Farang Learning Thai

[Ratsima]

Try that software that Gacca mentions above. I find it excellent.

It's Windoze-only. I have a Mac....

Anyway, why would it be better than the speech analyzer built-in to Rosetta Stone? They seem to do the exact same thing.

[meadish_sweetball]

I don't know either of those applications but I find the idea appealing. I wonder what it is that causes the block. I bet it can somehow be bypassed by tricking the brain.

[clausewitz]

Try that software that Gacca mentions above. I find it excellent.

It's Windoze-only. I have a Mac....

Anyway, why would it be better than the speech analyzer built-in to Rosetta Stone? They seem to do the exact same thing.

Ok try imitating a Thai- really like you are being sarcastic, with some of the tones. Make sure you don't know beforehand whether it is falling or rising or High/low. Then work backwards once you get a few right.

[Ratsima]

Ok try imitating a Thai- really like you are being sarcastic, with some of the tones. Make sure you don't know beforehand whether it is falling or rising or High/low. Then work backwards once you get a few right.

Another piece of interesting and provocative advice. I'm good at sarcasm, so I'll give it a go.

I should note that I've already taken seriously, with some success, a couple of the suggestions made in this thread. I went out to buy some gin the other evening. With a big smile I prepared the clerk for a farang-speaking-Thai by giving her a nice greeting. I followed that with a simple, "I want gin" (excessive polite words deleted). She pointed the way, I asked the price, she told me and we concluded the purchase. Now, we've been told that "พูดไทยเก่ง" is a hollow complement, but I was happy to hear it from the lips of an older woman (well, my age) who observed the transaction. I later celebrated with a lovely gin and tonic in the garden....

[CSS]

Ok try imitating a Thai- really like you are being sarcastic, with some of the tones. Make sure you don't know beforehand whether it is falling or rising or High/low. Then work backwards once you get a few right.

Another piece of interesting and provocative advice. I'm good at sarcasm, so I'll give it a go.

I should note that I've already taken seriously, with some success, a couple of the suggestions made in this thread. I went out to buy some gin the other evening. With a big smile I prepared the clerk for a farang-speaking-Thai by giving her a nice greeting. I followed that with a simple, "I want gin" (excessive polite words deleted). She pointed the way, I asked the price, she told me and we concluded the purchase. Now, we've been told that "พูดไทยเก่ง" is a hollow complement, but I was happy to hear it from the lips of an older woman (well, my age) who observed the transaction. I later celebrated with a lovely gin and tonic in the garden....

That's great and good to hear. Congratulations!

[kriswillems]

If you type "voice analyser mac" in google you'll find links to free voice and spectrum analysers for mac.

You could try:

http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Audio/AudioXplorer.shtml

and

http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/mac/SPECTRUM_ANALYZERS/

I just tried the voice analyser software on windows and I think it's very useful.

I have a remark about the high tone. My impression is that this tone is high and rising for long vowels but just high and flat for short vowels. And the high tone in diphthong vowels sounds again different. To me it looks like there are at least 2 or 3 different high tone pronunciations. The diphthongs are the hardest for me.

I would like to see voice analyser pictures of the different tones with different kinds of vowels (short, long and diphthongs)

[meadish_sweetball]

I agree there is a difference in the high tone when spoken over long vowels as opposed to short vowels (in fact the short vowels are so short there is no time to produce a marked rise without being dangerously close to turn the short vowel into a long one).

To be honest though, I have never noticed a difference of the high tone pronounced over long constant vowels as opposed to long diphthongs. It could just be my brain telling me the difference is not significant, I suppose.

[kriswillems]

I agree there is a difference in the high tone when spoken over long vowels as opposed to short vowels (in fact the short vowels are so short there is no time to produce a marked rise without being dangerously close to turn the short vowel into a long one).

To be honest though, I have never noticed a difference of the high tone pronounced over long constant vowels as opposed to long diphthongs. It could just be my brain telling me the difference is not significant, I suppose.

I think you're right meadish.

The voice analyser also doesn't show any difference with the long vowels when I pronounce the diphthongs with high tone. But my teacher sometimes corrects me when I pronounce a diphthong with high tone. She never does that with long vowels. Next time I'll ask her what exactly is wrong.

For me the high tone was the most difficult of all tones and I think every Thai language student should try to get it correct from the beginning. I don't like the idea of only studying the falling, rising and mid-tone in the beginning.

[Ratsima]

It seems to me all you have to do is work relentlessly on your tones.

