"thai Is An Easy Language ..." (part 1)

[coalminer]

"Thai is an easy language ..."

Anybody who has been reading a book or listening to a cassette/CD about learning Thai, will undoubtly have read or heard this phrase.

But is Thai really as easy to learn as the books, cassettes or CD's are suggesting?

Thai is a tonal language.

The Thai language has 5 tones, each with a different meaning.

In addition to the 5 tones, each word can have 2 tone lengths, a short or a long tone.

This makes that every word can be written in 10 different ways and with 10 different meanings.

Although not every word in Thai uses the 5 tones or the 2 lengths, many words do.

Furthermore, each word can have a different meaning depending whether it is used as a noun, an adjective, an adverb, etc...

Let's take an example (the tone marks in the transliteration are only for reading purposes):

mai ไมล์ a mile (n.)

mài ไหม่ new, fresh, novel, latest, recent, modern (adj.)

mài ไหม่ again, anew, afresh, once more, repeatedly (adv.)

mâi ไม่ no (adj.)

mâi ไม่ not (adv.)

mâi ไหม้ to burn, to be burned, to be on fire, to catch fire, to be charred (v.)

mâi ไหม้ burnt, scorched, charred, parched, sun-burnt, shrivelled (adj.)

maai ไม้ wood, timber, tree, plant, stick (n.)

maai ไม้ name of a Thai tone mark, name of a Thai vowel.(n.)

maai ม่าย to overlook (v.)

maai ม่าย widowed, divorced (adj.)

(Not used in the Thai language for this word, but additional ways to write "mai" are: "ใม, มัย" and their counterparts with the 5 tones.)

Most of the non-Asian foreigners will hear only "mai" without any difference in tone or in word length.

Even real Thais will have a hard time to know what a specific "mai" means if pronounced isolated and the meaning cannot be deducted from a complete sentence.

If someone makes a mistake on the tone or the word length in this example (mai), no harm is done.

But if someone makes a mistake on the tone or the word length of "ma", chances are that he/she will get a sneer at the best or end-up in the grave at the worst.

Where he/she initially would have wanted to say with "ma" "to come", without being aware of it, the person can have said "a horse", "a dog", etc...

The example "mai" uses only the consonant "m" which has no counterparts in Thai.

But many Thai consonants have a lot of counterparts which are pronounciated with a minor difference (e.g.: the sound "t" which can be written as "ด,ถ, ต, ฎ, ธ, ฐ, ฏ, ท") and would make the list "x" times longer.

Thai language uses "tone rules" to determinate the tone which are very hard to learn for most of us.

Also, prior to learning the tone rules, one needs to know the Thai alphabet.

The Thai alphabet has 44 characters, divided into high, mid and low tones.

But the initial tone of the character has nothing to do with the tone of the word.

The tone of the word depends on many other things as the tone length, whether it is a live or a dead syllable, etc...

A lot of the foreigners travelling to Thailand (if not the most) are elder people who have problems in acquiring a new language and surely an Asian language.

"Thai is an easy language ..."

[clausewitz]

It is an easy langauge compared to say English or Japanese. However, any lanaguge does take a degree of effort, memorisation, pronunciation skills etc.

[sbk]

I think alot of it has to do with how a person approaches learning the language.

I don't look at it as the same word with a different tone. I look at it as a different word. If I said to you in English, "They're going to go pick up their book over there" Would you think to yourself, all three are the same word? No, you wouldn't consider them the "same word" because they sound similar. So, apply the same kind of thinking to Thai and it makes it more understandable.

Hope that makes sense

[aanon]

Not just saying this to be contrary, but I really don't think I have come across any teaching material which tries to claim that Thai is unusually easy - that is, excluding titles and catchphrases along the lines of Andrew Biggs' 'English is a piece of cake!'.

all the best.

[midas]

What I find unusual and a bit challenging is this concept of reading backwards

essentially regarding the vowels. It's as if your eyes have to read in a

circular fashion as you proceed along the sentence because some characters

have vowels attached to them in front, above behind and below.

it takes some getting used to

[BigSnake]

Not easy for this old cowboy

[kriswillems]

The best attitude to study a language is to consider it doable - but requiring effort.

If the books would start with saying Thai is a very difficult language the reader would give up after 3 pages.

Studying Thai is doable for most people.

[AlexLah]

mai ไมล์ a mile (n.)

mài ไหม่ new, fresh, novel, latest, recent, modern (adj.)

mài ไหม่ again, anew, afresh, once more, repeatedly (adv.)

mâi ไม่ no (adj.)

mâi ไม่ not (adv.)

mâi ไหม้ to burn, to be burned, to be on fire, to catch fire, to be charred (v.)

mâi ไหม้ burnt, scorched, charred, parched, sun-burnt, shrivelled (adj.)

maai ไม้ wood, timber, tree, plant, stick (n.)

maai ไม้ name of a Thai tone mark, name of a Thai vowel.(n.)

maai ม่าย to overlook (v.)

maai ม่าย widowed, divorced (adj.)

You make me feel so bad.

How will I ever learn this language....

Apart from learning the tones and vowel lenght how will I ever learn the true meanings of all the idioms?

[Richard W]

But is Thai really as easy to learn as the books, cassettes or CD's are suggesting?

