Thai - How difficult?

[1FinickyOne]

I have heard that Thai is the 5th most difficult language to learn... any other opinions?

 

How does it compare to Vietnamese? 

[Crossy]

My biggest issue is actually hearing the tones, I'm deaf in one ear and pretty crumby in the other (I'll spash out for an aid one day). Of course when speaking I invariably get the tones wrong and (like Cantonese) it's always rude!

 

I've not tried Viet but at least they use something akin to the western character set when writing.

 

I managed quite well with Korean 20 odd years back, but it's not tonal and, despite using a unique character set, the rules are quite simple along with a lot of loan words.

 

Having a long-haired dictionary is useful in any language of course

 

[cheshiremusicman]

8 minutes ago, Crossy said:

My biggest issue is actually hearing the tones, I'm deaf in one ear and pretty crumby in the other (I'll spash out for an aid one day). Of course when speaking I invariably get the tones wrong and (like Cantonese) it's always rude!

 

I've not tried Viet but at least they use something akin to the western character set when writing.

 

I managed quite well with Korean 20 odd years back, but it's not tonal and, despite using a unique character set, the rules are quite simple along with a lot of loan words.

 

Having a long-haired dictionary is useful in any language of course

 

I have had exactly the same problem, I just cannot get the 'tones'. I've always been told that I'm a good mimic when it comes to languages, but for the hell of me I cannot speak Thai correctly even after trying for some 14 years - I must just be thick!

Years ago, I was learning French and I was told that I had a accent that was from the south of France - Marseille I think, but I've now forgotten nearly all the French I learned. The other language I had the utmost difficulty with was Swedish. I think with some languages you have to train your vocal chords from a very early age to get the hang of them. I'm definitely not tone deaf as I cannot stand out of tune music or singing - drives me mad and my hearing is still OK at 77 albeit one ear is better than the other. I think that I will buy one of these 'Auto Speech Translators' - thank goodness for modern electronics!
 

[Aforek]

For me, the only difficult thing are the tones, yes ... for the rest, grammar, writing, reading, it's just some work to do , not very complicate  ... every language has one's difficulties ... I am French, and for me, German is very difficult, grammar is huge, English not so much , it's a luck that English is the common language for mankind 

but Thai, the 5 th most difficult language in the world, I don't believe it !

try Finnish, Arabic, Chinese , Basque and others that I don't know ...

[CygnusX1]

Of the two foreign languages I’ve studied extensively, French and Thai, I’d say that for me at least, Thai’s around 20 times harder than French - ie for every hour of study to improve my French, 20 hours is required to improve my Thai by the same amount. That’s despite the fact that I’ve had many hours of private tuition in Thai, but am entirely self taught in French.

 

The main difficulty for me is not tones but grammar - despite those notorious irregular verbs, French grammar is almost identical to English grammar when compared to Thai. French and English also share so many words. I can read a page from a children’s book in French about 30 times faster than the same text in a Thai translation. The French words mostly fly past without my even needing to consciously translate them, whereas I have to decode the Thai grammar in a way that’s a bit like solving a succession of cryptic crossword clues. Thai’s different alphabet and lack of spaces between words probably don’t help either.

 

[1FinickyOne]

1 hour ago, CygnusX1 said:

in a way that’s a bit like solving a succession of cryptic crossword clues.

Yes. I find this too - I can know every word in the sentence and not know what the sentence means... though I guess English can be idiomatic like that too... 

[zyphodb]

Unless you have an ear for tones virtually impossible beyond simple question and answer I'd say, that's after several years of pretty well total immersion, of course it doesn't help each region speaking their own version, Thais from different regions often seem to have trouble understanding each other so how can we?

[Oxx]

20 hours ago, kenk24 said:

I have heard that Thai is the 5th most difficult language to learn... any other opinions?

 

My opinion: that's a stupid assertion.  (1) the difficulty of a language will depend upon how different it is from languages you already know.  (2) There are roughly 6,500 languages in the world, many of them far more difficult than Thai.  For a native English speaker there are even common languages more difficult to learn than Thai such as Finnish, Mandarin, Arabic, Hungarian, Basque, Navajo, Icelandic.

