irishpolyglot

So many confused people here...

I didn't start this thread, so I never claimed to "learn Thai in 8 weeks" as the title suggests. I was always dipping my toes in the language and was very clear from the beginning that I just wanted to get a basic grasp of reading and speaking. I called it "read and speak in 8 weeks" as a playful joke on what people count as speaking a language nowadays and I was actually on holiday in Thailand. I never promised anything, because this was always an EXPERIMENT for me. I didn't reach my target of reading aloud to a native, but I achieved everything else that I had initially stated on my blog. If you think that haggling prices with some English "no no" thrown in, ordering food and introducing the video like I did doesn't count as "basic Thai" then you are deluded.

The targets were modest because I was TAKING A BREAK from immersion. This was never a "fluent in 3 months" experiment and people who think I am exaggerating my claims to what I achieved have probably never read the blog itself where I was clear from the start about my goals.

Being public about language learning progress is something that I do to help relate to others going through the same struggle, but the comments I got here for being public about my 15-20 hours of work on Thai have been unnecessarily vicious.

I had mentioned somewhere in this forum that I "would like" to have done more, but I was working 65 hours a week for my last 3 weeks straight due to financial problems so I had to focus on that. If any of you have had serious financial problems, then you would understand the pressure I was under and the negativity from this forum certainly didn't help.

I don't get why everyone here is being so negative; I was a little ambitious with what I wanted to achieve, but am still very proud with the results. That video isn't the result of 8 weeks of work, I learned how to speak like that in ONE DAY. Before that video I couldn't speak any Thai at all. Maybe that progress is not good enough for you, but frankly I don't care. I shared my progress with you for some advice and support. Criticism is fine, but this thread has turned into nothing less than ridiculous. So many responses here show that you don't have the slightest clue what I was even aiming for in the mission. Not fluency in Thai, but basic familiarity with the feel of an Asian language. I succeeded in that as I had planned. When I try again with full immersion rather than 15-20 hours over 8 weeks then I'll achieve much more, just like anyone else truly committed would.

Despite any shortcomings of what I tried to achieve, I've received dozens of e-mails from people saying that I've inspired them to focus better on their Thai and attempt to make fast progress using some of my tips on mentality and immersion. I'm trying to spread a positive message that you can indeed achieve a lot in a language if you apply yourself. I didn't fully apply myself this time, but despite that lots of people have changed their approach and started speaking. The nastiness of this thread is doing nothing to help anyone.

Please let this thread just die, all that it's producing any more are pointless attacks. I didn't reach a fantastic level of Thai in 8 weeks, get over it.

"AND you never really gave any reasons why you didn't achieve anything close to your goals, which i believe were reading aloud well and lower intermediate conversation. That would be very helpful. I do understand that you've been successful in the past in other languages, so this must be a pain, but let's just hear what the difficulty was, other than time?"

Good point eljefe - Yes, there is more too it than just lack of time of course. I am packing right now and leaving Thailand this evening, so I'll write a summary of the travel and language-learning aspect of my Thai visit some time over the next few days. I hope that will help people see the mistakes I've made. I don't claim to have a perfect approach, and am always expanding on new ways to go about being able to speak a language. Being a teacher for several years and a recipient of failed academic language instruction, I consider certain methods as simply taking steps backwards. However there is some merit in the academic approach so you are right that a healthy combination of study and application is a great approach.

I've learned quite a lot in this short time period that will help me in later projects. Hopefully someone else may take something from my mistakes too; however, comments from others on this thread criticising my approach have almost never touched on the actual issues that prevented me from achieving so much more that I or anyone else really could do, even in just a few weeks.

My 2 month "break" is over and in later missions I will be very much extremely devoted to reaching my target, so the results will speak for themselves and I won't have to argue in circles with people, with no proof of the current language to convince them better. Sorry that my low level of Thai is far from impressive, but it's pretty much what I was aiming for from the start (other than not achieving the reading aloud to a native part as previously mentioned).

Early posts in this thread have been extremely helpful, so thanks to those of you willing to indulge in my experiment Even if I didn't show you anything you didn't know already, I hope you at least enjoyed seeing my attempts

@Joosesis

Thanks for your thoughts. Once again I have no idea where people are finding my claims to fluency in Thai. I'm sorry that my blog name has mislead people to what I was aiming for here! But I thought I was quite clear about the fact that my level of Thai IS DEFINITELY QUITE LOW. Sorry if something I said implied that I thought I'd be leaving here more Thai than the Thais themselves or something...