Thai is a tonal language.

Yes, and it is generally acknowledged that that poses problems for those who do not already speak a tonal language, i.e. for speakers of about half the world's languages.

The Thai language has 5 tones, each with a different meaning.

In addition to the 5 tones, each word can have 2 tone lengths, a short or a long tone.

This makes that every word can be written in 10 different ways and with 10 different meanings.

Although not every word in Thai uses the 5 tones or the 2 lengths, many words do.

SBK has already largely demolished this complaint. Of course, English is also quite bad, at least the British version. (Americans seem to see the language differently.) Many English vowels occur in long/short pairs, and final consonants can have at least six forms - voiced/voiceless, stop/fricative/stop+fricative, e.g.:

bit, beat, bits, beats, biz, bid, bead, bees, bids, beads

mitt, meet, meats, miss, mead, meads

nit, neat, nits, niece, need, needs, knees

My replies to the next bit are written in red, because I got the error message, 'You have posted more than the allowed number of quoted blocks of text'.

Furthermore, each word can have a different meaning depending whether it is used as a noun, an adjective, an adverb, etc...

Let's take an example (the tone marks in the transliteration are only for reading purposes):

mai ไมล์ a mile (n.)

mài ไหม่ new, fresh, novel, latest, recent, modern (adj.)

mài ไหม่ again, anew, afresh, once more, repeatedly (adv.)

The last two are really the same word - the clue is in 'new' v. 'anew'. Incidentally, it's spelt ใหม่.

mâi ไม่ no (adj.)

mâi ไม่ not (adv.)

These two are the same word. An interesting question is what their formal relationship should be to the interrogative particle măi. (Please forgive the use of a breve for a caron - many people lack fonts that can render a caron).

Incidentally, you forgot the homonymous măi ไหม 'silk'.

mâi ไหม้ to burn, to be burned, to be on fire, to catch fire, to be charred (v.)

mâi ไหม้ burnt, scorched, charred, parched, sun-burnt, shrivelled (adj.)

Same word. Verbs can be used as participles.

maai ไม้ wood, timber, tree, plant, stick (n.)

maai ไม้ name of a Thai tone mark, name of a Thai vowel.(n.)

I've often wondered if these two are really the same word. You forgot to write them 'máai'.

maai ม่าย to overlook (v.)

maai ม่าย widowed, divorced (adj.)

I presume these are truly different words (pronounced mâai), but...

(Not used in the Thai language for this word, but additional ways to write "mai" are: "ใม, มัย" and their counterparts with the 5 tones.)

I'd be surprised to see the latter (mai hanakat, yo yak) with any tone marks. I searched an 18,000 odd word list and found no examples with a tone mark.

Most of the non-Asian foreigners will hear only "mai" without any difference in tone or in word length.

There is very little difference in word length. With the short vowel, the 'a' is short and the 'i' is long. With the long vowel, the 'a' is long and the 'i' is short. This applies to live closed syllables in general, not just those ending in 'i' and 'o'.

Even real Thais will have a hard time to know what a specific "mai" means if pronounced isolated and the meaning cannot be deducted from a complete sentence.

Probably some truth in this - tones are relative, not absolute, but on the other hand some have significant relevant variation in them. Low and mid are generally admitted to be difficult to distinguish in isolation.

But many Thai consonants have a lot of counterparts which are pronounciated with a minor difference (e.g.: the sound "t" which can be written as "ด,ถ, ต, ฎ, ธ, ฐ, ฏ, ท") and would make the list "x" times longer.

There are three quite different consonants here - /d/, /t/ and /th/ -

/d/ - ด ฎ

/th/ - ถ ธ ท

/t/ - ต ฏ

Admittedly I can't think of a significant European language more recent than Ancient Greek that made such a distinction. Or are you just talking about syllable-final position? These three sounds are not distinguished in syllable-final position. Incidentally, syllable finally, only ด is used - the others are used in loanwords, generally from Sanskrit, Pali or English.

Thai language uses "tone rules" to determinate the tone which are very hard to learn for most of us.

Speak for yourself, though I must say the presentation is usually abysmal.

Also, prior to learning the tone rules, one needs to know the Thai alphabet.

The Thai alphabet has 44 characters, divided into high, mid and low tones.

But the initial tone of the character has nothing to do with the tone of the word.

The tone of the word depends on many other things as the tone length, whether it is a live or a dead syllable, etc...

Yep. Thai has been written for too long. The longer a language has been written, the worse its spelling gets, though Thai has few monstrosities as bad as English 'island'. Education causes a lot of problems When it was first written, there were just three tones for live syllables (no mark, mai ek and mai tho tones) and one tone (apparently the same as the mai ek tone) for dead syllables. On the other hand, you probably wouldn't have appreciated the voiceless nasals - Old English arguably had one, while Modern Welsh has three. Edited March 13, 2008 by Richard W

[coalminer]

Initially, I had no plans to respond to the replies in this thread.

But for someone who masters the Thai language like you do (maybe better as a real Thai), I feel that a reply would be in place.

Not to refute anything you said, but merely to add some points into the discussion.

(Due to the error message " 'You have posted more than the allowed number of quoted blocks of text', I will refer to "Richard" and Coalminer" in this text.)

