Did you try to learn Thai? How did you get on? How old were you? Was it worth it? Regrets?

[thaibeachlovers]

19 hours ago, mokwit said:

Isaan Thai is utterly distinct to a Bangkok Chinese speaker

Luckily I wasn't interested in any Bangkok Chinese speakers then.

I learned from cassette tapes while on the bus going to work, and learned enough to get by. Never interested in having a conversation in Thai, and in all my years in LOS only once wished I knew more words.

[1FinickyOne]

7 hours ago, Michel PUISSANT said:

Think of it just as music.

 

7 hours ago, Michel PUISSANT said:

I'm tired of people saying tonal languages are too hard it's sooo not true. It just takes more time for european people, true.

Yes, it is musical and the tones are often not even tonal... Maaaaa and Maa often just elongated sounds... I have been here many years and have little idea of tones.. the words mostly just sound different... KHAOO and kao.. 

 

Thai is not a translation of another language... you have to learn the words/phrases that they use to express the thought/feeling that you want to express. 

 

I was lucky enough to learn by living in an area w/little English spoken. I learned somewhat as a child might, being aware of when I am understood and not. I find it an interesting insight into the people and culture as well...

Thai being a heart language as opposed to English being more a head oriented language.  

[1FinickyOne]

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Luckily I wasn't interested in any Bangkok Chinese speakers then.

I learned from cassette tapes while on the bus going to work, and learned enough to get by. Never interested in having a conversation in Thai, and in all my years in LOS only once wished I knew more words.

That speaks volumes. 

[1FinickyOne]

On 1/10/2022 at 4:17 AM, Grecian said:

Positive responses so far. 

Hoping I will get a " I came here at 50 something and with some effort can now speak a boy's to inspire me. Lol

I started learning about age 48 or so... still learning a bit here and there - - never had a lesson... immersion was a good technique for me.. just take it a word or phrase at a time... repetition helps so do flash cards... make it fun and it will be fun..

[cmarshall]

Mr. Grecian,

 

You are asking a question that you yourself should be answering.  Of course, you can learn Thai at age 53.  The limiting factor is motivation, not age, and not even intelligence.  Forget the apps for which there are so many enthusiastic recommendations.  No one ever learns Thai just from an app.  If you want to learn Thai you should find the best teacher available, which you can determine by seeing how many of her former students became fluent.  Then you should plan to allocate hours a day to the study: reading, writing, speaking, and listening comprehension of which the last is always the most difficult by far in any language.  

 

You should also ignore 99% of the posters here on the subject, because they have failed and will just try to justify their failures.

 

I have been studying Thai for some years.  My flashcard program for Thai has 15,000 entries of vocabulary and expressions which I practice daily.  I can probably recognize 60% to 70% of those words.  Nevertheless, I still encounter unfamiliar words on nearly every page of the book I am currently reading, "The Miracle of the Namiya General Store" by Keigo Higashino translated into Thai.

 

I read Thai at the college textbook level, but slowly and can even touch type Thai.  When I recently had a consultation with a Thai doctor we conducted the conversation entirely in Thai at my insistence even though I am sure he speaks perfectly good English.  In other situations like with the Isaan guys in the condo who come to fix things in our apartment I can hardly understand a word they say.      

 

I started teaching myself Thai at age 60 the year before I arrived in Thailand.  I have been studying it continuously since arriving, most recently privately with an excellent teacher.  

 

Language study is an eminently fair endeavor.  The more you put into it, the more you will get out of it.

 

I hope someday to be fluent in Thai to which I will only add:

 

I. will. never. quit. studying. Thai.

 

Up to you, as they say.

[RafPinto]

12 hours ago, simon43 said:

I learnt to read/write/speak Thai when I was about 45 years old.  I attended Chula University and tended to have only Thai (or Issan) friends.  So Thai replaced French as my 2nd language ????

 

Now I just moved to live in Mauritius.  French is the main language that is used between foreigners and locals.  I keep putting Thai or Lao words in the middle of my sentences.... "Oh Merci, bor pen nyang". Je desire gin khao"!!  The locals must think I'm crazy ????

They will not call you, tingtong farang.

They call an ambulance in Mauritius.

[kwilco]

8 hours ago, clivebaxter said:

shop workers, taxi drivers and waiters don't make an effort

These are the people I'm most successful with.

