BaldPlumber

In the UK we had a touch more sophistication for Sunday bath nights; we used matey

My thai lady friends call round because they want to learn some basic English and I,m happy to help them and no money is expected by both parties,however on many occasions a little french comes into play also.....

 

Silly woman.  She'd have more leverage if she asked earlier.  A lot more.

Bar soap? Pah, get with the times, I use dish washing liquid and do two jobs at once.

That's pretty much how Thais speak English unless they've got a lot of experience or at least had a decent tutor.

The difference seems to be that English speakers are a lot more tolerant of our language being abused and mangled than the Thais are - cue bewildered stare from a thai should you dare to get a vowel length wrong in a completely unambiguous sentence lol

Sentence tense seems to be largely dictated by the use of ja (จะ) meaning will and not to be confused with the female ja (จ้ะ) meaning yes. So, you could say Phom ja duurm bier - I will go and drink beer at some unspecified point in the future.

This differs from the blindingly obvious Phom duurm bier - I'm drinking beer, are you blind?

Similarly, past tense as denoted by the extensive use of "before" by Thais is usually expressed by using แล้ว - laow - already. Which you usually just add to the end of the sentence. Or by using mua gorn - before (เมื่อก่อน) at the beginning of the sentence.

So, Phom duurm bier laow - I've drinked beer already, sort of.

Mua gorm Phom duurm bier - before I drunk beer.

Completely agree that the use of the final particle in forms of negation, question or accusation sometimes/often make the sentence needlessly aggressive in English.

Edit: my transliteration is probably different from yours.

i do not know enough thai - i actually know nothing much thai at all - to get into a discussion with you guys.

this is about translation engines.

but, she seems to completely lack comprehension of i.e. plurals, tenses and causals. google translate does not understand that well. neither do i!

there appear to be no gender indicating articles in thai, so they translate badly.

she has a need to add ' ka' or 'mei?' into her conversation which usually translate into something like 'yes or no' ,thereby creating an atmosphere of challenge in her translated emails.

there appear to be only sisters and aunts in her family, no cousins or friends.

the list goes on...

 

and, yes, (off topic) i know, you will argue that this can easily be avoided by me learning thai? i do not want to!

when i entered high school i had the choice to learn latin - and than do what with it?

who on earth speaks thai - other than thais and you guys? i can't even order ice for my beer across the river in laos without being lectured that it is not 'nam kaeng' but 'nam gone'.

Haha, not met any whinging losers. Probably because it's usually me [emoji51]

http://www.suksapanpanit.com/index.php?route=product/search&search=มานะ มานี

Has anyone got any idea of any market in the Pattaya area that might sell second hand books like these?

I'm probably going to need quite a few and it seems crazy to buy them new if I can avoid it.

An old girlfriend of mine used to buy the second hand comic books at one of the Threpasit night market stalls, but haven't been able to find it recently.

Thanks

Comic books aimed at children are a good source of practice, and the language used is less formal - closer to spoken Thai.  There is a bit of a learning curve getting used to the typefaces used, though.

http://www.suksapanpanit.com/index.php?route=product/search&search=มานะ มานี

1. Pronouns follow nouns
2. Adjectives follow nouns
3. Personal pronouns very complex
4. Word omission when not strictly necessary
5. Non declining verbs
6. Plural / singular not necessary
7. Verb tenses mostly controlled by the use of จะ and แล้ว
8. Extensive use of classifiers, used infrequently in English
9. Sentence particles inc negation, softening and polite

To name a few, apart from that and the obvious vowel length and tones, nothing to separate the languages [emoji4]

How old is the miserable OP if he's been coming to Thailand for 20 years already? Presumably not a youngster anymore.

The best dictionary app I have found is Talking Thai–English–Thai Dictionary (iPhone/iPad version) or Talking Thai Eng Dictionary (Google Play version) by Paiboon Publishing, the company that publishes Thai for Beginners. Same app just different platforms.  It is not the cheapest app but it is the one I use the most. You can enter text in Thai or Romanized text, the words have spoken Thai versions (Central/BKK pronunciation), and it has a host of other features. 

If you're serious, then you're going to have to learn to read / write thai - at least a little.

The talking Thai-English-Thai dictionary by paiboon publishing is the best I've come across, but it's not a free app.