Coalminer

But is Thai really as easy to learn as the books, cassettes or CD's are suggesting?

Thai is a tonal language.

Richard W

Yes, and it is generally acknowledged that that poses problems for those who do not already speak a tonal language, i.e. for speakers of about half the world's languages.

Reply:

You acknowledge that learning a tonal language poses a problem for speakers of about half of the world's languages.

Yet, somewhere further in your reply you answer in reply to "Thai language uses "tone rules" to determinate the tone which are very hard to learn for most of us" with: "Speak for yourself".

Please, try to be consistent.

Coalminer

The Thai language has 5 tones, each with a different meaning.

In addition to the 5 tones, each word can have 2 tone lengths, a short or a long tone.

This makes that every word can be written in 10 different ways and with 10 different meanings.

Although not every word in Thai uses the 5 tones or the 2 lengths, many words do.

Richard W

SBK has already largely demolished this complaint.

Reply:

On the reply that SBK would have largely demolished this complaint and other posters who have taken the opportunity to reply to this thread as something "personal", I would like to give the following reply:

1. This thread was never meant to be considered as a complaint, but as a "humoristic viewpoint" on the "quirks" of learning the Thai language.

2. This thread was never meant to be personally, as you did already point out that these "quirks" poses a problem for "half of the speakers of a non tonal language".

3. Most of the advices (if not all) I have received from my Thai language teachers is not to try to analyze/translate every word separately but rather to analyze/translate the whole sentence as one. Trying to translate a Thai sentence into English or any other language in order to understand the sentence is initialy wrong as every language has it's idioms which mostly cannot be rendered into another language with the same exact meaning (again according to my Thai language teachers).

Richard W

Of course, English is also quite bad, at least the British version. (Americans seem to see the language differently.) Many English vowels occur in long/short pairs, and final consonants can have at least six forms - voiced/voiceless, stop/fricative/stop+fricative, e.g.:

Reply:

This thread was NOT intended to compare Thai to any other language in the world.

If someone would want to write a thread about the "quirks" of any language in the world (with a little bit of knowledge about that language, he would be able to write a book.

Coalminer

Furthermore, each word can have a different meaning depending whether it is used as a noun, an adjective, an adverb, etc...

Let's take an example (the tone marks in the transliteration are only for reading purposes):

mai ไมล์ a mile (n.)

mài ไหม่ new, fresh, novel, latest, recent, modern (adj.)

mài ไหม่ again, anew, afresh, once more, repeatedly (adv.)

Richard W

The last two are really the same word - the clue is in 'new' v. 'anew'. Incidentally, it's spelt ใหม่.

Reply:

(1)

"New" and "anew" have indeed the same meaning.

The only difference is that one is used as an "adjuctive" while the other is used as an "adverb".

Bur for the other translations, their counterparts are not so evident.

Also, the "incidentally spelling" ws not considered in this post as it would have been to easy to reply that I was giving incorrect examples.

Coalminer

mâi ไม่ no (adj.)

mâi ไม่ not (adv.)

Richard W

These two are the same word. An interesting question is what their formal relationship should be to the interrogative particle măi. (Please forgive the use of a breve for a caron - many people lack fonts that can render a caron).

Reply:

Thanks for giving another "quirk" by pointing at the formal relationship of the word "măi" in the interrogative particle.

Richard W

Incidentally, you forgot the homonymous măi ไหม 'silk'.

Reply:

Oops, my fault.

Thanks again for the correction.

Incidentally, if some people trying to learn the Thai langauge are chased away by this thread(s). I will at least be able to say that you have contributed to this result.

-);

(For your information, this is meant to be a "smiley" symbol after the last sentence in order to denote that you should take this sentence as a joke.)

Coalminer

mâi ไหม้ to burn, to be burned, to be on fire, to catch fire, to be charred (v.)

mâi ไหม้ burnt, scorched, charred, parched, sun-burnt, shrivelled (adj.)

Richard W

Same word. Verbs can be used as participles.

Reply:

See (1)

Coalminer

maai ไม้ wood, timber, tree, plant, stick (n.)

maai ไม้ name of a Thai tone mark, name of a Thai vowel.(n.)

Richard W

I've often wondered if these two are really the same word. You forgot to write them 'máai'.

Reply:

Thanks for the "transliteration" error.

Coalminer

maai ม่าย to overlook (v.)

maai ม่าย widowed, divorced (adj.)

Richard W

I presume these are truly different words (pronounced mâai), but...

Reply:

I will try to end your sentence with what I have learned untill now.

In order to try to translate a sentence in Thai, the reader has to take the whole sentence as one. Not separate words.

The later in the example being an "adjunctive", should only be translated with the word where it adjuncts to.

On the otherhand, there are examples about the difference in meaning when used as and adverb, verb, noun, etc. that are more bluntly.

(My apologies to the English grammar errors as English is not my primary language).

Coalminer

(Not used in the Thai language for this word, but additional ways to write "mai" are: "ใม, มัย" and their counterparts with the 5 tones.)

Richard W

I'd be surprised to see the latter (mai hanakat, yo yak) with any tone marks. I searched an 18,000 odd word list and found no examples with a tone mark.

