How difficult is Thai to learn

[jdinasia]

Thai one of the easiest? LOL

[sangfroid]

Thai one of the easiest? LOL

I have a friend who speaks English, Italian, french and Arabic, he gave up learning Thai after six months of struggle He says it is too hard

[jdinasia]

Thai one of the easiest? LOL

I have a friend who speaks English, Italian, french and Arabic, he gave up learning Thai after six months of struggle He says it is too hard

I would say it is one of the most difficult languages to learn! Full of subtleties around social interactions etc. But it IS learnable.

[jackmuu]

Thai one of the easiest? LOL

What's so funny about that? Please share the joke with the rest of the class.

When I compare learning Thai to learning Noregian or Mandarin, there is no contest, Thai is much, much easier.

[meadish_sweetball]

[If this thread seems a tad confusing, it is because I have split posts from another topic in order to keep that topic on track. /Meadish]

The following articles puts the issue of 'which is the most difficult language to learn' into perspective:

http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/hardest-language.php

http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/l...pectations.html

http://www.govtilr.org/ILRscale2.htm

To sum it up, it depends on your general talent for picking up languages, your starting point (mother tongue, number of other languages learned), and your desired level of proficiency.

(The above links discuss systems for measuring proficiency used in the UK and the US for learners of foreign languages).

Jackmuu, I am surprised to hear you found Norwegian so difficult. It shares a huge amount of vocabulary with English, has largely similar sentence structure and word order, and stems from a similar culture - it is geographically close enough to the British isles that plenty of the base vocabulary in English is based on the same Germanic roots, and the scientific terminology is based on Latin and French.

[jackmuu]

The following articles puts the issue of 'which is the most difficult language to learn' into perspective:

http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/hardest-language.php

http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/l...pectations.html

http://www.govtilr.org/ILRscale2.htm

To sum it up, it depends on your general talent for picking up languages, your starting point (mother tongue, number of other languages learned), and your desired level of proficiency.

(The above links discuss systems for measuring proficiency used in the UK and the US for learners of foreign languages).

Jackmuu, I am surprised to hear you found Norwegian so difficult. It shares a huge amount of vocabulary with English, has largely similar sentence structure and word order, and stems from a similar culture - it is geographically close enough to the British isles that plenty of the base vocabulary in English is based on the same Germanic roots, and the scientific terminology is based on Latin and French.

As you say, it depends on individual ability, but for me Norwegian is much harder to learn than Thai, not saying it is a harder language, but for me Thai was so much easier, Mandarin was easier than Norwegian but more difficult than Thai. Still not sure what is so funny about Thai being easier to learn than other languages though.

[jdinasia]

while I was in school learning Thai, I was studying with people from all over. We all spoke at least 2 languages already and EVERYONE thought Thai was MUCH harder than any other language they had learned to date

[OxfordWill]

Ancient Greek is harder..

[CSS]

Ancient Greek is harder..

Grammatically absolutely. Though what makes Thai difficult for most is its pronunciation and recognizing both the different tones and distinguishing the different vowels/consonants that native romance language speakers simply aren't used to distinguishing. Of the two I personally would say Thai is more difficult just because my mind is more comfortable with the memorization and systematizing of grammar structures.

[sabaijai]

The following articles puts the issue of 'which is the most difficult language to learn' into perspective:

http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/hardest-language.php

http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/l...pectations.html

http://www.govtilr.org/ILRscale2.htm

To sum it up, it depends on your general talent for picking up languages, your starting point (mother tongue, number of other languages learned), and your desired level of proficiency.

(The above links discuss systems for measuring proficiency used in the UK and the US for learners of foreign languages).

Jackmuu, I am surprised to hear you found Norwegian so difficult. It shares a huge amount of vocabulary with English, has largely similar sentence structure and word order, and stems from a similar culture - it is geographically close enough to the British isles that plenty of the base vocabulary in English is based on the same Germanic roots, and the scientific terminology is based on Latin and French.

As you say, it depends on individual ability, but for me Norwegian is much harder to learn than Thai, not saying it is a harder language, but for me Thai was so much easier, Mandarin was easier than Norwegian but more difficult than Thai. Still not sure what is so funny about Thai being easier to learn than other languages though.