I'm using a beta version which includes a huge reference section that covers consonants, vowels, tones, classifiers etc. It also allows you to break down each and every single word to explain the sound and spelling.

Other stuff in the reference section are phrases for every day situations, ranging from domestic, shopping, restaurants and the very entertaining sexy talk section. It is massively comprehensive.

Three keyboards are included with the app, Thai, English and also a sounds like keyboard that gives you the ability to try and find thai words with transliterated English.

I believe the next release will also support the generation of flash cards that can be imported into separate apps.

This app is vastly superior to anything else I've seen. The developers are accessible and respond very quicky to queries.

It's worth every penny of the, from memory, £15 I paid for it.

Very strongly recommended.

Edit: also look at the thai fun easy learn app. It will, in theory, teach you 6000 thai words - the first 1000 are free! It's more of a reading and writing app, so you need to know the thai consonants and vowels before you can use it effectively, but pretty good.

 

https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/countries/member-countries/hungary_en

 

Wouldn't want to stop that money rolling in now, would we.

 

That was an important contribution.

 

Are you suggesting Thai men are better pool players than their female counterparts?  

 

I'm not sure about this. I've met several bargirls who were bloody good and hard to beat. 

No, some of the thai ladies are extremely good potters and I've met some very good lady players.

What I meant was that the ladies tend to play less tactically than the men. This is especially true when playing international one shot as opposed to the usual thai two shot game.

In my experience anyway, but I'm no expert myself [emoji3]

Is Thailand incapable of passing new laws that don't include a possible jail term?

I'm amazed that there are people still wandering around. I think I'm probably up for a couple of years behind bars most days of the week here.

3 - some of them are very good pool players whereas most Thai ladies lack a tactical approach to the game.

(Misses point completely)

I really wonder about the sanity of people who think that soi buakhao is dangerous to walk down.

Walk opposite the direction of traffic, keep to the right hand side of the road as much as possible and you'll be fine.

Walked and ridden that soi hundreds of times and, unbelievably, still alive to tell the tale.

I believe that TV should start to offer discounted grips to many of its members.

Found a much better version of Manee which I've downloaded.

Renders far better than the previous version I had.

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Hi

In currently learning to read and write thai.

No real problems so far with either vowels or consonants but my problem is that I'm so slow in reading that I'm hardly moving.

My problem is that I'm reading the words and not seeing them as I do in English. So, I'm having to mentally articulate each and every word, which is exhausting.

I think I need some simple children's books to practise with.

I've tried the มานี books, well the first one, but I don't have a printer and find it difficult to read via a PDF reader. If this series was still available then it would be ideal for learning; previously I didn't know that field crabs existed!

So, has anyone got any recommendations and leads to where I can buy these books?

Many thanks

I remember some blowhard on here a while ago, boasting that with his less than 100 word vocabulary he could instruct non English speaking Thais in exactly how he wanted his house built.

I wonder how that worked out for him.

Oddly, he was angrily demanding if I knew the thai word for wheel. I could never work out whether he thought that was a particularity esoteric word or whether it was vital for the building of his (imaginary) house.

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20° cooler?

So, that would make the ambient temperature about 13°?

Does your friends umbrella have magical qualities?

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If you learn to read and write thai at the same time as learning to speak thai it might be easier for you since you will learn, in theory, the correct tone and vowel length.

Easier said than done though.

Since starting to learn to read thai, I've realised that I was mangling many, many words that I thought I was spot on at pronouncing

Four stages of learning:-

1. Unconsciously incompetent. You literally don't know enough to know how little you know. Characterised by those who blithely say I know more than I let on or something equally ludicrous.

2. Consciously incompetent. The stage you're at now, as am I.

3. Unconsciously competent. Being able to do it but still believing you're crap. Note that asking a girl in a bar whether she wants a drink does not count.

4. Consciously competent. A state of nirvana they very few achieve lol.

Nowhere near you, but I took my wave to a little non franchised shop where they advertised a full service.

So, they did the following

New chain
New sprockets, front and rear
New pads, new shoes
New air filter
New spark plug
Oil

About 1300 baht

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Good grief that's awful. Hope the poor lady recovers, but it certainly doesn't sound good.