You should add example18,001 and 18.002 to your word list:

Is ... there? … อยู่มั้ย

Is this OK for carry-on luggage? กระเป๋านี้เอาขึ้นเครื่องได้มั้ย

am I good (at it) or not? idi เก่งมั้ย

Is it far from here? ไกลจากที่นี่มั้ย

"มั๊ย" means "sure?", but mainly used as a particle.

I think I stated very clearly "Not used in the Thai language for this word".

My apologies if this was not clearly enough.

Coalminer

Most of the non-Asian foreigners will hear only "mai" without any difference in tone or in word length.

Richard W

There is very little difference in word length. With the short vowel, the 'a' is short and the 'i' is long. With the long vowel, the 'a' is long and the 'i' is short. This applies to live closed syllables in general, not just those ending in 'i' and 'o'.

Agreed about the word length.

But this may not be always clear to the listener.

Specialy if the person who is talking speaks in a "nonchalant" way.

Coalminer

Even real Thais will have a hard time to know what a specific "mai" means if pronounced isolated and the meaning cannot be deducted from a complete sentence.

Richard W

Probably some truth in this - tones are relative, not absolute, but on the other hand some have significant relevant variation in them. Low and mid are generally admitted to be difficult to distinguish in isolation.

Reply:

-);

Coalminer

But many Thai consonants have a lot of counterparts which are pronounciated with a minor difference (e.g.: the sound "t" which can be written as "ด,ถ, ต, ฎ, ธ, ฐ, ฏ, ท") and would make the list "x" times longer.

Richard W

There are three quite different consonants here - /d/, /t/ and /th/ -

/d/ - ด ฎ

/th/ - ถ ธ ท

/t/ - ต ฏ

Admittedly I can't think of a significant European language more recent than Ancient Greek that made such a distinction.

Reply:

The letter of the alfabet "c" is used in many Western alfabets which the same distinction, if not worse.

In some Western languages (Dutch), the character "c" shall be pronounced as with a "z" sound, a "k" sound, a "ch" sound, etc. depending on the word.

Richard W

Or are you just talking about syllable-final position? These three sounds are not distinguished in syllable-final position. Incidentally, syllable finally, only ด is used - the others are used in loanwords, generally from Sanskrit, Pali or English.

Reply:

I ws not talking about the syllable-final position. otherwise I should have included in my list the s-sound characters which have all a t-sound when used as syllable-final position.

Coalminer

Thai language uses "tone rules" to determinate the tone which are very hard to learn for most of us.

Richard W

Speak for yourself, though I must say the presentation is usually abysmal.

Reply:

Didn't you wirte "Yes, and it is generally acknowledged that that poses problems for those who do not already speak a tonal language, i.e. for speakers of about half the world's languages" at the beginning of this thread?.

Without any hard feelings from my side, you should try to be more consistent if you chose to attack the poster instead of the post.

Coalminer

Also, prior to learning the tone rules, one needs to know the Thai alphabet.

The Thai alphabet has 44 characters, divided into high, mid and low tones.

But the initial tone of the character has nothing to do with the tone of the word.

The tone of the word depends on many other things as the tone length, whether it is a live or a dead syllable, etc...

Richard W

Yep. Thai has been written for too long. The longer a language has been written, the worse its spelling gets, though Thai has few monstrosities as bad as English 'island'. Education causes a lot of problems When it was first written, there were just three tones for live syllables (no mark, mai ek and mai tho tones) and one tone (apparently the same as the mai ek tone) for dead syllables. On the other hand, you probably wouldn't have appreciated the voiceless nasals - Old English arguably had one, while Modern Welsh has three.

Reply:

Partly agree on this.

While I agree that Thai has been written for too long, the Thai language was "updated" some times.

But updating a language, can sometimes make the language more difficult at the end.

For example, the Belgian-Dutch language has been updated many times on a regular base although the Belgian country only exists since 1830 as a separate entity.

The result of all these changes is that a lot of Dutch-Belgians call their language "A.B.N. (Alles Behalve Nederlands)" and are struggling with all these chances.

Regards,

[Lithobid]

This was much more interesting than lunch today!

So far I have the score at

Richard W. 10 points for Griffindor

Coalminer 9 points for Slitherin

Sorry coal, but you forgot to add the word "Reply" to one of your set's of quotes

-);

Lithobid

[Richard W]

Richard W:

Yes, and it is generally acknowledged that that poses problems for those who do not already speak a tonal language, i.e. for speakers of about half the world's languages.

Reply:

You acknowledge that learning a tonal language poses a problem for speakers of about half of the world's languages.

Yet, somewhere further in your reply you answer in reply to "Thai language uses "tone rules" to determinate the tone which are very hard to learn for most of us" with: "Speak for yourself".

Please, try to be consistent.

...

Coalminer

Thai language uses "tone rules" to determinate the tone which are very hard to learn for most of us.

Richard W

Speak for yourself, though I must say the presentation is usually abysmal.

Reply:

Didn't you wirte "Yes, and it is generally acknowledged that that poses problems for those who do not already speak a tonal language, i.e. for speakers of about half the world's languages" at the beginning of this thread?.

Without any hard feelings from my side, you should try to be more consistent if you chose to attack the poster instead of the post.