I'm not sure why you think it's tones. When I hear Thais speak, I don't hear words at all. It's just noise. When I listen to my wife speak to her family, friends, or even service people at The Mall I always listen very carefully but I almost never understand anything. But, if I can get my wife to write it down (in Thai) or repeat it back, I almost always understand. At least I can hear words and know which ones I know and which ones I don't.

I think my problem is more fundamental than tones. In other words, I don't yet hear Thai well enough for tones to be a problem. I've been struggling with this for many years now. I can understand Thai Lesson Thai (Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur or Becker), I just can't understand Thai as spoken in the real world; this in spite of three years of listening, eavesdropping, soap operas, news, etc., etc.

I apologize for the Windows crack. I get more annoyed than I should when I run across someone who assumes that the entire world runs on Windows....

(And, yes, Kris, I do know how to search for Mac software....)

[Gaccha]

It seems to me all you have to do is work relentlessly on your tones.

I'm not sure why you think it's tones. When I hear Thais speak, I don't hear words at all. It's just noise. When I listen to my wife speak to her family, friends, or even service people at The Mall I always listen very carefully but I almost never understand anything. But, if I can get my wife to write it down (in Thai) or repeat it back, I almost always understand. At least I can hear words and know which ones I know and which ones I don't.

I think my problem is more fundamental than tones. In other words, I don't yet hear Thai well enough for tones to be a problem. I've been struggling with this for many years now. I can understand Thai Lesson Thai (Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur or Becker), I just can't understand Thai as spoken in the real world; this in spite of three years of listening, eavesdropping, soap operas, news, etc., etc.

I apologize for the Windows crack. I get more annoyed than I should when I run across someone who assumes that the entire world runs on Windows....

(And, yes, Kris, I do know how to search for Mac software....)

You are just describing sometihng that everyone goes through, I suspect. Are you saying not a single word in Thai is understood by you? Within one week of living in Thailand I could comfortably hear the numbers when they were spoken (even in conversations near to me of which I was not privy). I can't imagine after 3 years you can't hear them. So I bet you can hear some.

I note you can understand after having it written down. Yikes! You are on a hiding to nothing. A great big flashing beacon went on when I read that. This is the worst thing you can do for listening practice. Okay, let me tell you exactly how to learn how to listen. Watch and record a news story. Nothing fancy-- ideally a murder. The story should be about 1 minute long. Look up or guess the vocabulary before listening again. Record the story on your MP3 player (ie. no visual stimulae). Listen to it and then try to write every word down (of course, if you don't hear "words", then try to write any sounds you hear). Do this at least 15 times before giving up (when you get more used to this you should be doing it 40-50 times). While listening write sounds you want to check in the dictionary. After that, have your Thai wife write exactly the dialogue. Look up words you didn't know, listen again and again and again. Eventually the 1 minute dialogue will be very easy to follow-- so easy that for a moment you will think you are suddenly fluent. (However, if you were to listen to another dialogue it will feel hopeless again). You will be able to return to this dialogue in 2 months and still have a remarkable ability to understand it. You will find that you start liking certain phrases, tones of voice. This is good-- you are moving away from relying on having it written down or spoken artificially slowly to you.

As an alternative, you can try Western movies dubbed into Thai. You will be familiar with the dialogues in English (so you can guess the vocab), you know you enjoy the movie (so you can persist) and there is a certain excitement in learning how to say your favourite phrases in your target language (how does Yoda say: "No. Try not. Do or do not . There is no try." in Thai?).

You are in an ideal position to do this. You have a large vocab but your ears are not used to it. I can remember using a word in conversation and then not understanding the word when it was spoken back to me: not because of a tone or accent but simply because my brain had not learnt the word "to hear it").

Please trust me on this. Your listening ability is going to skyrocket but give it 6 months of 30 minutes a day before you are P8 level.

[Ratsima]

Thanks for your reply. I'm not sure what "You are on a hiding to nothing" means....

I had a long discussion with my wife about this last night. This after she had a brief conversation with her daughter and the only word I picked out of the whole thing was "bathing suit". So, yeah, I can pick out a word or two, but that's it. This is typical of my experience, both at home and out and about. Numbers aren't so bad now, but I still have difficulty distinguishing between "11" and "18" (and "21" and "28", and so on).

I'll try the suggestion about the news stories, but I'm not sure how I would record one. The movie might be easier as we have a bunch of DVD's that have Thai as an optional language.

Attached is a screen shot of a Rosetta Stone lesson. You hear a sentence and then have to pick out the correct one. I can do this almost without fail. Even if I don't remember what all the words mean I can match what I hear with what I read. This is easy. Of course, no one actually speaks Rosetta Stone Thai, so learning all this hasn't helped much.

Thanks again. I'll keep at it.