Time and again I hear them say "phut Thai geng". Quite often as a warning to their friends to be careful what they say in front of me. I have to say I find it very flattering.

I like learning languages. I think even with a limited knowledge one can make oneself inderstood. It requires a special logic...a form of lateral thinking. If you don't know the exact words then you need to think round it and find a way of expressing your self using the terms you do know..... for instance, if in English you didn't know "chair" you might say "4 legs to sit on".

I think language involves mimicry. I see foreigners speaking Thai without any effort to sound Thai. They will say,"I  can't do the tones" but they don't do the accent either.

My best "other" language is French. The high point there was when working in France, someone asked me where I came from....in France; he thought I was French!

[talahtnut]

Got the Thai Linguaphone tape stuff many years and got bored.

10 years later got the CD Linguaphone set, got bored same.

Crossing a road with the missus, I spoke some Thai and she sat down

in the middle of the road paralized with laughter.

Thai language is like learning Cockney Chinese.

[EricTh]

@Grecian

 

The problem with learning Thai in Thai language schools is that the teacher only teach formal written Thai.

 

I regretted learning formal Thai for one year as spoken Thai is completely different from formal Thai which is taught at schools. In short, it is not practical at all.

 

Furthermore, the Thai teachers English is just not good enough to explain the grammatical difference between Thai and English causing a lot of confusion for foreigners.

 

If you just want to order dishes or asking where is the toilet, then it's not a problem.

 

But if you want a real conversation at an intermediate level, there's no way to learn it in Thai language classes because they don't teach informal spoken Thai.

 

I found out the hard way when Thai people laughed at how I use formal Thai like 'garuna' which they don't use.

 

That's why most farang can't speak Thai after being in Thailand for xx years.

 

There is a disconnect between teaching Thai and practical Thai.

 

Edited January 11, 2022 by EricTh

[EricTh]

On 1/10/2022 at 11:09 AM, ozimoron said:

I believe that Thai is far easier than Indonesian or Tagalog. Tagalog and Bahasa are conjugated which makes them more difficult to learn whereas Thai is not. It has only 76 letters in the alphabet, many of which are rarely used in day to day conversation.

Indonesian or Tagalog is much easier. They don't have tones, their grammar is more similar to English and they use latin words and space their words.

 

Thai writing is terribly difficult to read and write because of many factors and they don't space their words.

 

[EricTh]

On 1/10/2022 at 11:53 AM, ozimoron said:

This is a good free resource for learning Thai

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2xIZS7z1wLkROtMYLmMstw

That's one of the worst channel to learn Thai. Learning Thai is not just about learning words but to form sentences.

 

A lot of the words she taught are actually too formal/classroom Thai and not used in everyday Thai.

Edited January 11, 2022 by EricTh

[EricTh]

On 1/10/2022 at 3:34 PM, law ling said:

Other than the little I know to get by, I gave up serious study of Thai once I was taught the rules of how to work out the tone of a word from its spelling: a complex set of multiple rules that every word must be subjected to - sorry, but to me it is a language of insane (and otherwise unnecessary) complexity.

 

Plus:

 

- can't read signs due to odd fonts,

- no space between words,

- most Thais can't help ... they cannot speak slower, louder or clearer when asked,

- many Thais speak dialects,

- I could go on ...

 

To many, its complexity may be a challenge they relish ... but to me, the tone rules were a deal breaker.

 

I agree with you on all your points but you miss out the most important point that most foreigners don't know.

 

Ordinary Thai people use a completely different set of words than the formal words taught at Thai schools.  

 

That's why I had trouble communicating with Thai people at first until I unlearn the formal words and start learning the informal words.

 

You may think they are 'dialects' but they are actually informal words that Thai schools don't teach but Thai use a lot.

 

Thai language teachers like to teach Sanskrit words because they sound 'more elegant' but in real life Thai people don't use much Sanskrit words but real Thai words.

 

There is a lot of Sanskrit words for almost every Thai word. It's like learning two languages.

 

That's why learning Thai can be a nightmare due to all these problems.  By learning Thai .. I mean to reach a high intermediate level and not beginner level.

 

Thai language schools teach the formal fonts but most Thai don't write in that font but another different set of fonts.