There are two quite different issues here. One is being able to distinguish the tones when speaking and listening, and the other is knowing how the tone is represented in writing. The first is difficult for many; the second need not be difficult.

Coalminer

mâi ไม่ no (adj.)

mâi ไม่ not (adv.)

Richard W

These two are the same word. An interesting question is what their formal relationship should be to the interrogative particle măi. (Please forgive the use of a breve for a caron - many people lack fonts that can render a caron).

Reply:

Thanks for giving another "quirk" by pointing at the formal relationship of the word "măi" in the interrogative particle.

It's not such a quirk. A word for 'not' or 'no' is often used to mark a question, e.g. the use of a final 'No' (or equivalent) in certain styles of English, or the Latin enclitic '-ne' to mark questions. The alternative 'not' word in Thai, บ่, is similarly used as in interrogative final particle, but I'm not sure of the details of tone. (The word is more a feature of the Northern and North-Eastern dialects.) Incidentally, the tones of final particles do seem to convey meaning rather than just being an 'arbitrary' feature as they are in most words. (And yes, I am aware that there is a usually a correlation between sounds and meanings, but it is only a correlation.)

Coalminer

(Not used in the Thai language for this word, but additional ways to write "mai" are: "ใม, มัย" and their counterparts with the 5 tones.)

Richard W

I'd be surprised to see the latter (mai hanakat, yo yak) with any tone marks. I searched an 18,000 odd word list and found no examples with a tone mark.

You should add example18,001 and 18.002 to your word list:

Is ... there? … อยู่มั้ย

Is this OK for carry-on luggage? กระเป๋านี้เอาขึ้นเครื่องได้มั้ย

am I good (at it) or not? idi เก่งมั้ย

Is it far from here? ไกลจากที่นี่มั้ย

"มั๊ย" means "sure?", but mainly used as a particle.

I think I stated very clearly "Not used in the Thai language for this word".

I looked for examples with any initial consonant. The reason I didn't expect any examples with a tone mark is that in the formal language, the sequence mai hanakat, yo yak is restricted to words from Sanskrit and Pali. The example you gave, มั้ย, is a colloquial spelling of ไหม. I suspect the word list I used did not use Internet forums as a source. For what it's worth, Word 2002 marks it as a misspelling - but then it might be using the same list! It isn't in the on-line Ratchabandit, either. (The relevant page is missing from my paper copy - it was misbound!) I wonder if มั้ย is used rather than ไม้ because the 'wood' word anomalously generally has a long vowel.

Isn't มั๊ย just another colloquial spelling of ไหม? It's wrong by the general rules of Thai spelling, because one only needs mai tri and mai chattawa if the initial consonant is a mid consonant, and therefore should only use them when the initial consonant is a mid consonant. Such wrong spellings do occur - a common one is เค๊ก for เค้ก.

[coalminer]

There are two quite different issues here. One is being able to distinguish the tones when speaking and listening, and the other is knowing how the tone is represented in writing. The first is difficult for many; the second need not be difficult.

While the second do not need to be difficult, it is many times difficult reading the many posts about the Thai tones in the different forums.

Nothing is difficult for someone who has mastered the problem like you did with the Thai language.

It's not such a quirk. A word for 'not' or 'no' is often used to mark a question, e.g. the use of a final 'No' (or equivalent) in certain styles of English, or the Latin enclitic '-ne' to mark questions. The alternative 'not' word in Thai, บ่, is similarly used as in interrogative final particle, but I'm not sure of the details of tone. (The word is more a feature of the Northern and North-Eastern dialects.) Incidentally, the tones of final particles do seem to convey meaning rather than just being an 'arbitrary' feature as they are in most words. (And yes, I am aware that there is a usually a correlation between sounds and meanings, but it is only a correlation.)

Digging deeper on the meaning of the Thai word "ไม่ (not, no)" would bring this thread in an endless loop I'm affraid.

Many books tranaslate this word also as "isnt it?"

The translations of the word "ไม่" are endless.

I've heard the word บ่ a few times in the Isaan language.

But I haven't been able to give it any meaning.

I looked for examples with any initial consonant. The reason I didn't expect any examples with a tone mark is that in the formal language, the sequence mai hanakat, yo yak is restricted to words from Sanskrit and Pali. The example you gave, มั้ย, is a colloquial spelling of ไหม. I suspect the word list I used did not use Internet forums as a source. For what it's worth, Word 2002 marks it as a misspelling - but then it might be using the same list! It isn't in the on-line Ratchabandit, either. (The relevant page is missing from my paper copy - it was misbound!) I wonder if มั้ย is used rather than ไม้ because the 'wood' word anomalously generally has a long vowel.

When I raised the question a few months ago why I couldn't find any particles in the Thai dictionaries (and I can assure you that I have a lot of them, the man response was that particles are not mentionned in ANY dictionary.

That's why they call them particles, or words to "convey" a meaning.

The same applies to your fail in finding the examples in your books (or maybe it was written on the missing relevant page, -).

The examples I gave doesn't come from the Internet but from my Thai teacher who is a real Thai.

Isn't มั๊ย just another colloquial spelling of ไหม? It's wrong by the general rules of Thai spelling, because one only needs mai tri and mai chattawa if the initial consonant is a mid consonant, and therefore should only use them when the initial consonant is a mid consonant. Such wrong spellings do occur - a common one is เค๊ก for เค้ก.