I think I deserve criticism more because I'm an argumentative Irishman, rather than for my learning method or claims

Retention is definitely an important issue. I will lose any Thai I've learned here quickly (as I have with my Czech for example) because I will not be actively working to maintain and improve it. I already do that for my 6 non-English languages and it's a lot of work, so I only add a new language to the mix when I will be devoted to it for life (which I haven't decided for Thai up to now). I discuss how I retain languages while living away from the country in which it is spoken (without paying anything) in this post. Here in Bangkok for example, I have been maintaining my French, Italian and Portuguese with natives.

However, most of what I say is geared towards people aiming to live in the country for a long period of time, so retention is not much of an issue for them if they are continually exposed to the language.

Sorry you feel that I'm arrogant. There's a fine line between arrogant and confident. The whole point is that I'm saying that anyone can do what I'm doing and trying to encourage them to try

irishpolyglot - I couldn't make out a lot but sounded good far better than me after a few months, sure it wouldn't take you long to be really good. You'll probbaly find a lot of people that speak thai protect it and think of themselves as something special and aloof from other non speakers which they just typecast as sex tourists.

One thing though... do not wai service staff like at the bts, even ironically it's not good

and I think she ripped you off on the watermelon it's usually 10 baht

Cheers

Thanks for that hiero - I really liked wai-ing, so I could be criticised for overdoing it. Thanks for the tip

Damnit, I'll never get that 5 Baht back again!!

@dvc Thanks for your thoughts! I don't claim to have a perfect accent; I just wanted a "perfect" starting point There is of course a long road ahead to speaking Thai well, and I definitely have plenty of work with tones ahead of me and agree that my accent is not good (I wasn't expecting it to be the first day I ever tried!)

Hopefully people see what I'm trying to say here that perfection is a good long term goal, but it's good to be content with speaking "OK" as long as people understand you, in the early stages.

In future attempts I will of course work hard to have good pronunciation and accents.

Glad your native friend could understand me; that was my purpose for STARTING to speak a language after all

@anchan42 Thanks so much So far, all natives that I've shown the video to have loved it. Obviously there are proud and arrogant non-natives too, but they will never be pleased no matter what you do!

@Softwater Hmm, funny how apparently everything I've done here can be referenced to a post you wrote... where's your post on someone speaking from the very first day that they tried, I missed that one?

So, you have outdone yourself this time! That was one hel_l of a rant. I've bitten my tongue on a lot of undeserved insults on this site (hidden behind condescending flowerly language), so I'm going to respond to your ridiculous comments, obviously not to convince you but hopefully to show others reading this thread the other point of view.

I have a lot of critiques to what I've heard so many times for the typical "academic/linguistic" arguments that you have repeated here. I'll be writing a whole article about that, so there's no need to go into here as it would be off topic. I'll never prove myself to you, and that's what I "don't care about", not the fact that I'm wrong about things in Thai. You have completely misunderstood the whole purpose of what I was aiming for in Thailand and your lack of faith in people's genuine interest in helping others is quite sad.

Your comments have unnecessary venom in them after patronisingly congratulating me on my effort to soften the blow:

"So we started some 2 months ago with a wild claim of 'fluent in 3 months'" - did you even read my blog or the introduction post to Thai, other than specifically to find points to quote and tear down? Clearly not. I never ever implied that I was aiming for that; I was very very clear about my goals. Fluent in 3 months is the name of the blog, get over it. It's what I do most of the time; I'm not going to change the domain name for 2 months. You have never discussed my thai visa on this site and you haven't heard me complain about that.

"I'm one of those 'academic, linguistic' type ESL teachers that you don't like" - I was an ESL for 4 years (& mathematics teacher for 5 years before that) and I will be discussing particularly how ESL teachers make excellent language learners. You make a lot of presumptions about the way I think... my criticism is about the traditional academic approach. Good ESL teachers think outside the box (using games with children, putting away the books and making adult students interact with one another etc.) and I don't categorise them as linguists. They are smart learners/teachers. The tired old approach is not smart.

"by any other means when it doesn't work" - sweeping statement that the active approach of actually speaking and trying interesting learning methods rather than hiding behind books "doesn't work" shows that you are having trouble thinking outside of your own approach. It's hypocritical - you say I'm crazy for saying my approach is the best one, and you say yours is the best one.

"life just gets in the way" IS an excuse. I was able to communicate in Thai when I saw past this. If someone continued to use this excuse they'll never achieve anything outside of their routine of doing nothing but learn and never using.

"teachers like me make such a big deal and say its all about repetition and remaining motivated" - I have found nothing you have said to be remotely motivating, other than the introduction statement to soften your upcoming criticism. However you are definitely king of repetition.