Edited January 11, 2022 by EricTh

[pomchop]

I started out trying to force myself to listen to ten minutes a day of Thai vocabulary words on an MP3 while doing daily walk...ultimately cut it to five minutes and listened to several different lessons over and over day after day, month after month...some days had to force myself to do it but small "price to pay 5 mins a day" of a 90 minute walk ...ultimately did learn to say and understand quite a few very useful words but putting them together in the proper order to make sentences took some time...but have to say that the Thais i practiced on were very helpful and even though i often had words in wrong order etc they seemed to get a laugh out of it all and it was always good fun...as for learning to read i did take a few lessons and can read words like hong nam, toilet etc...but remember even if you can read you still need to know what the word you are reading actually means...i will never ever be close to fluent in Thai but just knowing a bunch of words is not all that hard to do and if you make it fun by practicing on Thai people it can lead to some good laughs...

Edited January 11, 2022 by pomchop

[kwilco]

49 minutes ago, EricTh said:

@Grecian

 

The problem with learning Thai in Thai language schools is that the teacher only teach formal written Thai.

 

I regretted learning formal Thai for one year as spoken Thai is completely different from formal Thai which is taught at schools. In short, it is not practical at all.

 

Furthermore, the Thai teachers English is just not good enough to explain the grammatical difference between Thai and English causing a lot of confusion for foreigners.

 

If you just want to order dishes or asking where is the toilet, then it's not a problem.

 

But if you want a real conversation at an intermediate level, there's no way to learn it in Thai language classes because they don't teach informal spoken Thai.

 

I found out the hard way when Thai people laughed at how I use formal Thai like 'garuna' which they don't use.

 

That's why most farang can't speak Thai after being in Thailand for xx years.

 

There is a disconnect between teaching Thai and practical Thai.

 

Thank you for that review of all the Thai language schools in Thailand.

[Gecko123]

To Thai Language Coach @EricTh:

 

Don't quit your day job.

 

Edited January 12, 2022 by Gecko123

[anyone]

On 1/10/2022 at 1:50 AM, OneMoreFarang said:

If someone would drop you in a little Thai village with everybody only speaking Thai, would you learn the language?

Sure, and fast. Because you have to.

If you will be locked in the room with cats for a few years, will you learn cat's language? Sure NO 555

[thaibeachlovers]

19 hours ago, cmarshall said:

Mr. Grecian,

 

You are asking a question that you yourself should be answering.  Of course, you can learn Thai at age 53.  The limiting factor is motivation, not age, and not even intelligence.  Forget the apps for which there are so many enthusiastic recommendations.  No one ever learns Thai just from an app.  If you want to learn Thai you should find the best teacher available, which you can determine by seeing how many of her former students became fluent.  Then you should plan to allocate hours a day to the study: reading, writing, speaking, and listening comprehension of which the last is always the most difficult by far in any language.  

 

You should also ignore 99% of the posters here on the subject, because they have failed and will just try to justify their failures.

 

I have been studying Thai for some years.  My flashcard program for Thai has 15,000 entries of vocabulary and expressions which I practice daily.  I can probably recognize 60% to 70% of those words.  Nevertheless, I still encounter unfamiliar words on nearly every page of the book I am currently reading, "The Miracle of the Namiya General Store" by Keigo Higashino translated into Thai.

 

I read Thai at the college textbook level, but slowly and can even touch type Thai.  When I recently had a consultation with a Thai doctor we conducted the conversation entirely in Thai at my insistence even though I am sure he speaks perfectly good English.  In other situations like with the Isaan guys in the condo who come to fix things in our apartment I can hardly understand a word they say.      

 

I started teaching myself Thai at age 60 the year before I arrived in Thailand.  I have been studying it continuously since arriving, most recently privately with an excellent teacher.  

 

Language study is an eminently fair endeavor.  The more you put into it, the more you will get out of it.

 

I hope someday to be fluent in Thai to which I will only add:

 

I. will. never. quit. studying. Thai.

 

Up to you, as they say.

I could have done same as you and learned to speak it fluently, but the question is "why would I want to spend that much time and energy to learn a language I never wanted to converse in or read"?

 

In your case was the effort rewarded in some way that would otherwise have not been?

 

I'm sure that were it necessary to speak Thai to get women into bed a lot more farangs would be fluent Thai speakers.

[thaibeachlovers]

On 1/10/2022 at 9:50 AM, OneMoreFarang said:

If someone would drop you in a little Thai village with everybody only speaking Thai, would you learn the language?

No, because if I couldn't leave it I'd slit my wrists- I did live in a village for a while, and that was enough experience for one lifetime.