Might depend where you start as well, ie, which languages you learn first. I learned Thai before I studied Mandarin, and found Mandarin a breeze (the spoken language that is; and even the written language is easier once you get used to the idea of ideograms, esp simplified characters) compared to Thai.

[jdinasia]

BTW ... I did NOT start this thread

[Johpa]

Many years ago the US State Department rated foreign languages on a difficulty scale of one to four based upon the average number of classroom hours it took to reach a specific level of proficiency with level one being the easiest. Thai, as well as Chinese, was ranked as a level three language. If I remember correctly, languages rated at level four included Arabic, Russian, and Japanese.

[meadish_sweetball]

From the link I posted above, it seems Mandarin now ranks at level 4, whereas Thai is a level 3 with an added "*" which allegedly represents "usually more difficult than other level 3 languages".

[mangkorn]

Has Jackmuu easily mastered all Thai sentence structure, including the proper usage and placement of the various particles? If reading Thai newspapers is easy, then I do bow down to you, sir.

In spite of what one is often told, Thai is more complicated than just a mere subject-verb-object construction. And perhaps you might explain the proper placements and usages of the dreaded à¸à¹‡ (gor), for example? It is not merely an all-purpose particle to be tossed in just anywhere. It could be very helpful to many of us to hear an easy explanation of that.

BTW, I have a Chinese-American friend who is a true polyglot stud, speaking several Chinese dialects, Korean, Japanese, Malay, Bahasa Indo and several Romance languages, and he says that Thai is the most difficult language he has ever encountered, for whatever that's worth.

Thai is easy in many ways, particularly the logical sense of the vocabulary, but if you come from a Romance-language background, sentence structure seems anything but easy - if you're actually trying to give a complete discourse on a detailed subject, outside of a beer bar, that is. And in clearly establishing the imperfect tenses, and especially the subjunctive mood, well, there is nothing easy about that in Thai, methinks.

Edited May 27, 2007 by mangkorn

[Johpa]

Has Jackmuu easily mastered all Thai sentence structure, including the proper usage and placement of the various particles? If reading Thai newspapers is easy, then I do bow down to you, sir.

In spite of what one is often told, Thai is more complicated than just a mere subject-verb-object construction. And perhaps you might explain the proper placements and usages of the dreaded à¸à¹‡ (gor), for example? It is not merely an all-purpose particle to be tossed in just anywhere. It could be very helpful to many of us to hear an easy explanation of that.

BTW, I have a Chinese-American friend who is a true polyglot stud, speaking several Chinese dialects, Korean, Japanese, Malay, Bahasa Indo and several Romance languages, and he says that Thai is the most difficult language he has ever encountered, for whatever that's worth.

Thai is easy in many ways, particularly the logical sense of the vocabulary, but if you come from a Romance-language background, sentence structure seems anything but easy - if you're actually trying to give a complete discourse on a detailed subject, outside of a beer bar, that is. And in clearly establishing the imperfect tenses, and especially the subjunctive mood, well, there is nothing easy about that in Thai, methinks.

My professor of Thai at a university in the US, one of the primary assitants to Mary Haas, he is also listed on the title page of her dictionary, could give a detailed linguistic analysis of just about any aspect of Thai grammar other than what you refer to as the dreaded ko (gor). That being said, with sufficient exposure, you will find yourself inserting it into a phrase, usually correctly, without having a clue as to why.

There is nothing easy about learning any language. Certainly the great challenge in learning English is also mastering such things as the imperfect tenses (there are only two true tenses in English) and mastering the auxillary verb structure which gives rise to such things as the subjunctive mood, a grammatical feature few native speakers can explain yet they can use it nearly flawlessly.

[withnail]

One of the things that makes learning Thai difficult in my opinion is the lack of resources available to us as students and to Thais as teachers of Thai as a foreign language.

[ThaiGoon]

Wow, as a Thai, I always thought Thai language was pretty simple and relatively easy to learn compared to say....English.

[meadish_sweetball]

You're most welcome to participate here with some advice ThaiGoon, we could definitely use some more native speakers helping out.