[Ratsima]

I finally found some Thai newscasts that had been converted to one minute podcasts. I listened to these over and over again, but it was a total blank. I couldn't pick out any words that I could understand.

Today I went to my local minimart to buy beer, as usual. I normally take along a cloth bag so they don't have to waste a plastic one. But, today I forgot. I tried to say, "ตอนนี้ไม่มีถุง" to the lady owner. But, instead of her fetching a plastic one, as expected, she brought out a huge collection of razors and razor blades. I must have mispronounced my planned sentence so horribly that she thought I'd asked for a razor, but I don't see anything in my sentence that sounds even remotely like มีดโกน.

Of course, then I'm stuck, with no way to get out. She starts asking tons of questions that mean nothing to me.

I finally got away with just the beer I wanted in the first place.

It is instances like this that put me in a deep depression about ever learning to speak Thai.

Is this the sort of thing the OP was asking about when he said, "Farang Learning Thai, How painful is that?"

For me, very painful, very painful indeed.

[erikhs]

I have been getting phone refill cards at 7-11 for a few years now. Of course, I do not speak Thai. I usually go in and ask, "Mee 1-2-call ha roi baht?" Last week I asked for 300 baht cards, and I needed two cards. For my second sentence, I said something like "sahm roi, song." Then we went back and forth three times, not communicating. Finally he sold me two 300-baht 1-2-call cards, and I left. I have no idea what went wrong. If I cannot even change my order from a single 500-baht card to two 300-baht cards, it is discouraging. After two years of swimming at the public pool, and I barely know how to offer a child a piggy-back ride, which in Mexico among Mayas took me about three days to learn to say "koo-chun." I started a brief introductory course recently, that only proved that Thai is an incredibly complex language for a native English speaker to learn. You probably need to spend a thousand intensive hours studying Thai before the light begins to turn on. I do not have that much patience.

Im no expert, but from my thai class i think your problem is that you didnt use a "classifier". Just like you would say "Id like a glass of water" in english there would be a classifier for phone cards, dont ask me what it is! So you would ask "DTAC saam roi, song xxxx".. Is this right?

[joy2]

More you get old, it more difficult to study the language .. but it not always. I met friend, he is 72 years old but he study Thai language in Chiang Mai, now he is improved a lot. Try to hang out with Thai with different background...has good education, middle, or not so educate but you will get variety of vocab.as the same as me..choke dee

[DavidHouston]

Im no expert, but from my thai class i think your problem is that you didnt use a "classifier". Just like you would say "Id like a glass of water" in english there would be a classifier for phone cards, dont ask me what it is! So you would ask "DTAC saam roi, song xxxx".. Is this right?

You are correct. The correct classifier for บัตรเติมเงิน (bàt-rá-dterm-ngern), "telephone refill card ; pre-paid card" is ใบ (bai). This is also the classifier for ตั๋ว (dtŭa), "ticket", among other words.

Edited July 3, 2008 by DavidHouston

[Ratsima]

More you get old, it more difficult to study the language .. but it not always. I met friend, he is 72 years old but he study Thai language in Chiang Mai, now he is improved a lot. Try to hang out with Thai with different background...has good education, middle, or not so educate but you will get variety of vocab.as the same as me..choke dee

I don't hang out with any Thais, ever. The only contact I have with Thai people is as a customer at a restaurant or retail outlet. Where would I go to "hang out Thai with different background"?

[kriswillems]

You can read and write but nobody understands you when you speak...

It looks like you studied Thai language by yourself and not with a teacher that corrects your pronunciation. If you pay Thai people to speak with you they will speak to you.

Some guys go to bars to practise their languages skills. But the subjects you'll talk about over there are rather limited, you might end up speaking Isaan or Cambodian, your wife will probably not be very supportive, and in the end you might be paying much more than you originally planned.

There are no Thai language school in your area. So, I would go to any school in your area, look for a teachers that teaches Thai children or for any school that organises extra courses in the evening or weekends. You don't need a teacher with a bachelor degree. Anyone that studied until M.6 will do. This kind of teacher is also not very expensive. I would go for a teacher that doesn't know any English.

Learning to understand spoken Thai and speak Thai without the help of anyone is very hard. Learning to read Thai by yourself is not that hard.

Edited July 4, 2008 by kriswillems

[Groongthep]

"Learning to understand spoken Thai and speak Thai without the help of anyone is very hard. Learning to read Thai by yourself is not that hard."

kriswillems is right. A professor of history at Chula Aajarn Tak once told me he used to work with a renown farang scholar of Thai history who could read and write Thai perfectly even writing academic papers in Thai for publication in journals. He was also was able to translate early thai/khmer script into modern Thai and English. Unfortunately, when he tried to speak Thai nearly no one could understand him. Speaking and comprehension take practice practice practice. There is no substitute.

