irishpolyglot

Whoops! My bad!! I got my forums mixed up; I always write to a few language/travel forums to encourage more interested commenters to the site. Seems, I confused LPTT with one of the other ones I was on.

My apologies to Thorntree for the unwarranted negativity... about negativity

@Leah - everyone in this forum has been extremely helpful, and most comments on my site are positive

However, I asked for advice on Lonely Planet's thorntree forum and got a wave of people tell me how arrogant I am. As well as that, I get discouraging reminder comments occassionally on the site and quite a few e-mails through my contact-me form. Obviously, never from Thais, just from farangs who themselves put years into learning who think everyone else should suffer the same or it isn't fair...

Glad you liked my suggestion for learning alphabetical order!

@handydog Sorry mate; I haven't learned any Welsh!! I'll be writing a few posts about Irish Gaelic just after I finish this Thai mission. Irish and Welsh are really different, but since they are in the same family, maybe something I'd say about Irish might help a wee bit!

In terms of my progress, I think I said everything pretty much on the site; I've only put a few hours into just pure reading since I was intentionally being a tourist in the south. I'm moving up to Chiang Mai tomorrow and will attempt to speak as much as possible (phrase-book in hand), and we'll see how much I can learn to converse in my final 4 weeks!

Thanks again for all the positivity here!!

@nick I'm not working "in Thailand". My VAT number is Irish, my bank is Irish, my clients are European, my official address is in Ireland. I am working in Europe, but "doing it" here. I'm in Thailand as a tourist, plain and simple, I'm not employed here or working as a freelance/entrepreneur based in Thailand or with Thai clients/business. I don't take work away from Thais or illegally process any money in Thailand. From an economic point of view, there is just a pure inflow of money from my ATM or credit card to the Thai economy, just like with all other tourists.

Officially, I don't see what rule I'm breaking

Anyway, I'm not the only location independent worker in Thailand...

Thanks David!! I like your philosophy I've seen Stuart Ray Jay's videos and I'm quite impressed! However, I'm aiming to shatter that bell curve and let "mere mortals" know that they too can find shortcuts to learning languages without having to give up

"so many quirks and idiomatic expressions"

EVERY language has this. Open endedness and vagueness in languages is also something I've come across before. I'm sorry but even if these are hard, they are still not unique to Thai. That's part of the difficulty in learning any language, even if the workload is greater in Thai due to the greater number of differences (both cultural and linguistic), I still don't see why the same learning techniques can't be applied.

Note that I'm not aiming for perfect "correct interpretation" in 8 weeks. I don't ever aim for perfection - I will make mistakes and I'm cool with that. I don't think that the impossibility of (anyone) to learn a language perfectly should hold us back from giving a pretty dam_n good stab at doing it well

I've already come across some words that are untranslatable, but seeing them in context a few times helps fine for "getting" them. Once again plenty of languages have plenty of quirks. There will be lots of things I will never understand in Thai, even if I decided to live here. That's not something I'm trying to disprove. Everything you mentioned is something to concern people aiming for professional level Thai. This is the very problem I have with the academic approach (perfectionism), which contrasts with how I've learned other languages.

Looking forward to hearing the opinions of the other regulars!

I noticed a bit of traffic coming to my site from this page. Glad to see my project has sparked some interest! I also found some great resources in these forums; I wasn't aware of this site before so thanks for the link love

To answer some questions I see above:

* I don't necessarily have "a method" to learn Thai in 8 weeks. This is an experiment to see if my current method that works well with European languages, can be adapted and if I can find a fast and efficient way of learning Thai writing and tones, which as far as I can tell are the major difference (everything else, including learning vocabulary [and even correct use of stress as mentioned above], being the same or actually easier than in European languages, especially grammar). If my experiment is a success I'll blog about what my method is for others who wish to learn Thai quickly.

* "his goal is very easy to achieve... it would be astonishing if he failed". To the best of my knowledge, very few other farangs learn Thai quickly. If they do, they'd be dismissed as being a "language genius". I've already met expats living here for years who don't have more than the basics. I think my goal is do-able, but definitely not easy. You seem to have misunderstood what I'm aiming for:

* I plan to be able to spontaneously read aloud ANY TEXT (that I've never seen before, e.g. newspaper article) by the end of the 8 weeks (in such a way that it's understood well) and have some level of conversation (approximately lower intermediate). I'm not aiming for parrot-level with just a store of words and phrases I can repeat; I want to actually communicate. This will not be easy, but I am confident that I have a good chance. My success will have much more to do with efficient study and the application method rather than intelligence and "natural ability". (I failed languages in school; this is a recent passion for me)

@Rikker Thanks, it was nice meeting you too! I won't be able to tell you stories of my travels these months through Thai, but I'm hoping you'll be pleased with my "ok" level nonetheless come first week of March when I'm back in Bangkok

So far, I can already read aloud most signs without relying on romanisation. I've put in a total of about 5 hours study since I got here (have to unfortunately work full time), but that's more than enough to apply good memory techniques to all symbols and test yourself reading random texts. I'll go into detail on that in a post tonight/tomorrow.

Hope you enjoy the blog and leave comments. Thanks again for mentioning the mission here Leah!