[ThaiGoon]

Sure krab khun Meadish. I'll try to help out as much as I can. But I do have to admit that your knowledge of Thai language is actually much deaper and more thorough than mine. Several times when I read your posts on this subforum, I did get to learn things about my own language that I never knew before. (I think the fact that I never got a better grade than "grade 3" in Thai language since my Matayom 5 might have something to do with it. ) Anyway, I'll try to help out as much as I can krab. (Khun Bambina, another Thai, has done a great job in helping out people in this subforum as well. )

[meadish_sweetball]

Thank you for those kind words Khun ThaiGoon, no need for all the waiing though.

The thing is, I had to learn the language through explanations, because I was not in Thailand when I started learning, so I had little access to Thai speakers or Thai reading/listening material.

As a native speaker having the language around you since birth, you never had to worry much about 'why' and 'how' (except perhaps in school now and then). Me on the other hand, studying Thai outside of Thailand with very few Thais around apart from my Ajarn and the people at the local Thai restaurant, had to find explanations that worked... otherwise I would have gotten nowhere. Our class started out with almost 30 students, and finished with 3... the rest dropped out or flunked along the way.

But when it comes to understanding subtleties, or creating complex sentences, I will never reach the level of a native Thai, the same way my written English will never be as good as that of native English speakers who write for a living.

[ThaiGoon]

I see. Cheers krab.

PS. I thought both your Thai and English were excellent.

[too true]

Many years ago the US State Department rated foreign languages on a difficulty scale of one to four based upon the average number of classroom hours it took to reach a specific level of proficiency with level one being the easiest. Thai, as well as Chinese, was ranked as a level three language. If I remember correctly, languages rated at level four included Arabic, Russian, and Japanese.

I learned Russian before I learned Thai, and learning Thai was a breeze compared to Russian. Mind you, the challenges of the languages are very different. If you've got a good ear and can hear the difference in tones Thai probably seems easier than Russian, which is a very gramatically technical language.

[mangkorn]

My professor of Thai at a university in the US, one of the primary assitants to Mary Haas, he is also listed on the title page of her dictionary, could give a detailed linguistic analysis of just about any aspect of Thai grammar other than what you refer to as the dreaded ko (gor). That being said, with sufficient exposure, you will find yourself inserting it into a phrase, usually correctly, without having a clue as to why.

There is nothing easy about learning any language. Certainly the great challenge in learning English is also mastering such things as the imperfect tenses (there are only two true tenses in English) and mastering the auxillary verb structure which gives rise to such things as the subjunctive mood, a grammatical feature few native speakers can explain yet they can use it nearly flawlessly.

Nearly flawlessly? Not nearly, not hardly. How many times do you hear native English speakers say: "If I was you..."; instead of "if I were you..."? Just one example, of several.

[Khon Baan Nok]

Thai is:

1) The most difficult language I've tried to learn... and

2) The most fun.

I am a native English speaker who also speaks Spanish and French, and though they are now quite rusty I have been quite capable in spoken Hindi/Urdu and Oriya. I am very comfortable with the Devanagiri character set and some of its derivatives (Oriya and Bengali, particularly). Once upon a time I could even fumble my way through market Dioula/Bambara from West Africa.

With the Devanagiri background, I jumped right into reading/writing the Thai character set because I thought its relationship with Sanskrit/Pali would help. It probably did, but not much, and mostly on an ex post facto basis, in that I can now see the connections between words like "samut", sea, and the Sanskrit/Hindi "samudra", which means the same thing. "Samut" in Thai is character for character identical to "samudra" in Hindi, it is just pronounced differently.

Coming to Thai with, say. 5.5 previous languages, I feel that in the 1.5 years I've been here I speak capably (meaning correctly and with more or less correct tones) MUCH LESS Thai than any other language after the same time and effort. Some of that is, I suppose, because I'm easing into decrepitude (59), and some of it is because of the tones, but some of it may just be that the language is difficult.

And therein lies part of the fun. While there are some fairly consistent grammatical patterns--the placement of "mai dai" before or after the verb, for example--the language and its speakers just LOVE to play with meaning and nuance.

A recent example: I was ordering coffee from some young and sassy women that work at the office coffee shop. They asked if I wanted milk with it, and I replied no, black coffee. Giggling, they said, "ooee, du meun khun S. mai chawb nom, law". Getting the joke, I replied "Phom mai chawb nom nai gafae, khrap...". They howled and the whole place turned around to see what had happened. Very fun.