 

On 1/10/2022 at 9:50 AM, OneMoreFarang said:

What impression do you want to leave? Do you want to be see as that ignorant farang who doesn't even try to learn a few words?

Personally I didn't care what they thought of me in a country where I had to go to immigration every 3 months  to stay in. I was an alien and they made <deleted> sure I knew it.

If they cared about us, they'd make it worth while learning the language, but IMO they don't care if we are there or not ( as long as we leave lotsacash before we depart ).

[thaibeachlovers]

8 hours ago, EricTh said:

That's why most farang can't speak Thai after being in Thailand for xx years.

 

 

I learned enough Thai to get by in a few years and I wasn't even living there. Simple sentences dealing with such necessities as "where is the toilet" and being able to go shopping etc are all that some of us needed to live in LOS.

 

I never had a problem in restaurants because I learned to ask for fried rice chicken, and they serve that in just about every restaurant I ever went in. Didn't need any more choices than that.

In food courts I'd get something else, but they usually had menus in English, or pictures of the choices.

Edited January 12, 2022 by thaibeachlovers

[kwilco]

I have shown a lot of time teaching adults languages and training people to teach.

One think I've always told my teachers is that before they can teach a kanguage they have to teach their students how to learn or study.

 

They have forgotten how to or never knew.

[kwilco]

It is so sad when I meet sone expat who is married to a Thai woman and it becomes apparent that he can hardly speak a word of Thai even though he's been in the country for years.

What do they do all day? Just sit around and drink with their expat mates telling each other how stupid Thai people are? 

I remember a few years back going to some guys house for a meal. I spent quite a lot of time talking to his wife who had cooked a fantastic meal. ( he had his own chicken and chips). Then his son who was about 10 or so, quietly said to me.

"How come you can speak Thai and my Dad can't?".

I didn't know where to put myself.

Edited January 12, 2022 by kwilco

[BritManToo]

12 minutes ago, kwilco said:

It is so sad when I meet sone expat who is married to a Thai woman and it becomes apparent that he can hardly speak a word of Thai even though he's been in the country for years.

What do they do all day? Just sit around and drink with their expat mates telling each other how stupid Thai people are? 

I remember a few years back going to some guys house for a meal. I spent quite a lot of time talking to his wife who had cooked a fantastic meal. ( he had his own chicken and chips). Then his son who was about 10 or so, quietly said to me.

"How come you can speak Thai and my Dad can't?".

I didn't know where to put myself.

My woman learned to speak English very quickly (as her 5th language).

My kids all speak English as their first language.

More useful to them to learn English than me to learn some rural Thai language that nobody outside the village speaks.

 

PS.

Agree your pal is a fool, he should have learned by now never to let other foreigners know where you live, never allow other foreign men to meet your woman. Extremely rude of you to speak to his wife in a language he doesn't understand.

Edited January 12, 2022 by BritManToo

[thaibeachlovers]

19 minutes ago, kwilco said:

It is so sad when I meet sone expat who is married to a Thai woman and it becomes apparent that he can hardly speak a word of Thai even though he's been in the country for years.

What do they do all day? Just sit around and drink with their expat mates telling each other how stupid Thai people are? 

I remember a few years back going to some guys house for a meal. I spent quite a lot of time talking to his wife who had cooked a fantastic meal. ( he had his own chicken and chips). Then his son who was about 10 or so, quietly said to me.

"How come you can speak Thai and my Dad can't?".

I didn't know where to put myself.

I hope you told his son to ask his mother or father as to why. It's their business and no one else's.

 

BTW, getting too friendly with another man's wife is a sure way to be never invited back ever again. Happened to me.

[Lacessit]

I started learning Thai when I was 67, 11 years ago. I'm still learning, IMO it's a good antidote for senility.

I'll probably never be fluent in Thai. I can make myself understood in most situations. My smartphone has Google Translate on it, so if I want a word outside my normal vocabulary

( e.g. screwdriver ) it's just a matter of showing the Thai person I am talking to, the Thai script on the screen.

I do recommend learning Thai, it does make life easier. And I feel quite chuffed when I can have a conversation with a Thai entirely in their language without a word of English spoken. That feeling makes my day.

 

[kwilco]

I can't remember why I went to eat at the house, but it certainly wasn't because of the guy. I'm oretty sure the woman had something to do with work.