This example was also given by my Thai teacher.

มั๊ย means "Sure?, Are you sure?" and is a particle used in Isaan frequently.

Wether the use or the spelling of these particles is correct or not is not in my competence and should be discussed between skilled people in the Thai language as my Thai teacher and you.

Regards

[Johpa]

There are two quite different issues here. One is being able to distinguish the tones when speaking and listening, and the other is knowing how the tone is represented in writing. The first is difficult for many; the second need not be difficult.

While the second do not need to be difficult, it is many times difficult reading the many posts about the Thai tones in the different forums.

Nothing is difficult for someone who has mastered the problem like you did with the Thai language.

I can't speak for Richard, but as one who has become comfortable with Thai, both the spoken and the written language, it was not an easy path and took quite a bit of effort, but nothing unreasonable. There are a few adults who are able to somewhat retain a child's ability to learn through osmosis, simple exposure, but most of us have to make an effort.

As far as level of difficulty, by US Foreign Service standards, Thai ranks as a level 3 language, with level 4 languages needing the most average hours of study to reach a specific level of proficiency.

The Thai alphabet is very learnable, simply memorize the letters and a few tone rules, most of which are quite natural apart from the borrowed words from Pali. It has been decades since I formally studied Thai and I have long forgotten most of the tone "rules" and what letter belongs to which consonant class, but I can still read. But truthfully, some days my produced tones are more accurate than others

When I raised the question a few months ago why I couldn't find any particles in the Thai dictionaries (and I can assure you that I have a lot of them, the man response was that particles are not mentioned in ANY dictionary.

That's why they call them particles, or words to "convey" a meaning.

My Haas dictionary lists many particles. Since Thais use tones for phonemic purposes to convey meaning, they tend to use particles to give the meaning nuances. With English we do not use tones for phonemic purposes (they still exist phonetically) and tend to use tones to give the nuances. But since we are talking nuances, such as expressing doubt or adding emphasis, it is not easy to explain or to learn the appropriate usage of many of the Thai particles other than hear them in context.

[Richard W]

When I raised the question a few months ago why I couldn't find any particles in the Thai dictionaries (and I can assure you that I have a lot of them, the man response was that particles are not mentionned in ANY dictionary.

That's why they call them particles, or words to "convey" a meaning.

While there certainly was a tradition of not entering them, some at least are in Ratchabandit and in my big Thai-English dictionary. On the other hand, my pocket Thai-English dictionary has neither ไหม (apart from the meaning 'silk') nor ครับ.

The same applies to your fail in finding the examples in your books (or maybe it was written on the missing relevant page, -).

The examples I gave doesn't come from the Internet but from my Thai teacher who is a real Thai.

I think it's more akin to the difficulty in finding words like เมื่อไหร่, though I see that that is actually in Ratchabandit, nowadays at least.

[kriswillems]

You're right, Richard.

If you look for มั๊ย on google you'll end up on all kinds of message boards.

There you can see the meaning is the same as มั้ย, or better ไหม.

มั๊ย is wrong. Low class consonants NEVER have a ๊.

Thai people make this mistake very often when they have to write "talking language" or words with an English root. Even some teachers in my Thai courses write these words wrong. Other examples:

สมุดโน๊ต (notebook)

โค๊ก (coke)

I think 90% of Thai people can't explain the tone rules. They just remember the combination of consonant and tone mark, or consonant and long/short vowel (and this for every consonant). If they have to write a combination that they have never seen before they make mistakes.

This shows again the Thai educational system is very much focussed on remembering and very little on thinking.

[mangkorn]

บ่ basically means "no/not" in Isan, and does double duty as both question and answer: ไหม and ไม่

But when used as an interrogative, it is often pronounced บ๊อ

Edited March 14, 2008 by mangkorn

[Rikker]

Coalminer, I'm confused why you've taken Richard's straightforward style as an attack, let alone an attack on you personally, because he has a lot of good points. You: "you should try to be more consistent if you chose to attack the poster instead of the post."

Most of the stuff you mention in your original post is clearly laid forth in order to make Thai seem daunting, particularly the hairsplitting of different senses of the same word into different "words" (I'm with Richard on this one). When Richard points out that English is just as bad from the perspective of foreign learner, you reply "This thread was NOT intended to compare Thai to any other language in the world."

But if you're talking about how intimidatingly complex Thai is for foreign learners, aren't you thereby implying that it's more complex than other languages? Or else why bring up the topic at all?

Enjoy the conversation. There's no need to get defensive. I don't read any aggression in Richard's remarks, but maybe that's just me.

Basically, chill out.

Edited March 14, 2008 by Rikker

[coalminer]

I think 90% of Thai people can't explain the tone rules. They just remember the combination of consonant and tone mark, or consonant and long/short vowel (and this for every consonant). If they have to write a combination that they have never seen before they make mistakes.

This shows again the Thai educational system is very much focussed on remembering and very little on thinking.

When I asked my Thai teacher (who has been teaching Thai in schools for more than 25 years) about the tone rules, I've got the straight answer: "Forget the tone rules and listen how Thais use to pronounce a word or a sentence".

