Learning Thai Average Timeframe

[bailly]

Hey,

I am just wondering how long it took people to learn thai, i don't mean perfectly fluent but enough to hold a conversation with someone, i have been learning from books, internet and tgf and when i move to Thailand in 2 months for a year or so, i will do lessons/school, i have been picking it up ok but would like to know how long it took others, please mention if you did lessons etc,

Thanks in advance,

Bailly

[samesamebutdifferent]

Took me about 2 years to get through the 3 Benjawan Boomsan Becker books; which for my money, seem to be the best on the market. Give you a good vocabulary, that will get you through most situations. Bangkok Post done a book of newspaper acrticles in 2 languages as well, I used this afterward for more advanced learning. Then moved to Issan, and could'nt understand a word anyone said. Ah well back to the drawing board.

[aanon]

Hey,

I am just wondering how long it took people to learn thai, i don't mean perfectly fluent but enough to hold a conversation with someone, i have been learning from books, internet and tgf and when i move to Thailand in 2 months for a year or so, i will do lessons/school, i have been picking it up ok but would like to know how long it took others, please mention if you did lessons etc,

Thanks in advance,

Bailly

if you do some preparation (eg. learn the alphabet and some vocab) and then immerse yourself fully in thai for 6 months (ie. speaking little to no english), then you should be able to hold quite a good conversation. adjust this 6 months guesstimate down if you're young (under 18), an obsessively driven learner or just have a knack for languages. adjust it up if you're older, going to be learning thai but mostly speaking english, and so on.

of course, the lines between "fluent", "able to hold a conversation" and "able to get by" are fuzzy and dependent on your own expectations. suffice to say, you can make some very personally rewarding progress within 6 months if you want to.

good luck

[mynextgig]

Hey,

I am just wondering how long it took people to learn thai, i don't mean perfectly fluent but enough to hold a conversation with someone, i have been learning from books, internet and tgf and when i move to Thailand in 2 months for a year or so, i will do lessons/school, i have been picking it up ok but would like to know how long it took others, please mention if you did lessons etc,

Thanks in advance,

Bailly

if you do some preparation (eg. learn the alphabet and some vocab) and then immerse yourself fully in thai for 6 months (ie. speaking little to no english), then you should be able to hold quite a good conversation. adjust this 6 months guesstimate down if you're young (under 18), an obsessively driven learner or just have a knack for languages. adjust it up if you're older, going to be learning thai but mostly speaking english, and so on.

of course, the lines between "fluent", "able to hold a conversation" and "able to get by" are fuzzy and dependent on your own expectations. suffice to say, you can make some very personally rewarding progress within 6 months if you want to.

good luck

I learned Thai originally from the Colloquial Thai book while i was living outside Thailand but visiting most weekends, it took me about 6 months of constantly listening to the recordings to the point where i could identifiy and understand every single word in each of the 15 or so dialogues and would pick out bits from these during my trips to Thailand. I was encouraged that when i spoke Thai i was generally understood but couldnt then understand the response from whoever i was talking to.

I then lived in Thailand for about a year in a town in which I was probably one of half a dozen english speaking foreigners and so to communicate i had to immerse myself in the language and get out of my comfort zone and thats when my progress seriously improved. I also read through 'The Structure of Spoken Thai' by Higbie and Thinsan and although there is no audio with the book, I started listening out for words and sentence structures on television and everyday chat and so my overall dialogue improved also.

The biggest mistake i made was not learning to read Thai at the beginning, i was able to hold a pretty reasonable conversation in Thai but still didnt know the alphabet and so I made the decision that whenever i was outside of Thailand i would focus on reading and when i was in Thailand i would focus on dialogue.

There is absolutely no question that if you can read Thai before you understand a single word of it, your learning curve will be significantly improved.

[bailly]

cheers for the advise i think i will focus on trying to learn how to read Thai and learn the alphabet for the next 2 months while i am not there, i will be the only farang where i am staying most of the time so i suppose i am putting myself in a good position to force myself to learn, so i am taking a guess that after 1 year of staying in Thailand and a bit of dedication i should (hopefully) be able to hold an ok conversation, i am 23 so hopefully my brain hasn't given up on me yet

[Tod Daniels]

While your mileage may vary, I do suggest you learn to read thai as soon as possible. The down side is, initially it seems very daunting.

For example the thai language has 44 consonants but of those 44 consonants, there are a LOT of duplications;

6 are t's (ฐ,ฑ,ฒ,ท,ธ,ถ)

5 are k's (ข,ฃ,ค,ฅ,ฆ)

4 are s's (ซ,ศ,ษ,ส)

3 are p's (ผ,พ,ภ)

3 are a ch sounds (ฉ,ช,ณ)

Once you recognize these duplications the consonants become much less formidable.

