As I know nothing about you and how you learn, let me tell you how I did learn Thai, maybe it will be helpful. I had already been in-country a good while, as you are, and the trigger was the birth of my son and the amazing ablility of babies to learn literally dozens of words a day -- the danger was real that I would be locked out of his conversations with family and friends. So I had a very strong motivation. I then attacked the issue from two sides: I went to a language school with a very patient teacher, who had to correct my tonal mistakes saying words. This I did only once a week, for 30 minutes, because all the work around it I did myself: I compiled words from my daily usage from a romanized dictionary (yes, it was a handwritten notebook then!), so I learned words I would likely really use often. Nowadays you can get from the internet finished word lists of the most-used words, etc, and can use an app like Anki to do repetitive learning tasks based on learning success. Having gained a decent enough vocabulary to hold the most simple conversations with my wife or people out and about ("I want to order a coffee", "where is the toilet", "tirak, your food tastes wonderful"), I used the same language teacher to teach me to read, giving me assignments for home. By then my son was old enough to play around a pool of the local hotel, so I combined his playtime with my learning. It was, essentially, a really pain free process, but a gradual one over several months. A word about the tones: do not worry about them; with daily usage, you learn to say words "right" even if you are unsure of the exact tone. And as long as you do not need to sell something to a Thai (eg. you want his money), people will understand you from context just fine, even if your pronounciation is abhorrent (like a Scot to an Englishman). Also, my wife loved to correct me when I got it wrong, and joked about it endlessly, so she was happy as can be! I also would recommend trying to learn reading as fast as possible, because it really gives you an understanding how a word should sound (there were quite a number of words where I was quite sure how to say them and I was utterly wrong about it, I am convinced, again to the -- more secret -- enjoyment of my wife). In the end, only with doing you will make progress.
Create an account or sign in to comment