"People who sell the 'language learning is easy' line are not only talking bullshit, they are being profoundly unethical, causing far more harm to far more people in the long run than they are doing good in the short run with the ejaculatory and ephemeral 'confidence boost' they give with their vague motivational clichés." We'll never agree on this - people should speak soon, and confidence is CRUCIAL in speaking a language. You clearly don't wish to give people confidence boosts, so I would likely rate you as a poor teacher even if you know all of your rules inside out.

"a page that is also remarkable for having the word 'negativity' used 15 times." You actually counted that?? That is just SAD. Get a life will ya! How did you see that and miss the pretty clear goals of what I was aiming for in this mission? My posts usually have 1,500-2,000 words in them and discuss attitude a lot. Negative attitudes like yours are detrimental to progress, so it's something I bring up loads.

"I don't know what you're up to, but you're not up to anything that helps people who are serious about learning Thai." Wow - I'm glad that I'll be getting out of this forum discussion soon. You really do have your head in the clouds. I've had countless people tell me that they have started speaking Thai thanks to my encouragement. With you as their guide they would be locked in a loop of constant learning forever. I feel sorry for anyone that follows your advice. Just because you know some facts does not make you a good teacher. You seem to have an inability to see the human side of it. People NEED to feel good about their progress to be motivated to make more.

I've encouraged others to try. My mission is to stop English speakers from giving up on speaking other languages and I'm sorry that you can't see that. I can see how my claim to do what I did in a short time can be viewed as arrogant, but reading your comment I see that you are profoundly arrogant yourself and inflexible in your learning approach. You are a sad person and I feel disappointed that you will continue spreading the above statements in this forum, and teaching your inefficient approach of drilling rules and discouraging not-perfect speaking attempts. In your above comments you were being nasty in an indirect way. I'm not beating around the bush like you. Your future comments don't deserve a response.

@leah & @softwater You will notice that the blog already has a "donate" button, and I have occasionally had affiliate links to Amazon (I didn't for the last 2 months since it wouldn't have helped). Other than that there is currently NO advertising at all on the site (despite the 1000-5000 views a day, which I could make money from if I added any kind of ads, but I haven't) and I have made pretty much no money at all from the site since I started it. The end of each other mission I blogged about was never followed up by a sales pitch.

However, I think you will find that every blog in the world with a considerable follower base monetises on the traffic in some way. I'm not going to release just some e-book, but I will be adding paid optional extras to the site that I'll be advertising, while the content of helpful language hack posts will continue as it does now so most people can just ignore it if they so choose. I'm going to be open about that and am not apologising for it because (as I said), I've spent the last 3 weeks locked in my room because of a debt. I'm not out to make a million bucks, but if people like what I write then maybe I should have more time to write for them Being a full-time language-hacker is a goal of mine, and nobody will be surprised to see that I will act to make that happen. If you think it's immoral for someone to earn money for putting a lot of their time into a project then I'd be happy to move to your idealist world where money doesn't exist, and maybe you'll quit your job and teach English / whatever for free.

The purpose of this mission was not to build up to a sales. I've had language missions for the last 7 years, and I'm being public about it this time. Anything I mention on the site will be a collaborative project that quite a few language bloggers will be contributing to. The cynicism in this forum is dreadful! I'm sorry you can't see my genuine love for learning languages and see me as nothing more than a car salesman. Shame on you!

I'm still debating with myself whether I should link to thaivisa in my summary post on resources for learning Thai. Someone trying a similar approach to me but with less experience would get shot down quickly by some people here. There's being helpful, there's giving constructive criticism, and then there's being needlessly nasty like softwater has just been just to prove the other guy wrong.

@eljefe2 Since my look over Thai was superficial, there are clearly lots of parts that I've missed so feel free to tell me what you mean by Thai grammar being "harder" than a European language like French.

French has noun genders, irregular plurals, definite/indefinite articles, complicated rules for use of prepositions, multiple conjugations (depending on time being used) and a host of other things that don't exist at all in Thai. Expanding to other European languages like German or a Slavic one, you also have noun cases to deal with, which complicates matters a lot! There are so many examples and most of it doesn't exist in English either.

The impression I got was that, presuming you have mastered tones, reading, enunciation, vocabulary etc. Thai rules for words going together are way less complex than European languages. I'm interested to hear some examples of where this is not the case, however I am still sceptical that the list could be "harder" than any list I could give of any European language. Thai is indeed "harder" in other aspects. But would the work involved in learning Thai grammar differences actually be much greater than in mastering the equivalent in most European languages? From what I've been told by other learners, this is simply not true.

You can give me a list of differences if you like, but my argument is that the work involved may be considerably less compared to European languages.

I'm interested in discussing this as it's something I'll be mentioning in the summary post.

