Is it worth learning Thai

[jdlancaster]

28 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

Thais don't learn speaking or writing by tone rules.

They memorise each entire word, it's more of a pictorial language.

It was kinda the same for me. I learned the rules but it was more of a pain in the ass than just remembering the word. I find most of my writing is just texting anyways so spelling doesn't matter and autocorrect does half the work for me.

[dotpoom]

I suppose the answer would be "Yes"...if you can handle understanding what they (Thai ladies) are saying about you. 

[rumak]

2 hours ago, ThaiBunny said:

Your intellectual milieu?

i also find country people much nicer and more enjoyable than people who try to imply that they are

superior by making jokes about what group others might enjoy interacting with.  

 

 

[rwill]

It's nice to be able to read well enough for menus and such.  Even when they have both English and Thai the English is sometimes gibberish.

Example:  (In Thai it says pickled crab)

[TKDfella]

1 hour ago, BritManToo said:

I haven't moved to Thailand, I only have a 90 day VISA.

I was in Saigon for a week last month, should I have learned Vietnamese?

I was in Phnom Penh for a week last month, should I have learned Khmer?

 

Sure if I had citizenship, I'd probably learn the language, but not under current conditions in Thailand.

You're just wasting your time.

Your reply seems a little sarcastic...is it meant to be? I was replying to the OP which inferred long term and the benefits, if any, of learning Thai. Of course my reply to the OP obviously did not include short term stays. Don't know why you bothered to quote me. ????

[Chongalulu]

My Thai is very basic (learning in your 60s is of a different order),so a few phrases get me by in restaurants etc but rely on the wife when it comes to banks,immigration etc. On the occasion where I’ve tried to indulge in a bit of conversation,especially with Thai women,they invariably say "You have Thai wife..?" BUSTED!

[uhuh]

58 minutes ago, jdlancaster said:

 

4. You make friends and have friends of friends that can be helpful and influential... Such as a friend that is an Immigration Officer at BKK, can be helpful when you have loads of visa exempt stamps in your passport.

 

You can be a part of the community and your place among it can be more than random drunk pensioner or English teacher. 

Not in my experience. 

Not in the experience of a friend who speaks Thai very well and tried for years to be integrated in Bangkok and have Thai friends.

 

But yes, in the experience of a friend whose Thai is not really very good but who behaves in many ways the way Thais behave (very status conscious even he really is a nobody, always show off, almost a con man, and always prepared to ditch his friends). It is not the language that helped him,  it is his personality. 

[GreasyFingers]

1 hour ago, jdlancaster said:

I'm really surprised at all the people saying no. It's not that difficult if you focus. For reference, I speak/read at an Interagency Language Roundtable level 3. My writing isn't that great though. You also need cultural competency, it's not enough to just know the words.

All of your points are valid but my wife has never tried to help me learn the language (she probably prefers to laugh at me when I try). Even if she did I would have to learn central Thai, Loas Thai and Issan Thai as she uses all of them.

 

There are advantages in not learning:

1. my wife's English is limited so she cannot nag me

2. I do not have to listen to the family and village gossip

3. I do not have to try to converse with 2 or 3 drunks at the same time there is music blaring in the background.

 

I have survived living in a village for 4 years with the lack of Thai not causing too many problems. The locals are willing to help if I am in a shop alone and always end up with what I want.

[mlkik]

28 minutes ago, rwill said:

It's nice to be able to read well enough for menus and such.  Even when they have both English and Thai the English is sometimes gibberish.

Example:  (In Thai it says pickled crab)

Fresh horse crap 5555

[Bogbrush]

Back in the day I attended evening classes to learn Afrikaans; the teacher (ondervyser) told me that one of his greatest frustrations was to get adults to speak - for the first few weeks they enter what he called the ‘silent period’ because adults won’t talk until they’re 100% certain that what they are about to say is totally correct, whereas kids will blurt out “me want sweeties” with no embarrassment. I find this trait applies to me with Thai - and maybe to a lot of others as well...

[TheHangingJudge]

I remember a few years ago when I was staying at a village in Isan for new year celebrations ,none of the dozen or so guys spoke English but after a few whiskies eight or nine were talking reasonably well English.