-);

[coalminer]

Coalminer, I'm confused why you've taken Richard's straightforward style as an attack, let alone an attack on you personally, because he has a lot of good points. You: "you should try to be more consistent if you chose to attack the poster instead of the post."

Rikker, I did take Richards line "Talk for yourself" as a personal attack on the OP.

If "yourself" is not personal, how personal is personal?

But I respect Richard as a person and someone who has much more knowledge of the Thai language than most of us and perhaps lot of Thais.

That's why I said "without hard feelings" in my reply and didn't keep hammering on this sentence in my next reply but rather chosed to cut it out.

Please, dont try to put oil on the plate where it was already long forgotten by me and maybe also by Richard.

Most of the stuff you mention in your original post is clearly laid forth in order to make Thai seem daunting, particularly the hairsplitting of different senses of the same word into different "words" (I'm with Richard on this one).

When Richard points out that English is just as bad from the perspective of foreign learner, you reply "This thread was NOT intended to compare Thai to any other language in the world."

But if you're talking about how intimidatingly complex Thai is for foreign learners, aren't you thereby implying that it's more complex than other languages? Or else why bring up the topic at all?

I've started this topic to give a "caricatural" or "humoristic" view on learning Thai.

At the same time, this topic can be educational for people learning the Thai language IMHO, if I see the replies from Richard and others injecting new words into the discussion (Isaan words) or showing that some words are simply errors in the spelling, although used regularly.

The sentence that Thai is more difficult to learn than many other languages has been showed today with Johpa's reply that Thai is ranked 3th in diffculty (on a total of 4) by the US Military.

If someone would want to compare the spelling of the Thai language against the "complexity" of another language, it would be easy to write a complete book.

But comparing the Thai language to other languages was not the intention of this thread and I didn't want to see this thread evelving in an endless comparing of the Thai language with any other language.

Richard already admitted that learning Thai is difficult with the sentence: "Yes, and it is generally acknowledged that that poses problems for those who do not already speak a tonal language, i.e. for speakers of about half the world's languages."

And this has been admitted as well by Johpa and other readers of this topic.

The reason why I started this topic has been given above.

Enjoy the conversation. There's no need to get defensive. I don't read any aggression in Richard's remarks, but maybe that's just me.

Basically, chill out.

I surely enjoy the conversation.

And I enjoy even more the input into this thread of Richard, Johpa and others with their knowledge of the Thai language to which I'm very gratefull for their participation.

Jai yen yen

[kriswillems]

For a change I have question about English language.

I am also a native Dutch speaker (as Coalminer) and I was also surprised when I read "speak for yourself".

I am wondering if the expression "speak for yourself" should always be interpreted as a very harsh way of expressing disagreement.

Or can this expression can also be used in a rather funny and poetical way when it's put within a more formal context?

[Rikker]

I am wondering if the expression "speak for yourself" should always be interpreted as a very harsh way of expressing disagreement.

Far from it. For me, it's not an inherently negative expression. It completely depends on the way it's used.

I assume there's some rude expression in Dutch which Dutch people take this phrase to be equivalent with..?

[mangkorn]

That expression is neither harsh nor rude. It simply means: "what may be true for you is not necessarily true for others." It's a pretty good life lesson to take heed of, too.

Lighten up.

Edited March 15, 2008 by mangkorn

[kriswillems]

I am wondering if the expression "speak for yourself" should always be interpreted as a very harsh way of expressing disagreement.

Far from it. For me, it's not an inherently negative expression. It completely depends on the way it's used.

I assume there's some rude expression in Dutch which Dutch people take this phrase to be equivalent with..?

If you translate this expression word by word into the Belgian "dialect" of Dutch (not Dutch) it sounds rather rude (spreek voor uw eigen). It always sounds very negative unless it's being used between very close friends in a joking way. We wouldn't write something like this on an internet forum (about a serious subject such as language study). (Most)Belgian people are rather reserved when it comes to expressing their opinion.

My apologies for disturbing this thread - back to the subject.

[Richard W]

Coalminer, I'm confused why you've taken Richard's straightforward style as an attack, let alone an attack on you personally, because he has a lot of good points. You: "you should try to be more consistent if you chose to attack the poster instead of the post."

Rikker, I did take Richards line "Talk for yourself" as a personal attack on the OP.

If "yourself" is not personal, how personal is personal?

I did take

Thai language uses "tone rules" to determinate the tone which are very hard to learn for most of us.

(my emphasis) as disparaging the members of the forum. My reply is only an attack if you view a disagreement as an attack, and I do see that many (!= most) do get confused by them.

It annoys me that the Thai alphabet (at least, from ko kai to mo ma) rarely gets presented as a grid like a periodic table of the elements, with the high consonants and nasals (including the part-time nasal yo ying) lined up in their three columns. I appreciate its difficult to decide whether to line ko kai and cho chan up with bo baimai or po pla - phonetics argues for one way, letter shapes for another. The columns even have standard numbers - 1 to 5. Three columns are 2-elements wide, a bit like Group VIII in the periodic table. I'd also love to draw it so as to point out that the sequences so sala to so suea and yo yak to wo waen (excluding the syllabic liquid characters) are actually partial columns (which I'm tempted to number 2b - to go with kho khuat and fo fa - and 6), but I'm no artist.