OK thanks for the comments everyone!

I suppose different people distinguish noise differently. If you can't hear what I'm saying in the restaurant for example (couldn't really have been any clearer...) then maybe your computer speakers aren't so good. As I said on the site, this isn't Rosetta Stone's recording studio! In the real world there's noise...

Please note that I also had to understand what was being said to me in noisy Bangkok streets and chaotic markets, and under pressure of being filmed and knowing that people from thaivisa.com would be nitpicking everything about the video. That definitely adds to nervousness that you would have anyway the first time you ever attempted to speak a language in your life!!!

@tombkk I won't be making that video. I leave tomorrow so I'll just say on the summary that proving that I could read any text aloud to Thais was the only part of the mission I definitely didn't complete. As far as I'm concerned, I was successful or mostly successful in the rest of what I had initially aimed for, and anyone else could do much better than me in less time if they were more committed.

@dvc Very convenient saying after the video (and after I said on the forum several times that I was going to film in Bangkok) that I could only really prove myself if I had done it elsewhere... So you think I only got one word right in the whole video?

You may be right in what you said, however most people I've talked to here say that in full sentences the context is much more clear and saying precisely the right tone (or enunciation?) isn't as crucial as when saying the word in isolation. Even Thais don't speak right some of the time...

On top of that my goal was never perfection. It was always reaching some level of practical Thai in a short time. This obsession with perfection is the only thing really holding other farangs in Bangkok back from doing exactly what I did in the video. It's not that impressive, but people living here for TWO or more years still can't do it!!! I'm hoping to convince some of them to try.

I had successful basic two-way conversations in Thai, so not having precisely the right enunciation, getting some tones wrong etc. isn't the point. The point is always communication. If I can communicate with them because of what I've learned or because Bangkok Thais are more flexible in understanding bad Thai, then I don't really care because the point was to speak it in Bangkok. Communication in Thai is happening, and that's all that matters

The video may or may not have been interesting.

I'm sorry to say that with such a lot of background noise I could not hear what you were saying, so have no idea how well you have done

Sorry about the noise, but the whole point was to do the video out in the open! I don't have an external mic to attach to my shirt I'm afraid!

However, I think it's quite an exaggeration to say you can't hear what I'm saying. There's no noise in half of the scenes and even when there is noise, I speak loudly. If you listen again you'll hear me fine

I could have done the video in a sound-proof room, but that would have defeated the purpose

OK everyone. Here it is!

http://www.fluentin3months.com/say-something/

Go easy on me

It wasn't an accusation, Benny, as you know full well; it was a rhetorical suggestion aimed at making you appreciate that replying to people's genuine questions is a far better way for us all to get along than trying to misdirect them with talk of 'negativity' and 'personal attack'.

Most of us on this forum are pretty experienced at recognising obfuscation - we've had a long training (see the pinned 'Best Thai Language School' thread if you want the evidence).

Best

Sw

Thanks SW. I didn't even know what obfuscation meant until you said it there and I looked it up

It's ironic but I've had so many more misunderstandings in English than I ever had in the last 7 years mostly not speaking it. Hopefully that partially explains my passion to try to convince as many people as possible in the world to stop speaking English and learn other languages

@eljefe2 Romance languages have helped me somewhat with pronunciation: the French "eu" sound and the rolled "r" in Spanish/Italian for example do way better than an English R. However other consonants that sound the same to the untrained ear are definitely a challenge.

Lack of time was a huge contributor, but there are a few others and I will state all of them on the blog (or here) once the project has ended, since this weekend still has lots in store for me!

The total hours of study would be closer to 15-20 than 50.

Thanks for your thoughts!

It's called a forum...if you just want happy clappy cheer-ers-on, it would've been best to stick to your blog where you can moderate out any reasonable demands for justification and clarification.

See that would be an example of a "negative" statement (as well as an unjustified accusation) The only comments I've ever moderated out of my site so far have been spam. I've clearly made you angry if you are resorting to personal character attacks. Is that what a forum is for?

@LivinLOS

Although the speak-pretty-well-in-two-months post is actually about last summer, what you copied is correct and I aim to do exactly what you quoted me as saying in the video this weekend, apart from the reading goal. I will decide after the video if I will go on and have that tested. If I don't I will clearly say that I didn't achieve the reading aspect at my desired level.

Sorry for implying you were making judgements; just that lately a few comments like Softwater's above have put me on the defensive in this forum... (your double question marks confused me; that's the second time one thread has had simple misunderstanding in the writing tone implied!)

Can't we all just get along?

Thanks dmax Please don't give up!! I'm certainly not "giving up", I'm going home for St. Patrick's day I'd have stopped this mission even if a greater time investment had produced a very impressive speaking result.