The problem was one of shyness but after that was overcome we had a great night.

[BritManToo]

42 minutes ago, TKDfella said:

Your reply seems a little sarcastic...is it meant to be? I was replying to the OP which inferred long term and the benefits, if any, of learning Thai. Of course my reply to the OP obviously did not include short term stays. Don't know why you bothered to quote me. ????

Every foreigner is here as a short-term stay, it will say so in your passport.

[seancbk]

23 hours ago, vinniekintana said:

Yes...if you plan to live here long term

The benefits too numerous to mention and the only downside is the difficulty of the language

 

I know several old codgers who don't speak a word of thai after many years here.

How they (mis)communicate is a mystery to me.

 

 

I've seen many old codgers here who can't spell in English and met a fair few who don't even speak English well, with their horrible accents.  I'm not surprised they don't do well with Thai.   

[upu2]

Definitely

[SEtonal]

1 hour ago, jdlancaster said:

I'm really surprised at all the people saying no. It's not that difficult if you focus. For reference, I speak/read at an Interagency Language Roundtable level 3. My writing isn't that great though.

How did you learn Thai?  Did you learn Thai via the United States' Foreign Service Institute or Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center?

[LawrenceN]

23 hours ago, Peterw42 said:

One thing I dont fully understand is when people suggest learning to read Thai, as you will be able to speak Thai.

I can read Indonesian, every single word, because its the same alphabet. I still cant speak or understand Indonesian.

 

I know a few Thai characters and can phonetically sound out some basic words. Unless its the Thai word for apple and a picture of an apple next to it, I have no idea what the word I am reading means.

Yeah, see there's this thing called a dictionary. Were you expecting the words to jump off the page and explain themselves? You have to make the effort to open your dictionary, app, or website. It's not just memorization. When you see the same word on a sign in public four times this week, you start to think, "That's quite common. I need to know that one." Then it sticks, because you had a need for it, context in your daily life.

Try thai-language.com

[wilailuk]

I won´t bother to learn anymore, people are just too stupid to understand even "zip baht" "dongbai" etc. - so I just gave up.. It´s like thai people enter the "zombie zone" when they hear farang talking thai..

[LawrenceN]

47 minutes ago, Bogbrush said:

Back in the day I attended evening classes to learn Afrikaans; the teacher (ondervyser) told me that one of his greatest frustrations was to get adults to speak - for the first few weeks they enter what he called the ‘silent period’ because adults won’t talk until they’re 100% certain that what they are about to say is totally correct, whereas kids will blurt out “me want sweeties” with no embarrassment. I find this trait applies to me with Thai - and maybe to a lot of others as well...

What trait? "Wanting sweeties"? That's why lots of guys came to Thailand to begin with. ????

[LawrenceN]

2 hours ago, Bang Bang said:

Khob khun, krub, BritManToo. If this works I shall owe you a great debt of gratitude.

Are you Catholic? If it works, you should be nominated for sainthood, because it will be a miracle.

[nausea]

Interesting question. Obviously, it's worth learning survival Thai, spoken or written, but beyond that I don't know. The time you spend learning Thai could be spent on other areas - French, Latin, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Spanish, or just improving your English. Are there great works of Thai literature? Am I missing something integral to Thai society by not being fluent. What I note is that people fluent in Thai get no great advantage; in fact, being ignorant is often better; you don't hear the insults. What I also note is that guys noted for being fluent, i.e. Stickman, go home. I love the Thai language, it's pretty basic - nam kaeng (hard water). 

[wilailuk]

@nausea: Agree.. funny you mention Stickman, he spoke fluently, but never used it and def. not in front of a policeman! He played the dumb tourist, far less problems, much better.. 

[GinBoy2]

We've been around this a few times.

 

I already spoke Mandarin, so already had my head around tonal languages, and I speak several languages anyway.

I also picked up Isaan Lao, which is pervasive everywhere from Bangkok North

 

Did it help?

 

Well obviously it made things easier, especially after I got to grips with reading, from shopping to just reading a newspaper

 

But then you run into all the regional issues. Lao as a spoken language they transliterate with Thai characters. You can't buy a dictionary for that!

 

Did it help me integrate into society? 