On the up-side; thai vowels over english ones. While thai has 32 vowel sound combinations, (with little exception), they all make the same sound every time they're written. I will give an example with a word in english of how this is NOT the case; "home" and "come". They use the same construct but have completely different pronunciations. In thai they would be completely different vowels, so once you get the thai vowels down you can read FAR above your level of understanding. Then it just comes down to learning and recognizing vocabulary words.

Personally I think reading is much easier than clear speaking, but that is just me.

A good site to learn to read is called;

www.teachthai.com

It is/was made by the Ministry of Non-formal Education and from what I understand was designed for children of thai nationals who speak english and are stationed at the various embassy's around the world as a way to learn thai. Once you make a user name and password you can log in and listen to an animated book, pen and girl talk about the thai language. It is how I taught myself to read, and believe me if I can learn it, anyone can.

I think it comes down to personal choice on what your priorities are here in the glorious "Land 'O Thais". Do you want to speak, read, or both. I know people who've lived here 20+ years, speak far more clearly and fluently than I do, yet cannot read a single thai character.

It is not difficult to learn what I call; "two-word" or "tourist-thai". It relies on "frozen phrases" which have high frequency of use, and can be accomplished quite quickly. Making the leap from there to stringing words together in coherent sentence constructs takes much more vocabulary, and the ability to recognize individual words not phrases. I know people who have lived here many years yet swear สบายดีรึเปล่า is a single word, and who are unable to break a "frozen phrase" down into its component words.

I will say, take with a grain of salt ANY compliment from a thai about your ability to speak their language. If I had a baht every time a thai said, คุณพูดภาษาไทยเก่งมาก, I'd have a million baht. Sadly (for me anyway) it also seems the country is populated by 63 million thai language experts, who are more set on correcting a slightly mispronounced word that actually trying to understand from context what you are trying to say. I accept second rate, appallingly spoken, and poorly constructed engrish every day from the thais, yet I have never corrected them if I can work out by context what they are getting at.

Sadly outside this small S/E Asian country, the thai language has VERY LITTLE if any practical usage. If you do live here, there is the ability to communicate with the native inhabitants in their language. I will warn you, sometimes their preconceived notions of foreigners gets in the way of them understanding what you are saying. They see a tall, white, foreigner and immediately set in their mind the fact that person can't possibly speak thai. When you do speak thai to them, they have already turned the switch in their head to listening for engrish, and initially cannot understand what you are saying, even if you are speaking clear thai, because they are not listening for thai but engrish. It can take repeating the sentence a time or two to get them to switch back over to thai.

I don't mean to sound negative or disparaging about the country or its diminutive, yet ever smiling native inhabitants. After all it's been my home for over 4 years now.

Good luck, don't give up, especially if you are going to live here.

[mynextgig]

I will say, take with a grain of salt ANY compliment from a thai about your ability to speak their language. If I had a baht every time a thai said, คุณพูดภาษาไทยเก่งมาก, I'd have a million baht. Sadly (for me anyway) it also seems the country is populated by 63 million thai language experts, who are more set on correcting a slightly mispronounced word that actually trying to understand from context what you are trying to say. I accept second rate, appallingly spoken, and poorly constructed engrish every day from the thais, yet I have never corrected them if I can work out by context what they are getting at.

I couldnt agree more, the times i have said something in Thai which is obviously clearly understood by everyone listening and they either fall about laughing or repeat the phrase i have just spoken, giggling away. When i then check out why what i said was wrong it will have been near perfect with maybe a couple of words in the wrong order.

Additionally, most Thai's that can speak even a bit of english will immediately want to switch to talking in English, even though i speak better Thai than most of them speak English.

You need a thick skin to progress in Thai and a great deal of motivation.

[jdinasia]

Actually Thais are very gracious about errors ... but if you don't understand it (Thai) well enough to understand WHY your errors are funny (or you take yourself far too seriously for words) then you will likely get upset

edit --- I have heard (recently) a man speaking what he thought was Thai to a group of very decent Thai professionals; they all kept a straight face and sincerely tried to figure out what the guy was saying, and then tried to help him. Sadly the foreigner in this case had picked up all his "Thai" in Nana or Patpong and it was a mishmash of Thai, Lao, and Khmer. The folks in question didn't burst out laughing until the guy was well away from them and then they didn't point or make it obvious Why they were laughing.

Sure, if he had been speaking to a group of workers from the border region he might have been understood but to expect the average Thai person who has limited dealings with foreigners that are attempting to speak Thai as a second language to figure out what you are saying is unrealistic if your tones and structure are all wrong.