@LivinLOS

For my initial goals, please read the introduction post originally linked to. I'm here in Thailand to dip my toes in my first Asian language, and to get a good understanding of tones and the writing system of Thai. Anything else was just a bonus. I was hopeful of achieving more, but never claimed that that was the original purpose of being here, and I've been very open about the fact that I was not immersing myself in Thai and being a tourist.

I'm sorry if you feel that I haven't achieved anything, but my two posts on memory techniques for reading Thai letters and for shortcuts on the tone rules have gotten very positive feedback from other Thai learners and several people have thanked me for encouraging them through my general positive encouragement in other posts, to give their studies a second chance. For me this is a pretty good purpose for this mission.

My approach to learning languages is very unconventional, and it is based hugely on having confidence that the language isn't a monstrously difficult task, which I honestly believe from years of conversations with learners who have given up, that it is what holds the vast majority of people back from ever even trying. I was intimidated by ever even trying Asian languages myself until this trip, but that has changed now that I see from talking to a lot of learners that the issues people have are definitely the same confidence and negative-filter ones (anyone else care to give me a list of reasons why Thai is hard? I can't get enough of those )

This trip to Thailand was an investment for that confidence and basic understanding, not an attempt to reach intermediate conversational level. That was the "purpose" you asked about, and I've succeeded in it and will use that momentum to encourage others rather than winge about how hard Thai is The initial comments I said about generally getting discouragement on online forums come back to mind now; I really wish some people here could learn to focus on the positive...

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" - Winston Churchill

I'm looking forward to the video. Hopefully, it'll answer a lot of unanswered questions.

What unanswered questions? In the video I only plan on speaking some basic Thai for a minute or two in BKK streets, I won't be giving an hour long lecture about learning strategies

I'd imagine one question most people would have is just how far have you come in your 8 weeks?

A good test we give ESL learners is asking them to talk for 2 minutes on a topic of their choice - perhaps an introduction about themselves, their family and their work/hobbies/interests. Or you could talk for 2 minutes about your journeys around Thailand, or anything else you felt comfortable about in terms of vocab. They usually only have about 15 minutes to prep, but I think we can overlook that in your situation, so long as its not scripted and is spoken without prompts.

At pre-intermediate level you'd be expected to make a fair number of mistakes in pronunciation, word choice, syntax and fluency, but as you rightly say mistakes aren't the issue. If you can get the majority of your meaning across, I'd say you'd done something remarkable in 8 weeks.

I used to do the same process myself as an English teacher. Also, I've taken European proficiency diploma examinations in Spanish and French and from the oral sections I could think of many ways to prove various spoken levels.

However, speaking pre-intermediate Thai is not going to be the purpose of the video; just basic conversations in some extremely common situations: not usually so impressive, but something that a huge majority of farangs living here simply can't do. I was hoping to focus on speaking this month, however work hasn't given me the time (I am literally counting the seconds to 9pm tonight when I have to deliver this project; I haven't been out with friends more than 4 times in the last 3 weeks ), and I still don't have much more than basic pleasantries at a spoken level.

So I actually plan on making all of my progress in the hours before recording the video and have a very patient and good teacher to help me with that. The video will be emphasising how much you can do in an extremely short time, especially if you are confident and not obsessed with mistakes, and it will have another important message that I'm hoping will help people, by actually criticising the video itself.

As I said, the purpose is not to show off any progress that I've made. Nevertheless, I'm hoping that people here will be somewhat pleased with my pronunciation, use of tones, understanding responses and actual application in a real live conversation.

Sorry that I didn't make it to pre-intermediate, but I did very clearly say in my introduction to this this mission that the speaking part was not really the focus, even though I was hoping to reach pre-intermediate if possible. Hopefully any cynics that have been waiting to say "I told you so" that I wouldn't speak fluently (which I never claimed to be attempting), will see the purpose of what I was actually aiming for here, and take something positive from my final messages

I'm looking forward to the video. Hopefully, it'll answer a lot of unanswered questions.

What unanswered questions? In the video I only plan on speaking some basic Thai for a minute or two in BKK streets, I won't be giving an hour long lecture about learning strategies

Thanks for the responses everyone!!

