e., puying song khon) is a feature of Japanese, so previous exposure to this sort of syntax meant it was not a hurdle when learning Thai. Also, Thai has certain similarities in terms of syntax with Chinese as well (word order, use of context to help distinguish tense, etc) so previous exposure to Chinese helped also (not to mention the concept of tones).

 

 

 

On a more esoteric level, language reflects what a culture finds important and how it thinks. A different European language is therefore much like an alternate vocabulary for expressing concepts and thought patterns that are already familiar to us, whereas our native thought patterns have to be "translated" into the Thai mold before we can hope to speak Thai natively.