[Slip]

I finally found some Thai newscasts that had been converted to one minute podcasts. I listened to these over and over again, but it was a total blank. I couldn't pick out any words that I could understand.

Do you have a link you could share for this Ratsima? I'm in a similar boat to you I think, but wouldn't mind giving this a try.

Gotta just keep plugging away...

[meadish_sweetball]

Today I went to my local minimart to buy beer, as usual. I normally take along a cloth bag so they don't have to waste a plastic one. But, today I forgot. I tried to say, "ตอนนี้ไม่มีถุง" to the lady owner. But, instead of her fetching a plastic one, as expected, she brought out a huge collection of razors and razor blades. I must have mispronounced my planned sentence so horribly that she thought I'd asked for a razor, but I don't see anything in my sentence that sounds even remotely like มีดโกน.

Hard to say, but my guess is that she thought she heard the word มีด in the middle of what was supposed to be มีถุง and thought 'maybe he wants to shave'. Did you have a five o clock shade perhaps?

[Ratsima]

Slip: Here's one source of podcasts in Thai:

School Podcasts

And another: This is school kids reading Thai news stories. A little fast for me, although some are easier than others.

About half way down on this page are some links to YouTube videos in Thai:

Thai Language

I'm sorry, but I can't seem to find the source of the original news podcasts that I downloaded. I'll keep looking. Those were actually captures of Thai TV News that had English subtitles superimposed so that you had an idea what they were talking about. But, I found these to be harder than the student read ones referred to above.

Groongthep: I actually ran into the guy who could read and write but not speak. I saw him years ago on lower Suk shopping. He did everything with a pencil and a pad of paper. Amazing.

Kris: I have been asking around for a teacher. As you might have surmised, I'm not the most forward guy in the world, but I have put out some inquiries and am waiting for replies. Most people I meet are anxious to study English. Having lived abroad all my life dealing with English-as-a-second-language people, I'm pretty good at s-p-e-a-k-i-n-g s-p-e-c-i-a-l E-n-g-l-i-s-h. So, I end up being sought out for that ability.

Meadish: In retrospect the razor event was quite hilarious. Would have made a great video. Me sitting there dumbfounded as the mini-mart lady continued to produce every conceivable shaving product in her small shop. Sigh.

[Ratsima]

I've asked a friend of mine, who's lived in Thailand for 20 years, about finding a teacher. This guy taught English at the university level in Bangkok for over a decade, is fluent in Thai and knows more about the many different languages spoken in Isaan than anyone I've ever met. Here's what he had to say:

"Hard to find a good teacher in Isaan. They could all give you help and then you'd end up speaking provincial Thai. A good teacher is one who has struggled to teach tones to aliens; they know what to expect and the others don't. Whatever the case, off the street or a teacher, they get bored stiff in an hour and hard to figure what amount of money would keep them going. There are some serious places though in BKK that really do a good job."

Any thoughts?

[meadish_sweetball]

There is truth to what he is saying. It's not that nobody speaks ok formal Central Thai in Korat - they do, especially school teachers and the educated classes.

But to teach it to a foreigner who has problems with the tones is something else. Like your friend says, they will not be familiar with the problems you are experiencing and may not know how to fix them.

Colloquial Central Thai is a bit different, but then again, even in Bangkok you might find it difficult to find somebody who would teach it to you properly as there are many taboos about teaching or encouraging 'the wrong kind of language'. Watching TV soaps and sitcoms helps though, but that is not what you need to do at the moment unless you just want to immerse yourself even while not following what people are saying.

With enough exposure to soaps, one will start to pick up both mannerisms and common expressions that you can then ask your wife about. It's helpful, but watching soaps is not for everyone. I've only found a few that I can watch without becoming too annoyed with the characters, stereotypes and plot building.

As you probably know, the people around you will be speaking the Korat dialect when they speak amongst themselves - not Central Thai, unless one of them is not from around the area, in which case the local will generally switch if it's only a two person conversation.

[Ratsima]

As you probably know, the people around you will be speaking the Korat dialect when they speak amongst themselves - not Central Thai, unless one of them is not from around the area, in which case the local will generally switch if it's only a two person conversation.

I'm still not able to tell what people are speaking. My wife and her family are Chinese and only know and speak what I assume is Central Thai. She's not able to understand when people speak Lao or Korat. Sure, she knows a few words, but that's it.