@Parvis The boy thing was what irritated you?? Please read Kikenyoy's explanation. I was using it as an exclamation, sorry if lack of comma or exclamation mark made the meaning ambiguous. Frankly I find it ironic that you call me out on "difficulties in English comprehension" and you've clearly had that yourself with what I wrote... Let's just call a truce - I wasn't calling anyone boy!!! In Ireland we say boyo for that

@Rick Thanks for the defence! Just so you know, I wasn't floored by my first Asian language All difficulties I ran into are universal for all languages; lack of time commitment (due to unfortunately needing to pay off a debt and working double time as I mentioned), and drive to make the first step of speaking (out of laziness: I'm human! And my be-a-tourist side experiment of speaking English for once, went overboard). I honestly didn't find the concept of tones or the script frightening after approaching them with an upbeat attitude, even though many could argue that I'd know 0.01% of what tones/script really are, I'm hoping my posts about them show differently. I am actually leaving Thailand with a very confident attitude of my first Asian language from what I have seen, far from feeling deflated by the experience

@Thaiclub For my purposes there is no discussion of fluency here. I was never aiming for that in Thai. My blog is fluent-in-3-months because that is what I usually do, and my upcoming next mission starting late March will be an extremely high objective, as per usual, unlike my basic reading/speaking goals of Thai. Your test is definitely a great way to go about it. I can't promise that I'll test my reading, but I am all set for the video this weekend! (Uploading to site on Monday most likely, as long as I have something upload-worthy!)

The purpose of the video will not be to brag about any (parrot like) progress I've made in Thai; I'll have a different message that I'm hoping will help people.

I will of course summarise the mission and explain what I found hard and what I didn't, with advice for those attempting the same thing

Thanks again for the interesting discussion everyone, and sorry if I unintentionally offended anyone!!

I've been away. And now I'm confused.

Is Benny going to take Rikker's 'test' and read out loud an unseen passage, non-parrot fashion?

After I finally finish this monstrous work project that's kept me indoors for most of the last 3 weeks (incl. weekends), this weekend I'll attempt to make a video in Thai out in the streets communicating basically with others. After that I'll decide what tests I'll go through before leaving, if any. I'd mostly like to meet Rikker again for a friendly chat to be honest If I feel like I'm ready for such a test, I'll let ppl know. If not I'll say what I did and did not achieve in this mission.

The encouraging tone from this forum has been dampened somewhat in recent responses! Haven't you guys (mangkom & parvis) ever heard of ambition before? If you aim high and "only" get 80% of what you initially planned for, then that's still a pretty dam_n good achievement. Aim for the stars and land on the moon! Sorry guys, but I'm a happy Irish optimist, so you can't drag me down with your ego-bashes and dull comments nitpicking ways that 100% perfection isn't possible

Other people in this forum and comments on my website say that my advice has made an impact in their Thai studies. That's way more important than my own temporary language learning project, so I'm going to leave happy no matter what

@mangkorn Boy when you go off on a rant you really go for it

I agree, we should find this irish "polyglot" fellow and lynch him immediately and display his head on a pillar to warn others with such audacity

Thanks so much for that comment Toffeeman!! You applied the association technique I suggested perfectly! I love your colourful association for "to wear". Others who argue that this is too much work, would to well to note that making such illustrative examples comes very naturally very quickly after practice, and you only need to use the association a couple of times and then it's burnt into memory so you never slow down and just know the word immediately.

For learning the tones with words, rather than include them in an association, I try to learn simply the FIRST LETTER of the word (i.e. the Thai symbol). In most cases this is all you need since the rest (short or long vowel, ending consonant) is included in the pronunciation and makes it clear what tone it is if you are familiar with the rules. This would also help in actually reading and writing the word. Of course this changes if there is a tone mark (in which case your rise association would come in very useful!) For words starting with a silent ห, I'd add something representing that symbol into the association rather than the tone itself; building on my ability to read and write as well as say the word.

I'm very glad you see the point of my blog - I get frustrated when people just say "it's all well for YOU, but [excuse #1, excuse #2...] is MY situation." A positive attitude is free for everyone

I've only got just over a week left here - I still have one final somewhat useful achievement to make in Thai that I'll be focussing on over the weekend (been working double time since I got back to Bangkok unfortunately) and showing on the blog, but otherwise I have put in very little work into learning Thai (this stay was my break; I will be speaking very little English on extremely difficult full-immersion missions for most of this year), so I'm insistent that it isn't that bad if I can see what I've seen in nothing more than about 10-15 hours of cumulative work. The main thing I've achieved in this stay is gaining the confidence in seeing that Thai and, more generally, reading a strange script and getting a basic understanding of tones is not intimidating at all. Confidence is worth *thousands* of words of vocabulary.