[mr mr]

14 minutes ago, Oxx said:

 

My opinion: that's a stupid assertion.

stupid is as stupid does. 

[Colabamumbai]

Go to a Thai Language School. Speak Thai everywhere you go, they will correct you. Start learning the basics on You Tube. Have a Thai mindset. 

[1FinickyOne]

21 minutes ago, Oxx said:

My opinion: that's a stupid assertion.

Thank you..

 

otherwise your answer was interesting. I was just noting what I had heard... 

[donnacha]

55 minutes ago, Oxx said:

For a native English speaker there are even common languages more difficult to learn than Thai such as Finnish, Mandarin, Arabic, Hungarian, Basque, Navajo, Icelandic.

Actually, I found it surprisingly easy to attain fluency in all those languages. Especially Navajo, that one was p*ss-easy.

 

[uptome1946]

 

 

My opinion after 30 years of Thai study.

 

To learn Thai presents many challenges to a speaker of a Western language beyond simply hearing and making the correct tones.   The five "tones"  by the way are different in pitch and in amplitude.  For example, rising tones start out quiet and get louder.  Words with falling tones start out loud.  So it is not just pitch or frequency it is also sound intensity that changes.

 

Syntactically, Thai is a "topic comment" language which means that the first word in the sentence is the most important word or idea.  Thai sentences do not follow the subject predicate structure of Indo-European languages.  One word can be a sentence in Thai since subjects if they are recoverable by context are omitted.

 

IMHO it is absolutely necessary to learn the alphabet to learn the language since the English approximations are far from the actual phonemes of Thai.

 

The old saying, "to have another language is to have another life" is especially true for a language like Thai.

 

Here is a gloss of a sentence I just heard an hour ago.

 

"He do same not hear I speak".

 

Meaning "he is acting as if he didn't hear what I just said"

[charliebadenhop]

Yes, the tones will be a problem for most non-Thai people. Although my tones are lousy, the more Thai I learn, the more I am understood, so I don't really worry about it.

 

There is an excellent FREE learning platform for Thai. www.lingopolo.org

 

I have been studying one hour a day for the last two years, and I am supposedly half way to full fluency... not considering the tones. 

 

 

[andre47]

19 hours ago, Aforek said:

For me, the only difficult thing are the tones, yes ... for the rest, grammar, writing, reading, it's just some work to do , not very complicate  ...

Writing is not complicated for you? How can you learn to write Thai? Even many Thais cannot write correct...555.

Reading and talking is doable, but I don't believe that I will be able to write Thai one day. The problem is that if you hear a syllable you cannot be sure how to write it. There are 3-5 different possibilities. You have to learn and remember the correct writing of each single word. Nowadays we can use software at our phone or our computer. That makes it a bit easier.  

The tones are also not easy, but in most situations you or your counterpart can catch the meaning from the context.

[PGSan]

20 hours ago, Crossy said:

I'll spash out for an aid one day

Similar to me!  I did get an aid in the good ol’ NHS but found it helped very little, but your mileage may vary.

 

On tones, I treat them like stress/emphasis in English, seems to work well (I was taught Mandarin this way, no idea what they recommend for Cantonese with7? tones!).

[jackdd]

Thai is relatively easy, even for people coming from European languages and even more so for people coming from Asian languages.

It doesn't matter much if you get the tones right, usually the context gives away what word you wanted to say and you will be understood.

[PGSan]

1 hour ago, zyphodb said:

doesn't help each region speaking their own version,

Pretty much the same as, for example, English then?

[PGSan]

3 minutes ago, jackdd said:

from Asian languages.

From where in Asia, Japan, Korea, Sri Lanka, Turkestan, Turkey.

Please be more specific.  (Oh, I know, you meant Laos:-).

[andre47]

4 minutes ago, jackdd said:

Thai is relatively easy....

Are you joking? Maybe you are very capable in learning languages....

[CygnusX1]

58 minutes ago, uptome1946 said:

Here is a gloss of a sentence I just heard an hour ago.

 

"He do same not hear I speak".

 

Meaning "he is acting as if he didn't hear what I just said"

That’s a great example of the grammatical difficulty of Thai (for native English speakers, that is, native Mandarin speakers may well find Thai grammar easy). Translate some random bit of a French newspaper very literally, and although this will result in some highly stilted and ungrammatical English, your translation will still be mostly understandable. Perform the same kind of literal translation from a Thai newspaper and the result will generally be incomprehensible.

