Skeetjones

[Long and boring.]

I first visited Thailand in 1977 about 2/3 of the way through an around-the-world trip. I was here a month and didn't bother to learn much Thai outside of the few phrases in Tony Wheeler's "Southeast Asia On A Shoestring".

I came back to Thailand in the 1980's when a friend of mine was construction manager for a hotel in Phuket. He and his wife lived in a nice big house off Soi Ngam Dupli. They had a maid who only spoke Thai, so I picked up a few phrases watching them interact with her.

I continued to visit Thailand at least once a year after that, mostly to dive in the Similans but also to travel a bit. Again, I never bothered to pick up more than simple traveler's Thai.

In 1996 I decided that knowing more Thai would be useful in my travels so I bought Becker's "Thai for Beginners" book and cassette tapes. My office had just moved, so my five minute commute had turned in to half an hour. I listened to the tapes for an hour a day: a half hour in and a half hour out. I didn't want to learn to read at that time, so I pretty much skipped the sections of the book on the alphabet, consonant classes, etc. Eventually I learned to understand and (I thought) say many useful phrases.

So, it was quite a shock to find on my next visit to Thailand that pretty much nothing that I learned was of much use. Since most of my visits were short and much of my time was spent on dive boats with other Westerners I didn't really have much time to practice.

By the early 2000's (awkward, isn't it?) I was considering retiring in Thailand, so I bought the Rosetta Stone Thai CD. At first, Rosetta Stone is extremely daunting. There's no studying, no memorizing, no reference book. You just sit at the computer screen and try and match spoken and/or written words with pictures. It seems impossibly difficult at first, but if you buy in to their immersion methodology it eventually begins to work. If you keep at it long enough you will learn the language. Unfortunately, the language you will learn is not actual Thai, but "Rosetta Stone Thai", a language spoken nowhere except by people who have learned their Thai from Rosetta Stone. (My wife finds it to be hilarious and will occasionally break into a decent imitation of Rosetta Stone Thai just for the fun of it.)

On the plus side, if you use Rosetta Stone right you will learn to read (sort of). And, you will learn how to read (sort of) without learning the Thai alphabet, consonant classes or tone marks. This was a pleasant surprise. I hadn't set out to learn to read, but after months with Rosetta Stone my brain somehow worked out the symbols and I found I could "read" (note the quote marks) words that I hadn't learned from Rosetta Stone.

At that point I decided I ought to learn the alphabet so I bought a Gor Gai book. I learned one letter per day. I practiced writing each letter I learned; filling up the designated spaces in the Gor Gai book. I also wrote out all the letters I'd learned up to that point ten times in a little notebook I kept for the purpose. Once I'd learned a new letter I'd put that letter's sticker on my computer monitor bezel. Sadly, I never got past ฏ. Learning an additional letter somehow caused an overload in my brain and I'd simply forget one or more of the letters I'd already learned. To this date my computer monitor has only 15 stickers on it.

I retired in 2005 and moved to Thailand. It was a huge shock to me that I couldn't understand anything that anyone said. It was (and it remains) an unintelligible buzz. What happened to those hundreds of hours of study? Why couldn't I pick out any familiar words? What had gone wrong?

Even worse, why couldn't anyone understand what I was saying? Even something as simple as น้ำเปล่า was met with furrowed brows and confused looks. Was my pronunciation really that bad? Yes, it was, and it still is.

Undaunted, I charged on. I had lost Becker's book, so I bought it again and spent many hours with it. I bought primary school books and read them out loud. I read "Manee and Friends" online. I bought the AUA Reading course book (and immediately abandoned it because of its bizarre transcription system). I went through "Speaking Thai" (book and tape) from Asia Books. I bought Becker's "Improving Your Thai Pronunciation" CD and struggled with it for hours. (ใครขายไข่ไก่ - I'm sorry, but I just can't hear the difference.) I learned how to look up words in a printed dictionary.

This brings us up to about 2008 at which point I decided that I was never going to be able to speak Thai and that I should stop wasting money and time on language learning. I continued to practice reading everything I could get my hands on. I really like being able to read road signs, product labels, menus, etc. (It always baffles the Thai waitresses when I can read the menu but have to point at the item I want because if I say it out load I'm certain to be misunderstood.)

Late last year I heard about HighSpeedThai from a post on this forum. I broke my no-more-Thai-language-books rule and bought it. If I were 30 years younger, had a decent ear and wasn't such a cretin, this would be a great course. But, your success at HighSpeedThai depends on your ability to hear and reproduce the tones and on your ability to memorize large amounts of data: letters, consonant classes, tone rules, etc. I can do none of the above, so this effort was yet another ignominious failure.

Why haven't I taken a course or hired a tutor? Well, I live in Korat and there are no courses. And, finding a tutor is next to impossible. I found one online who wants 3000 (yes, three thousand) baht per hour. I have to wonder what sort of Thai she's teaching. I found another who will teach you online using Skype, but she wants 500 baht per hour. That's more than I'm willing and able to pay.

Now it's time for me to make amends. I've lived in this neighborhood for five years. Many of the people with whom I have regular contact have the mistaken impression that I can speak Thai. They hear me say a few things and they figure that since I've lived here a while I must be fluent by now. For example, there's a small minimart where I buy gin. The only two sentences I've ever said to that lady in Thai are, "I want a bottle of Gilby's gin." and "You don't need to put it in a bag." That's it. But, every time I go in there she's on about "ฝรั่งพูดไทยได้ดี", and then she babbles on with zero comprehension by me. I need to let these people know that I can't speak Thai so that they don't waste their time trying to converse with me.

Finally, I need to change tactics. Instead of trying to learn Thai I need to work out strategies for living here without being able to speak. Which reminds me, I should have paid more attention to PeaceBlondie six or seven years ago. He knew back then that an old fart like me would never be able to speak Thai.

That's all folks.

Aye, if you want to learn Thai you just need to keep talking with Thai people so you can get the hang of how a Thai person talks, because programs will usually break the word down into tones and all that, but when you hear it in normal conversation it will throw you off, just brush off the embarrassment, and laugh with them , don't take offense it's just fun.

That is how my mom is fluent in English now, she just kept talking and talking and not Being shy.

I do give you respect for being able to read a good amount.

You'll get there

Wow. I'm getting a divorce soon too, I hope that is not my fate. But I bet she is mad.

My thing is : when you are in Thailand you have to deal with their rules. People don't need to make a fuss and cry about it, just keep it moving.

I'm not racist, but when was going to school on sukhumvit road I would just look and wonder <deleted> are all these buk dum and Arabs doing on this block? It don't make not any type of sense to me why a black person would be doing in Thailand unless it was for school or business.

My point is that to me, Thailand is not a country where more than one race is born there, so if they choose to believe and think all blacks are bad and sometimes they do see them commiting crimes, then they have a right to stereo type and choose who they serve.

Get abunch of blacks together and they feel the same way. It's not a one way street.

Drop a Thai or white or Indian, to Kingston jamacia, or some place in Africa, or drop a white guy off in, Saudi Arabia, it could easily be the exzact same for the Thai/white/black guy to get discrimitated.