As I said above, I unknowingly told a little girl (very crudely) that I wanted to have sex with her in Brazil... that was in front of her parents. I've had a huge amount of linguistic mix ups that would make you cringe if I listed them, and I could list a LOT!! I got arrested on one occasion, and nearly deported on another because of screwing up what I meant to say in serious formal situations. So I know "what's the worst that can happen" and look at casual chats with people in the street with very little seriousness because of it

Embarrassments are a necessary part of learning a language. The way I would deal with both of your situations would be to confront those people next time I see them and apologise sincerely for any offence I may have caused and explain what I was trying to say. I'd tell the waitress that instead of "no" I meant to say "absolutely, definitely positively yes" and maybe get a giggle or something - taking advantage of the situation. You never know if you don't try! I use the same approach with languages and meeting girls; I'm happy to get 50 no-s and flirt with a large number, just enjoying the conversations, rather than the goal being to meet the girl of my dreams on a particular night. This approach actually leads to more success than genuinely trying really hard. As I said, not aiming for perfection in most situations, actually yields much better results

Even if they didn't forgive you in your situations, it would clear the air somewhat and show that maybe they aren't worth wasting your time on if they hold grudges for so long. Relationships can be mended my friend, give it a try

You also have to embrace embarrassment in the same way as I suggested for language mistakes. Don't take yourself so seriously I'm sure there are cases when you have spoken Thai and been very proud of it; you should focus on that!

Just my two "satang"!

@Ratsima

Thanks for the compliments! However, I'd argue that outgoing-ness is a skill that can be learned like any other

When I started these language learning travels (still only speaking English) at 20, I was extremely shy and introvert and nothing like what you see in the videos. (I'd describe myself as nothing more than an awkward Maths nerd at that stage) .

I argue on my site that shyness can be overcome if you put your mind to it! I have made SO MANY MISTAKES in speaking foreign languages in the last 7 years that I literally don't care any more (to the point where I am no longer intimidated by any aspect of a language, as you can see in my retorts in this thread). It took time for it to sink in, but people don't stand around, point and guffaw at you for using the wrong conjugation/noun gender/tone

One thing I do is embrace mistakes and accept that what I'm saying WILL be wrong. I never aim for perfection, as this is always way too intimidating. I aim to say "something" and that's surprisingly easy, no matter what your level may be.

Next time you might speak Thai, have the goal of making 100 mistakes in as short a time as possible! It's a weird goal, but it gets you over the intimidating process when your goal may be to speak sentences with absolutely zero mistakes. I know it's hardly a quick fix, but please give it a try and let me know how it goes

@RickBradford Thanks for those answers! Interesting to hear that more technical words are polysyllabic; that would make sense why I haven't seen any since I'm only learning basic vocabulary.

@tod-daniels For your milk example, I'm sorry but that really is universal. All languages have expressions. Saying "Buona fortuna" in Italian for example (a word-for-word translation of "good luck") would not be received well at all, and the idiomatic "in bocca al lupo" (in the mouth of the wolf) is necessary. I remember jokingly say "I could just eat you up!!" when talking about a cute girl in Brazil, which is ok in English, but comer has pure sexual notations when not literally talking about eating in Portuguese. I was being very offensive without knowing it. Off the top of my head I could give you dozens of examples instantly in languages that I'm familiar with. Literal translations don't work in any language. Even similar words have subtle differences.

This is why I keep coming back with retorts; learning Thai is not necessarily harder than learning European languages. People always seem to feel that their task is the hardest one. Learning ANY language is hard, but if you look at with my "stick-to-it-iveness" attitude, it's doable and I have achieved fluency in other languages thanks to that attitude (and not thanks to natural talent). I still don't see why it wouldn't be as hard and as easy in Thai.

You are totally right that my current level of reading with next to zero comprehension is not actually that impressive or even useful. However, I wasn't aiming for that in this trip; just being able to "read" in my current superficial manner to prove that it isn't that hard. Learning vocabulary is pretty much the big gap I have with Thai and why I can't speak it, but I don't mind that for the purposes of this project. I'm still hoping people will appreciate that I've tried to focus on what's different in Thai. I would see the rest as just applying the same principles as in European languages.

Sorry if this sounds like I'm belittling Thai's difficulty, but I'm actually trying to encourage more people to speak the language by being consistent in saying how it isn't that bad. It makes me sad to see how many English speakers living permanently in Thailand have nothing more than a few words because of believing that it's just too hard to learn for them. If I can convince just a few of those people to try again with a different approach, I'd feel like I would have achieved something important, even if I didn't end up speaking Thai itself

Thanks for the continued discussion and especially for the encouragement, despite any disagreements! I really like the positive feedback (nearly) all of you have been giving here. Hopefully you all see where I'm coming from. You can keep telling me how hard aspects of Thai I don't know are, and I'll keep coming back unconvinced. I'm just that stubborn after hearing it all several times already for other languages

@anchan42 I'd definitely like to post a video of me speaking at least basic Thai with locals here in Bangkok, just before I leave. Hopefully it should work out! The video desi linked to is actually in English, I'm just discussing my interpretation of tones (2 weeks into the project)

@tombkk Thanks for the good luck wishes! Could you give me some examples of multi-syllable unique words in Thai? I really don't think it could compare with European languages - I mean Thai seems to prefer compound words like all the ones with ใจ (heart) for example that are absolutely unique words in European languages. Maybe most of the language doesn't do this, but a lot of vocabulary I've come across so far seems to be just single or double syllables or compound words.