[jackdd]

8 minutes ago, PGSan said:

From where in Asia, Japan, Korea, Sri Lanka, Turkestan, Turkey.

Please be more specific.  (Oh, I know, you meant Laos:-).

Tonal languages, like Chinese, Vietnamese, Burmese, Laos ...

[Orton Rd]

2 hours ago, zyphodb said:

Unless you have an ear for tones virtually impossible beyond simple question and answer I'd say, that's after several years of pretty well total immersion, of course it doesn't help each region speaking their own version, Thais from different regions often seem to have trouble understanding each other so how can we?

I agree but there are people who have a talent for languages just like some are good at music or painting. Mrs had one student who mastered not only speaking and reading but also writing in 3 years of lessons once a week. She wrote Mrs a long thank you letter in perfect Thai when she went back home. Then there is me who gave up years ago, they even have difficulty understanding the numbers I give them at the Big C till ????

[StevieAus]

I really believe that it varies from individual to individual and the older you are the harder it is.

In support of that look how easily kids pick up languages.

My problem is that I don’t seem to retain what I learn although my French is not  too bad and that was fifty odd years ago.

However hard Thai may be I am glad that English is my first language too many words meaning the same thing and conceptual issues as well.

I agree with Crossy having the long haired dictionary is a great advantage and the translation facility on the phone helps.

[jackdd]

14 minutes ago, andre47 said:

Are you joking? Maybe you are very capable in learning languages....

No, I'm not joking.

Thai has only very limited grammar, basically you just put the words in order.

Thai uses vowels, consonants to form syllables, which form words, same as for example English.

The only thing odd are the tones, but if you get them wrong you will usually still be understood.

 

8 minutes ago, Orton Rd said:

Then there is me who gave up years ago, they even have difficulty understanding the numbers I give then at the Big C till

Because they expect that you speak English and their brain is trying to interpret what you say as English numbers and they get confused. When you are at the fourth number they finally realize that you speak Thai, but then they didn't get the first few numbers already.

[Pedrogaz]

I took advice before beginning study here. One fellow was a Vietnam vet been here since 1968. He told me to learn to read and write first, because the tones are incorporated into the written language.

 

I took private lessons three times a week for about 8 months. I could read reasonably well and write OK.....but no one could understand anything I said and I could understand nobody apart from the teacher or my wife's family. 

 

I gave up. I can speak French, Italian, English and Japanese. The tones and perhaps more difficult are the vowel lengths in Thai. I feel totally stupid as most Germans I meet can speak Thai reasonably well, but Imperial US/UK expect everybody to speak English to save them having to learn any languages.

[andre47]

5 minutes ago, jackdd said:

Because they expect that you speak English and their brain is trying to interpret what you say as English numbers and they get confused. When you are at the fourth number they finally realize that you speak Thai, but then they didn't get the first few numbers already.

Yes, I experienced the same. Many Thais don't understand your Thai because they think you talk English 555

[andre47]

...

[AlfHuy]

13 hours ago, kenk24 said:

Yes. I find this too - I can know every word in the sentence and not know what the sentence means... though I guess English can be idiomatic like that too... 

That's how thais are. They tell you something but you never understand what they really mean.

[rkidlad]

Tones are very hard for me. When I started to learn Thai, I kept lifting my head and chin as I'd say a word with a higher tone; like I was singing. It was completely unnatural for me. 

 

The best way to learn is just immerse yourself with the language. No English. It's amazing how quickly you can learn when you have to. 

 

Also, be careful when getting into small talk with people. I did it at the beginning and and thought I was going mad. Language isn't just words it's also culture. Last bizarre conversation I had was with the new laundry lady who told me in perfect Thai that her Thai isn't very good 'cos she's Burmese. She told me when to collect my shirts and I left confused. My missus later told me that she isn't Burmese, but she lived near the border so often had to speak a different language there.

 

I've found in small talk many people will tell me things that I don't need to know and have no meaning within the context of the conversation. It's not a knock on Thais, it's just a cultural thing. In any culture, you'll always get people who love to talk.