 

I'm a little less sure about that. If we went out together and I spoke either Lao or Thai, we'd have the weird situation where the person I was speaking to would turn away from me and talk to my wife!

 

I saw this video, it's about Japan, but I think it sums up my experiences in Thailand perfectly.

 

So you decide if its worth taking the time to learn.

 

 

[Antonymous]

After studying Thai for a couple of months with the use of a Linguaphone before my first visit to LOS, I discovered to my dismay that Thai people didn’t actually speak in the way that I had learned. In everyday speech they used different vocabulary, phrases and pronunciation. I was put off by that early experience.

 

As a company owner in Thailand I quickly found that leaving Thai language communication to my bilingual senior managers had many distinct advantages for me when interacting with other staff, suppliers and particularly with any government officials. My managers also convinced me that helping them to become more fluent in English would be a far better use of my time than my learning to speak Thai! Thirty years on I have to agree that they were right.

 

If you live here for any length of time I’d say that it is hugely beneficial to have a Thai personal assistant who can communicate with you very well in your native language, whether that PA is your employee, close friend, GF or wife. And so long as you have such an asset, you really don’t need to speak, read or write Thai yourself, beyond mastering a small vocabulary and a few oft used phrases that suit your particular circumstances. But be sure to learn those choice words from an educated Thai and not from bargirls (or Linguaphones) if you want to be understood and respected.

[BritManToo]

4 hours ago, Bang Bang said:

Jeez, other than the little thing that the 60,000,000 people around you speak Thai and little English, it does help to be able to get the point across in the supermarket/pharmacy/bank/taxi/...

I think you'll find 20,000,000 are speaking Laos, and 20,000,000 are speaking other languages (than Thai).

Only a third of the Thai population converse in Thai.

 

Not that I've ever been forced to speak to anyone in the supermarket/pharmacy/bank/taxi .......

My smartphone has photos of everything I need and can't find on the shelf myself, and I trust google maps more than the taxi driver.

[DaRoadrunner]

2 hours ago, jdlancaster said:

4. You make friends and have friends of friends that can be helpful and influential... Such as a friend that is an Immigration Officer at BKK, can be helpful when you have loads of visa exempt stamps in your passport.

Not sure I'd want an IO as friend, but I am curious how you got the visa exempt stamps?

[Jane Dough]

On 5/11/2019 at 4:39 PM, simon43 said:

Being able to write Thai is a useful skill for me that meets a particular need.  When I teach English to young Thai children, they often have zero skills in reading English letters and phonics, and are very shy. But they are old enough (8 years+) to be able to read Thai script.

 

That being the case, I write the English word using Thai script, so that they are able to correctly pronounce the English word.

 

Eg - for the English word 'get', I might write 'เก็ด'

 

Sometimes, it can be tricky trying to think of the best Thai letters to use when reating the English word ????

How would you write the English word "yet", incidentally?

 

Rooster

[PerkinsCuthbert]

3 minutes ago, Jane Dough said:

How would you write the English word "yet", incidentally?

 

Rooster

I know where you're going with this, Rooster, so I will answer with "แย๊ต", which has no meaning in Thai.

[rumak]

2 hours ago, jdlancaster said:

It was kinda the same for me. I learned the rules but it was more of a pain in the ass than just remembering the word. I find most of my writing is just texting anyways so spelling doesn't matter and autocorrect does half the work for me.

any language is best learned just by imitation and repetition.  I never learned the "rules".   Just learned vocabulary little by little and after hearing  mai dai  or  mai pen rai  a hundred times my brain just memorized it ......same way children do .  Like anything, its easier for those who are interested in learning and communicating.   

[PerkinsCuthbert]

I went to the Thai language department of the old AUA on Rajadamri, thirty-odd years ago, full-time for six months. Learning Thai became first a habit, then a hobby, to the extent that it's probably the single most useful tool in my notional Thai survival kit, and even now I enjoy adding words and trying them out in sentences on unsuspecting Thais, the poor dears.

[TKDfella]

1 hour ago, BritManToo said:

Every foreigner is here as a short-term stay, it will say so in your passport.

Not what it says in passport. Won't bother with you again as you are probably trolling.