I assume that when I go to 7/11, or The Mall, or even a local mini-mart, the people are speaking Central Thai rather than something else, but I can't be absolutely sure of that.

I wonder if just reading aloud to my wife might be of help. She long ago gave up trying to teach me Thai (too many questions), but maybe if she just corrected my pronunciation while reading that would help.

And, then, there's always the Soaps....

Thanks.

[kriswillems]

The teacher that I had in Europe before coming to Thailand was a Thai lady that ever taught Thai to Thai children (level pratom). She was actually very good in correcting the tones but she couldn't explain the tone rules. The tones rules are not that hard and you can study them by yourself. The advantage of having a teacher that teaches small children is that she/he will not use difficult words and he/she has experience with helping Thai children with their pronunciation. Pratom level children also practise their tones and pronunciation in school, but they are much better at it than we are.

[Ratsima]

I need someone who can say to me things like: "That initial consonant should be unaspirated, the vowel needs to be a tad longer and the final consonant should be unvoiced." Those are things that I don't hear very well and endless repetition by either me or the teacher is not going to help. Neither is, "That should be tor tau not dor dek...."

[PeaceBlondie]

Why would a Thai teacher of prathom children understand the first thing about the difficulties of a farang learning Thai? In her formal training and experience, what would prepare her to teach monotonous foreigners? I gave up halfway through a very simple intro course because my Thai teacher with at least a bachelor's degree in Thai was not teaching the class as foreigners, noot explaining, not going back and repeating. If Thai requires thousands of hours of intensive study, then so be it.

[Ratsima]

The last time I formally taught language was when I was in the Peace Corps back in the early 70's. But I still try to help people around here learn and improve their English and I often have a student or two. IMHO to be a good instructor of pronunciation you need to know how the human vocal track produces sound and you need to be an excellent observer of where your students are going wrong. Where is their tongue? Are they voicing or aspirating at the wrong time (or not)? Can you use the hand-on-throat technique to help them tell when they are voicing? Or hand-in-front-of-mouth to train them to tell when they are aspirating? Can you grind their faces into shape and get them to turn off their vocal cords so that they can produce a proper voiceless Labiodental fricative? Can you get them to feel where their velum is and how to actually close it now and then?

I think it would be extremely rare to find a primary school teacher who knew any of this or had been trained in the techniques necessary. After all, by the time their students get to them the students have already mastered the pronunciation of Thai and just need some vocabulary building, reading and formal grammar. I think you'd be better off with a speech therapist than a primary school teacher. After all, correcting pronunciation is more a matter of training than it is of teaching.

[kriswillems]

Why would a Thai teacher of prathom children understand the first thing about the difficulties of a farang learning Thai? In her formal training and experience, what would prepare her to teach monotonous foreigners? I gave up halfway through a very simple intro course because my Thai teacher with at least a bachelor's degree in Thai was not teaching the class as foreigners, noot explaining, not going back and repeating. If Thai requires thousands of hours of intensive study, then so be it.

Nothing.

But in the area where the thread starter lives there are no teachers that have experience (from a language school) teaching farang. I find it easier to speak to some young people with a basic education than speaking to somebody with a bachelor or masters degree. If you need a really good teacher, with experience, you'll have to go to Bangkok or maybe Chiang mai. Even in Pattaya there are no real good schools.

At least a prathom teacher will speak slowly and use simple words and she's used to practise the pronunciation and tones with her students (although the students have different and much less problems than farang).

A highschool teacher is used to teach vocabulary, she teachers about the origin of Thai words, she'll teach advanced grammar, she doesn't need to teach about pronunciation and tones, she doesn't need to speak slow or use simple words. So in the end a prathom level teacher might be better.

In one of my language schools in Bangkok I had a teacher that was an engineer, she didn't study about language at all. She was very religious and spent all her free time teaching Thai children in the local church. She used more or less the same teaching style when teaching farang. She repeated some sentences or turned the words around, just as if she was speaking to small children. She talked slowly and very clearly, just as if she was speaking to small children. She asked short simple 3 and 4 word questions, just as you would do with small children. Sometimes I felt like a child in her classroom but she was one of the best teachers I ever had.

I think this kind of teacher is better than somebody with a bachelor degree, also without experience teaching farang, that will try to explain Thai language in Tinglish. I feel the thread starter needs a teacher that refuses to speak English/Tinglish or that can't speak English.

Edited July 5, 2008 by kriswillems

[PeaceBlondie]

kris, the thread starter was a Thai. Are you referring to Ratsima? Are you suggesting the best Thai teacher would know nothing about language, including English, including foreign language learners' problems? Maybe an unskilled nobody??