Learning Thai In A Smaller Town

[muaythaist]

I take it alot of people on this forum have learned to speak thai some way or another.

This is something I would like to do and will need to do to some extent anyway, the question is mainly

:How did you learn? ROSETTA STONE? or Thai speaking teacher? What other way? by book?

If I take a thai speaking lesson for 1 hour per day, every day, how long will it take to speak a basic convo with a thai person?

Are there many teachers, or will i have to go to a city to learn it?

I'm intending to go to a muaythai camp, and will mostly spend my time with thais, as im not going to travel etc, i have the training purpose of going. so learning thai is an important thing for me

any advice is appreciated

regards

[GuestHouse]

I started with a Thai School Teacher (wife of a colleague) who taught me the basics, she moved out of the area with her work so I took lessons with ANOther teacher that she passed me on to. This teacher was nowhere near as good at getting the lessons over, nor were almost all of the subsequent teachers I had lessons with. In the end I took a course with the AUA, which suited me perfectly and from which I gained a good solid grounding. The trick is, and I found this with other languages, getting a teacher and a teaching method that suits you.

Best of luck, start early and stick at it, the rewards are endless.

Edited January 11, 2009 by GuestHouse

[scottyd]

Hi, I just registered this is my first post.

I learned to speak thai by using Pimsleurs Thai audio books, they are great for learning to speak, however you will not be able to read or write thai as it is all in mp3 audio. There are 30 lessons all of which are around 30 mins long. What I did is, in each lesson I would take notes and write down the things I heard the way I thought it sounded so I could look back on it for reference (made my own course book haha) and this helped me greatly. I would usually spend around 2 hours a day on each lesson as I would stop and replay some parts of the lesson to practice it or give me time to think and write it down, and the mandatory "talk to myself" bit after the lesson to test what I learned, but maybe that's just me ha.

Linguaphone is a good course too, but I found Pimsleurs to be better.

Rosetta Stone is good but I havent used it much because I couldn't get it to give me Romanised thai lessons as at the time I could not read thai.

Now I am using "Teach Yourself Thai". It is a handbook and audio cd to help you learn thai, I first rented this from the library because it was the only package that helped me learn to write and read thai, it was so good at this i bought myself a copy (£30 rrp but I got it for £20 off the net) BARGAIN! It also looks very good at helping you speak thai too, but I cannot give my opinion because I have only used it to help me read/write.

Are you located in the UK mate?, if so I may be able to help you more.

Scott.

Edited January 11, 2009 by scottyd

[JetsetBkk]

"Learning Thai In A Smaller Town, Is there lots of teachers?"

Hopefully your Thai will be better than your English.

[muaythaist]

hey - yeah im based in scotland just now. I'l be googling the pimsleurs books scott, and linguaphone. I think that sounds the best to start off with, considering I probably wont have access to a computer much when thats whats necessary learning from rosetta stone, I dont think I will be able to sit and listen to it for 2 hours a day though, 1 will be hard enough with my levels of concentration for mind orientated tasks.... sounds like you managed to learn it though? By the way how many times did you end up listening to each tape to take one of the 30min sections in just curious as to the timeframe of learning it... Im not too bothered about reading thai, 1 step at a time and all that .. even though i like to shortcut.. Also guest=house, how long did it take you to learn enough to have a basic convo with thai people? some folk will be more natural at learning a language than others obviously but im still interested to hear about the timeframe, as ive never learned a language before...

jetset.. your aviator is one of my favourite films .. even if its a bit cheesy

regards

[Spee]

any advice is appreciated

Use anything and anyone available.

- Take formal classes if you can.

- Rosetta Stone is really good (I've found other books and CDs to be helpful also)

- thai-language dot com is a really useful website

- Thai-English dictionary is a must (I always have one with me)

- mingle with the local people, there is no book or CD that will teach you local dialects and phrases

- make a commitment to learn (e.g., 1 new word every day, etc.)

- of course there is the Thai Language part of the forum

I would suggest making a list of all possible resources that might be available to you and figure out a way to utilize them. This is a common TVF topic and you can probably find more resources by searching old posts.

[scottyd]

If you are in Scotland now I could send you my copy of Pimsleurs Thai, just pm me your address and I will get it sent off asap.

You could do each lesson in less than 2 hours a day easy, but I set aside 2 hours for me just so I could learn quickly, also I did a lesson a day so I did the whole course in 30-35 days (I think I missed a few days when I was busy ha).

When I was learning it for the first time I did each lesson only once, but properly, I still occasionally listen to lessons again to practice and top-up my speaking as I can have conversations with my computer. how f**king sad is that haha.

I would still class my level of Thai as Basic-Intermediate. Pimsleurs teaches you enough to comunicate and be understood. The key for me is that it teaches you key verbs and how to construct sentences which is the most important for me, because then I can look up words I do not know and construct sentences with them because of the fundamentals it teaches you.

Like the person above said learning new words is good, after I did my lessons I could not find any more advanced ones so I just started learning new words day by day building on my knowledge.

Thai-language.com is an excellent website as it is a dictionary and often has an audio button to click so you can hear how the word is pronounced.

A good dictionary is a must for quick reference, I have the Collins "Thai Phrasebook". It is not an extensive dictionary (as its a phrasebook) but it has most of the words you will ever need in an Eng-Thai dictionary in the back, it also has a Thai-Eng dictionary straight after so if you and a Thai are talking and something crops up, Bam easy reference haha. Since it is a phrasebook it will also assist in your learning because you will be able to take what you have learned from your audio lessons and see how things are spelt. It also has a bonus of being pocket size (not english dictionary pocket size where you need a backpack to carry the behemoth haha) it will fit into most trouser pockets/back pockets. It set me back £4.50 from Waterstones.

Edited January 12, 2009 by scottyd

[noahvail]

I would still class my level of Thai as Basic-Intermediate. Pimsleurs teaches you enough to comunicate and be understood. The key for me is that it teaches you key verbs and how to construct sentences which is the most important for me, because then I can look up words I do not know and construct sentences with them because of the fundamentals it teaches you.

I thought Pimsleur was great, it gives you the basics. But it depends on where you move to in Thailand. I'm now in Isan, and the language is considerably different from the 'government Thai' that Pimsleur teaches. Yup, the basics are great, but I've had to unlearn certain words and phrases and replace them with the Isan version; and that's been the hardest part.

As for the writing, my wife has started me with kids' first books, tracing the letters and saying them. It's working! The only problem is, there are about 5 different fonts that are used. The letters on road signs are (imo) stylized versions of what you learn to write in school. It's a complex language, probably more difficult to learn than English - but the little bit I know stands me in good stead with the neighbours, and we have a lot of fun trying to talk - fortunately, gesturing is pretty much the same the world over.