Edited February 9, 2009 by jdinasia

[wasabi]

I began with the Benjawan Becker books as well, Beginner - intermediate - Advanced. These were a tremendous help and continue to be my favorite books. I've bought many others but never found ones as clear and easy to understand. I learned to read and write Thai about 3 months into my studies. I taught myself this by building spreadsheets that I reviewed for many hours. I then went to a local Thai wat and studied Thai on Sundays for about 4 years with occasional trips to Thailand, by about the second year I could hold basic conversations, near the fourth year I was better but it seemed at a slower pace then the first two years. I decided to move to Thailand and study here intensively. I would now say I am very good at Thai but definitely not fluent 9 months into it. However I do believe I know enough now that in time I could be fluent if I dedicate myself to studying. I agree with others about needing a thick skin. Early on I received a lot of ridicule and resistance when I tried to speak Thai. This probably depends on who you are talking too but it was very frustrating. I do recognize my Thai was probably difficult to understand and only those who were patient wanted to help me.

Just last week I was in Fortune town talking to someone about changing my DVD player in my laptop, what was wrong with it, what type I wanted and other things. It was very rewarding to have this conversation and be understood. It's a small victory but a victory.

The biggest reward is my Fiance spoke only Thai when we met. She was locked away in a world of Thai language that I would not have had access to had I not studied steadfastly for the past few years. I always wondered why I didn't give up even when no one was understanding me and no one seemed to appreciate my effort, perhaps she was the reason.

[krading]

I know exactly how you feel khun Samesame. If I'm out a just fraction with a tone or sound I get the blank look that tells me I might as well have been speaking Latin. After a few more goes at it, something finally clicks. "Oh you mean (whatever)", and repeats exactly what I said, (to my ears anyway.) As she learned most of her English by talking to the Swiss husband of one of her friends in the village, when I talk to her in English I have to mentally translate from Swiss-glish to Aussie. I'll be glad when I can speak Thai well enough to dispense with English altogether. "Teach her proper English" I hear you say. " ขี้เกียดเรียน " I'll save the teaching for the kids.

[meadish_sweetball]

"Oh you mean (whatever)", and repeats exactly what I said, (to my ears anyway.)

Don't you find the same thing happens in the other direction too, i.e. your wife says something to you, and you cannot figure out what it is, because the Thai accent removes or changes too much crucial info (vowel quality, dropped consonants, stress on the wrong syllable)?

I have insisted on speaking Thai ever since I started learning (my apologies and thanks extended to the Thais who had to deal with me during the early stages, their patience was admirable), with the result that my comprehension of Tinglish is a bit lacking, so I run into this fairly often.

I much prefer Thais to speak Thai with me, as then I stand a much greater chance of understanding them.

[bailly]

Starting to go a bit off topic now

[meadish_sweetball]

Sorry about that bailly, got a bit carried away there.

To get back on topic, I found it difficult to answer your question because it was so general.

I would classify myself as intermediate; I would pass the P.6 exam but my spelling of irregular words is atrocious, so I would not get a particularly good score if I did it without one or two months of spelling practice first.

I can reproduce the tones well. I don't have a very strong accent, over the phone Thai people fairly frequently mistake me for being Thai. I generally speak grammatically correct but not necessarily idiomatically, and I lack exact vocabulary. But I do get my point across in every situation.

It has been 11 years since I started to study Thai, but I only studied actively for the first 3 - a university course.

[kriswillems]

I agree with Aanon. If you really go for it you can in 6 months read, understand and speak Thai well enough to manage in almost every situation. Your Thai will not be perfect but it will be good enough to make life much more comfortable here.

Adding a few more months (3 to 6 months) will bring you to P.6 level. That means that on a mainly written test or multiple choice test you would get about the same score as a 12 year old Thai kid. But in reality this Thai kid can speak and understand Thai much better than you.

[samesamebutdifferent]

I'd agree with alot of the others, learning to read Thai although difficult at first, makes learning much easier. Understanding the tonal rules, as pesented by the 3 groups of consonants and the vowels that you can read, defintely helps with pronoucation, which I think is everyones bugbear.

If anything, spending the time to learn to read/write will actually speed up the learning experience.

When learning a new word I'll sometimes look it up in the dictionary, so I know for myself the correct pronouciation, as well as listening to native speakers.

I can remember when I used to reading all the signs in the street, menus in Thai restaraunts, like a constant test for myself, in fact I think I still do this.

Edited February 14, 2009 by samesamebutdifferent

[mangkorn]

I can remember when I used to reading all the signs in the street, menus in Thai restaraunts, like a constant test for myself, in fact I think I still do this.

I still do that every day, too. It's a lot better than doing nothing, while passing by or waiting. Constant practice, especially with stylized advertising fonts, is always good. Another challenge is taking city buses: if you aren't sure whether a fast-approaching bus is going where you want to, you must read the destinations very quickly before the driver zooms off, or doesn't even stop if nobody signals for him to.