My point is, however: I don't think Thai is an easy language to learn to speak well. It's grammar is very fluid, the tones are a big challenge if you are coming from a non-tonal background, and the writing system is as illogical as...say...English. But what a hoot!

[jdinasia]

I'd agree khon Bannok ....

the pay off in other places for learning a language were never as fun as they are here!

[jackmuu]

Thai is:

1) The most difficult language I've tried to learn... and

2) The most fun.

I am a native English speaker who also speaks Spanish and French, and though they are now quite rusty I have been quite capable in spoken Hindi/Urdu and Oriya. I am very comfortable with the Devanagiri character set and some of its derivatives (Oriya and Bengali, particularly). Once upon a time I could even fumble my way through market Dioula/Bambara from West Africa.

With the Devanagiri background, I jumped right into reading/writing the Thai character set because I thought its relationship with Sanskrit/Pali would help. It probably did, but not much, and mostly on an ex post facto basis, in that I can now see the connections between words like "samut", sea, and the Sanskrit/Hindi "samudra", which means the same thing. "Samut" in Thai is character for character identical to "samudra" in Hindi, it is just pronounced differently.

Coming to Thai with, say. 5.5 previous languages, I feel that in the 1.5 years I've been here I speak capably (meaning correctly and with more or less correct tones) MUCH LESS Thai than any other language after the same time and effort. Some of that is, I suppose, because I'm easing into decrepitude (59), and some of it is because of the tones, but some of it may just be that the language is difficult.

And therein lies part of the fun. While there are some fairly consistent grammatical patterns--the placement of "mai dai" before or after the verb, for example--the language and its speakers just LOVE to play with meaning and nuance.

A recent example: I was ordering coffee from some young and sassy women that work at the office coffee shop. They asked if I wanted milk with it, and I replied no, black coffee. Giggling, they said, "ooee, du meun khun S. mai chawb nom, law". Getting the joke, I replied "Phom mai chawb nom nai gafae, khrap...". They howled and the whole place turned around to see what had happened. Very fun.

My point is, however: I don't think Thai is an easy language to learn to speak well. It's grammar is very fluid, the tones are a big challenge if you are coming from a non-tonal background, and the writing system is as illogical as...say...English. But what a hoot!

I work all over the world but for some reason the thais seem to find it more shocking than most when you speak their language. I don't bat an eyelid when a thai speaks english or japanese.

I think if you have an aptitude for languages in general Thai is quite easy to learn to an acceptable standard, certainly easier than english.

[kriswillems]

I think if you have an aptitude for languages in general Thai is quite easy to learn to an acceptable standard, certainly easier than english.

If you can already speak a language with a Romanic or Germanic root it's much easier to study English than Thai. My native language is Dutch. Learning English, Spanish, French and German was much easier than learning Thai. For reaching the same level in Thai as in the other languages I need about 3 times more time.

But I can imagine that it's also very hard for a Thai person to study English.

[jdinasia]

I think if you have an aptitude for languages in general Thai is quite easy to learn to an acceptable standard, certainly easier than english.

If you can already speak a language with a Romanic or Germanic root it's much easier to study English than Thai. My native language is Dutch. Learning English, Spanish, French and German was much easier than learning Thai. For reaching the same level in Thai as in the other languages I need about 3 times more time.

But I can imagine that it's also very hard for a Thai person to study English.

My partner says that English is easier than Thai ... and he's Thai <and fluent in Eng>

[qualtrough]

It's grammar is very fluid, the tones are a big challenge if you are coming from a non-tonal background, and the writing system is as illogical as...say...English. But what a hoot!

I disagree. I think the Thai writing system is very logical, and much more so than English. Perhaps Meadish can address this, but I believe the various letters in the Thai alphabet are grouped by the part of the mouth where the sound is produced, e.g. dental, labial, etc. Spelling is pretty logical too, except for those usually silent endings from Sanskrit origins. There is nothing that I am aware of in Thai that is the equivalent of, say, the 'ough' combination in English.

[jdinasia]

qual ... what sound for an absent vowel ......... no spaces between words etc .... crazy writing ....

but once you get it ... you mostly get it!