Is it worth having a poll to establish the truth of Coalminer's claim that most of us found the tone rules very hard to learn? I think it isn't, and I suppose there is the possibility, as I took Coalminer to suggest, that those who found it hard have forgotten how hard it was.

[kriswillems]

Ok Richard. Here my opinion about the tone rules.

First of all, I am not very talented when it comes to studying languages.

The basic tone rules are not that difficult, in fact they are rather straightforward.

The part of silent ะ and the vowel อำ in words with 2 syllables and the influence on the tone of a word was rather difficult (also because of the exceptions).

Learning to use the tone rules at reading speed was hard. I needed to practice a lot.

Pronouncing the tones correctly was difficult and sometimes is still difficult (especially high tone).

To summarize:

If you look at the tone rules from a mathematical/analytical point of view, they are very easy, but applying them in a correct way at reasonable speed is hard.

Edited March 16, 2008 by kriswillems

[Bub]

I think learning a new language is a completely different experience for each person who tries it. At age 56, I find it to be very difficult. Not sure if I will ever be fluent enough to understand everything a Thai person says. But, I work with a young Romanian girl who learned English and Spanish within 2 years of being in the US, without a single lesson. I really envy her.

I have trouble learning the tones for individual words. It's much easier, and more practical I think, to learn words in context. My vocab is up to about 2,000 words, so I try to deal with common phrases, slang, etc.

My last trip, I think I spoke close to 50% Thai. In April, I hope to achieve 80%. I would like to find a private tutor who will go around BKK with me for at least a few hours each day.

[Briggsy]

Ok Richard. Here my opinion about the tone rules.

First of all, I am not very talented when it comes to studying languages.

The basic tone rules are not that difficult, in fact they are rather straightforward.

The part of silent ะ and the vowel อำ in words with 2 syllables and the influence on the tone of a word was rather difficult (also because of the exceptions).

Learning to use the tone rules at reading speed was hard. I needed to practice a lot.

Pronouncing the tones correctly was difficult and sometimes is still difficult (especially high tone).

To summarize:

If you look at the tone rules from a mathematical/analytical point of view, they are very easy, but applying them in a correct way at reasonable speed is hard.

Kris

One good way of building up the speed with which you are able to pronounce a word with the correct tone from its Thai spelling is the use of a nonsense-syllable chart.

Just write out a load of syllables in Thai. It doesn't matter if they have a meaning or not. The Thai pronunciation rules mean that every syllable has a tone intrinsically linked to its spelling. Then try to read the syllables aloud with the correct pronunciation. Best if you have someone there who can tell you if you're doing it wrong.

น้า มด หมุด หรู่ งิก โหญ ณี and so on. Maybe 100 syllables in a 10 by 10 chart. Then try reading across, up, down and from right to left.

Just an idea.

[meadish_sweetball]

Ok Richard. Here my opinion about the tone rules.

First of all, I am not very talented when it comes to studying languages.

The basic tone rules are not that difficult, in fact they are rather straightforward.

The part of silent ะ and the vowel อำ in words with 2 syllables and the influence on the tone of a word was rather difficult (also because of the exceptions).

Learning to use the tone rules at reading speed was hard. I needed to practice a lot.

Pronouncing the tones correctly was difficult and sometimes is still difficult (especially high tone).

To summarize:

If you look at the tone rules from a mathematical/analytical point of view, they are very easy, but applying them in a correct way at reasonable speed is hard.

Kris

One good way of building up the speed with which you are able to pronounce a word with the correct tone from its Thai spelling is the use of a nonsense-syllable chart.

Just write out a load of syllables in Thai. It doesn't matter if they have a meaning or not. The Thai pronunciation rules mean that every syllable has a tone intrinsically linked to its spelling. Then try to read the syllables aloud with the correct pronunciation. Best if you have someone there who can tell you if you're doing it wrong.

น้า มด หมุด หรู่ งิก โหญ ณี and so on. Maybe 100 syllables in a 10 by 10 chart. Then try reading across, up, down and from right to left.

Just an idea.

At Uni we spent a fair bit of lesson time with a similar approach (the teacher would write nonsense syllables on the blackboard, and we would attempt to read them out), and also the reverse - our teacher would say a syllable without writing it, and we would take turns getting up to the blackboard and trying to write it out, observing tone and vowel length (spelling would be optional as long as one got the tone and vowel length right, although our teacher would note which ones were common words, and add their spelling).

Great practice for perfecting ones pronunciation and ear, although some people in our class found the method of being publicly corrected by the teacher for every tiny mistake, intimidating. Before somebody mentions it, it is of course true that syllables carefully pronounced in isolation are a very different beast from rapidly spoken Thai.

I still believe that to get truly proficient, one benefits a great deal from time spent learning overly elaborate pronunciation, as one's speech will start from ultra-clear instead of making, and risking the cementing of, mistakes when trying to mimic rapid speech without the theoretical blueprint.

[kriswillems]

Thanks all for the advice. At this moment I manage to read most of the tones/syllables correctly at reasonable speed. If I makes mistakes it's because I am sometimes too lazy to focus on correct pronunciation. It took a while to reach this level. My trick was to read stories and let a Thai teacher correct every word that I pronounce wrong. I spent many hours, even days doing this.