I was in Thailand talking to a Thai person in Thai....if her lumark of a husband couldn't be arsed to learn the lingo.... its not his problem, he couldn't even communicate with his son. How sad can you get.

[TorquayFan]

Hi Grecian - can we have Dan Sparks back please ?

 

Re. learning Thai - I've been here 11 years and confess my Thai is less than minimal. Shocking

 

It is really good to do. Let me recount the story of an Aussie Friend. He was about 55 when he moved here. He sat in a class at the School every day and did the homework too - for 6 months. Then he could read, write and speak Thai like perfect !

 

He is back in Australia now sad to say - but his Thai was a revelation. I have another Friend near Korat, Dutch. His Thai is perfect too. And a couple of USA's. It can be done !

 

Languages are not my thing BUT if you can learn Thai, it will make your life here so much better IMO. ATB

 

 

 

 

Edited January 12, 2022 by TorquayFan

[thaibeachlovers]

1 hour ago, kwilco said:

I can't remember why I went to eat at the house, but it certainly wasn't because of the guy. I'm oretty sure the woman had something to do with work.

I was in Thailand talking to a Thai person in Thai....if her lumark of a husband couldn't be arsed to learn the lingo.... its not his problem, he couldn't even communicate with his son. How sad can you get.

If that was his choice to live like that who is anyone else to denigrate him for it? It's no business of anyone else.

I certainly never went out of my way to be like a Thai. I was there for my benefit, not anyone else's.

 

However, if he hadn't made his son learn English then he was a bit sad IMO.

What happened to kids learning English at school?

[mokwit]

On 1/10/2022 at 6:11 PM, Gecko123 said:

Mary Haas' Thai-English Student Dictionary

This has the classifier for each word. VERY useful. This is the one.

 

Cheat sheet: You can get away with 'an' instead of the correct classifier (yes, yes, I know, people who can't be bothered to learn the classifiers should be horsewhipped and deported, so no need to say).

 

I accept it is likely my pronunciation but I have found school only educated Thai's who are not used to hearing foreigners speak cannot contextualise a mispronounced by tone word. Likewise if you omit the classifier/"an".

Edited January 12, 2022 by mokwit

[ozimoron]

10 hours ago, EricTh said:

Indonesian or Tagalog is much easier. They don't have tones, their grammar is more similar to English and they use latin words and space their words.

 

Thai writing is terribly difficult to read and write because of many factors and they don't space their words.

 

It's all a matter of opinion and perspective. Do yoiu speak properly conjugated Tagalog or Indonesian? I lived in the Philippines for 24 years on and off and never learned formally but I do speak conversational Tagalog. You didn't elaborate on any of the "many factors" why Thai is difficult to read. There are 76 letters and about a third of them are rarely encountered outside of proper names and high class formal Thai. The syllables have a distinct pattern and one you recognise that pattern it's quite easy to determine where each syllable begins and ends. That syllables end with a limited number of consonants or vowels. The spaces are arbitrary and only used for readability.

 

10 hours ago, EricTh said:

That's one of the worst channel to learn Thai. Learning Thai is not just about learning words but to form sentences.

 

A lot of the words she taught are actually too formal/classroom Thai and not used in everyday Thai.

I use books to actually learn Thai, especially grammar but I found those videos to be an excellent source for learning how to pronounce the language and use it in every day conversation. Maybe it's easier for me because I learned Thai almost 40 years ago and have been married to 2 Thais, also one Filipina. If you think the words she is using are too formal I;d question where you are learning your Thai. Thais can easily pick it if you learned from a bar girl. Most of them are Isaan and speak a Thai dialect of Lao.

[Adumbration]

All of my expat friends think that I am fluent.  But I am not.  I am pretty fluent in a fishing village setting because I spend most of my time on or in the ocean.  Obscure stuff like the names of fish species and boating terms like anchors and fishing tackle...I have all of that in my vocab.

 

I would flounder greatly if in a city/office setting.

 

My partner speaks no English.  And I have been with her for 7 years now.  I also live in a small village where there is no Thais with working English.

 

I would say that the single most valuable thing about learning the language is that you do not NEED to have a Thai girlfriend if you don't want to.  I have an expat friend who has had a string of terrible ex-bar girl partners. But without their assistance he does not have the language skills to get by day to day.

 

I should add that I suffer from periodic deafness also.  When a Thai female is talking in my home I cannot hear a thing.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Adumbration