I've only got just over 2 weeks left in the project. I'll share my conclusions on the blog of course. I have to warn people convinced that Thai is harder than European languages, that I'll be optimistic about the ease of future progress and generally positive about how I view Thai compared to how difficult I had perceived it to be before coming. This will involve some extrapolation as I won't have reached the stage of actually speaking it at an intermediate or higher level, but all news of what's ahead doesn't seem that daunting. I honestly think the hardest part is universal for all languages; not feeling embarrassed to make mistakes, keeping up progress, not getting intimidated by learning new ways of speaking or the amount of new vocabulary to learn etc. Just needs a bit of work and practice, and most importantly, a positive attitude

Hopefully the couple of articles I've written have shown people that there are shortcuts and other ways of looking at this "difficult" task

@NearestTheTee Up to this week, all of my work has been study and reading and not so much speaking (apart from basic pleasantries, which I always say in Thai), since speaking fluently was never the purpose of my visit (it was to investigate how hard it would be to read an Asian language and get an ok grip on tones). In future visits I will aim for fluency in a short number of months, now that I have seen for myself that there is no need to be intimidated by the differences between Asian and European languages.

I've only got just over 2 weeks left in Thailand, but I'll attempt to at least have some basic conversation for ordering food (reading the original Thai from menus, recognising things I like to order) and asking taxis how much to certain places etc., and of course understanding and getting the gist of responses. Hardly impressive, but I decided that this is all I wanted; I will be working a lot this month and am happy to socialise in English a little bit for once (normally, my approach is 100% linguistic immersion), since I won't be speaking any English for the rest of the year for upcoming language missions.

@tombkk "If you speak several romance languages it is easy to learn another, and if you speak several slavic languages it is easy to learn another." Yes, but learning Slavic languages from Romance languages also involves starting with next to no vocabulary. But this is totally doable. Going from any major linguistic family to another has this issue. I've also got Irish Gaelic which I can't think of any words as being the same in English.

With some efficient memory techniques, new vocabulary can be learned quickly. From what I can see, the difficulty level in learning new vocabulary is pretty much the same for Romance-Slavic and Romance-Asian languages. Thai has tones and unfamiliar vocabulary, whereas European languages have several genders, multi-syllabic words (correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that Thai tends to simply combine short words in a somewhat logical way) and more. Any list of reasons why Thai is hard, I could give you a similarly long list of reasons why Czech or Italian etc. is hard. I prefer to focus on the positive

@SiangDeeMahk Thanks for all of your silly smileys... but honestly I think you need a more open mind. Just because it took you years, doesn't mean the rest of us have to use the same inefficient and boring approach I discussed the method I used to both read without romanisation and to more efficiently apply Thai tone and reading rules. Yes, I did this in a few short hours. I don't see what the problem is.

You are so cynical, where did I say I was selling a course?? I'm sharing my language journey on my blog and sharing all of my progress and tips openly with people. I don't earn any money from the blog at the moment apart from people occasionally donating €3 to buy me an orange juice. I find it sad when I see people who throw around the word "impossible" as much as you do. Some of us don't live in that boring world

@tod-daniels Thanks so much for that PDF!!! It's bit a huge help in being able to get a hold of other fonts

OK, I got my answers! The fonts one was here: http://www.thai-language.com/ref/typographical-styles and is very useful.

The Chiang Mai differences are drastically wider than I had anticipated!! I really like this city... but I may have to move back to BKK and try to master the standard dialect before I come back here. It's such a pity, this is my kind of place... but I'm here to learn the language and I've already put all the work into tones and reading that would be applied quite differently here in the north.

BTW, I have 2 questions, maybe someone can help?

1. I think I'll stay in Chiang Mai for the next few weeks and focus on speaking here (currently looking for a flat). How is the dialect different here from standard central?

2. Could someone possibly point out a link to a non-standard-font alphabet? The skewed symbols are hard to read only because I don't have a way to compare them directly other than guessing similarities. For example "S" looks way more like ธ than ร to me, (which I was wrong about) so I do need a wee bit of help with this aspect

Thanks!