When Did You Make The "jump"

[anothertorres]

just curious of personal experiences you guys/gals have had in learning to speak/comprehend the thai language. i only have 30 hours or so of schooling and roughly twice that amount in studying on my own time. i've only really begun but, i was curious how long before something clicked and you began listening *and* understanding?

i am starting to pick up more words each day, but still missing enough context to pull together entire conversations. i feel so close and will continue studying as long as it takes. so in your personal experience, at what point of studying, listening and speaking were you able to comprehend the people around you, the TV in front of you and the guy at HomeWorks?

and thanks to everyone who makes this the most interesting forum at TV. i've spent hours reading thread after thread and everytime i come around i get the urge to study even more.

[withnail]

Unfortunately, there's more than one jump in my opinion. A lot of people start studying Thai with the goal of being able to understand a certain amount, but I don't really think it works like that.

Quite quickly you'll be able to understand certain conversations directed at you as they will consist mainly of two to three word sentences. It took me a long time though to progress to free flowing conversation, but it can depend very much on context. I'd say 2 - 3 years, but I only studied one or two hours a week for a long time. When I studied full time for 6 months I met people who after 5 months of full time study were basically at the same level as me but lacking in certain areas, like colloquial vocab and pronunciation.

Now I don't feel the need to switch back to English when I speak to a Thai, but it depends what we're talking about. I will often run into 'obstacles' I have to get around although I can usually do so in Thai and don't have trouble making myself understood. I would be lying if I said I always understood what Thai people are saying when they speak to each other and certainly TV and radio is very hit or miss. I can watch 5 minutes of TV and understand every word or so little that I don't really know what is going on.

I'd say I'm above the level now that I initially hoped I would achieve, but I forget a lot that I have learned and the more I learn the more I realize I have left to learn.

In total I've been living in Thailand for 8 years. During the first 3 I made no effort to learn anything more that bar-fly Thai. I self-studied for a couple of years, studied full time for 6 months and have dipped in and out of more advanced private tuition after that.

Despite passing the p6 exam and the more recent competency test at an upper secondary/lower high school level I still feel very uncomfortable with the term advanced and not that comfortable with the term intermediate.

Being that you're starting from scratch though and presumably full-time you'll probably be amazed at where you'll be in 6 months from now, but not that impressed with yourself when you're there. I think that apart from the one or two native speakers that drop in here from time to time most of the experts in this forum will agree that we're really all still struggling along with it.

Saying that, I feel glad every day that I made the effort and, although I hope to get better, I still impress myself sometimes.

Good luck.

Withnail

Edited April 21, 2009 by withnail

[appleman]

I first started studying Thai 40 years ago. I still study, on my own, at least one hour a day (and do things like check out this forum every once in a while).

The best thing to do is to use this initial time to accomplish two things. 1. Get your tones as correct as possible. Make sure you get someone, a teacher, friend, who will tell you when your tones are off. If your tones are wrong then no one will understand a word you say, believe me. 2. Carry a small notebook everywhere you go. Whenever you hear a Thai word you would like to add to your vocabulary write it down. Whenever you want to use a concept but don't know what it is in Thai, write it down. Get a good dictionary (I have 7) and look them up later. Keep the list and read through it now and then. I have a list of thousands of words by now.

As to when things will get better: Learning a language is like a series of plateaus. You will stay at one level for a while and then there is a quantum leap to the next. Nothing gradual about language learning. So just be patient. At the beginning, if you work hard, the plateaus come often. For me, they are few and far between. That is good.

Note: I was in country for about a year and felt very frustrated that I could not understand those around me very well - until I went to Bangkok, that is. You see, I had been living in Chiang Mai, where everyone spoke to each other in Northern Thai. In Bangkok, I was surprise at how much I understood. If you live up country (Issan, South, North, etc.), then understanding those around you, if you have been studying Central Thai, might be a bit more difficult.

Note #2: If someone says to you "You speak Thai very well." then you know you still have a long way to go. When they stop complimenting you on your Thai and just speak with you like you are a normal person, then you will have arrived.

Lots of luck.

[villagefarang]

We are talking language here, so there is no language equivalent to a religious epiphany. One doesn't see the progress on a daily basis or reach a finish line. Early on I found that one of the best gauges was a random Thai friend who I hadn't seen for a few months. They were a better marker of my progress.

No matter how badly you hear Thais mutilate their own language you will be better served by speaking it as correctly and politely as possible.

You are still a babe in the woods so relax and try to make it fun so you don't burnout.

[sbk]

Well, I never had an epiphany moment either I have to say. I never studied formally, just picked it up as I went along, asked alot of questions and made alot of mistakes. Still do, i am sure.

I made a conscious decision to learn the local dialect. At the time it was 100% locals where I live and it seemed pointless to learn Bangkok Thai, so that while everyone around me could understand me, I would have been unable to understand them. So I get stunned looks from people who don't know me and locals who seem unaware that I don't always catch what they say. Southern Thai is pretty fast and there are some people I will never fully understand (my MIL for one, that woman is faster than the concorde!!) . But all in all I do pretty well with my Southern Thai. Bangkokians understand me well enough for me to get around, but are always quite surprised to hear a farang speak Thai with a Southern accent

On the whole, I'd say it was just a regular learning process and since I never studied there never came a moment of "aha!" like with Mandarin Chinese which I took at University level.

[anothertorres]

hey thanks guys for your thoughts. every bit of encouragement helps. i'm certainly not frustrated but, i just wanted to hear from you guys who have been at it much longer.

keep the experiences coming

[kriswillems]

I have been living in Thailand for 1 year and 9 months now. I took 4 months classroom courses at about 3 hours per day, 5 days per week. After that I had about 6 more months private courses (between 2 and 6 hours per week). I can understand most Thai conversations and can talk about most subjects in Thai (without using English). I don't understand every single word but enough to know what is being said.

What is strange is that I understand the Thai on TV when they are talking difficult and official language (for instance the news or speeches of politicians) but when people are talking "every day Thai", for instance like in a soap, I understand much less.

If you would compare my level of Thai with the level of Thai people I am an absolute beginner. If you would compare me with the average foreigner living in Thailand I am at intermediate or maybe even advanced level.

The only way to improve my Thai quickly is, at least for me, following classroom courses and having a very pushing and demanding teacher. If I don't have the time or money to study I read Thai books. This is an excellent way to extend my vocabulary, but it doesn't help me to improve my Thai speaking or listening ability.

It's difficult for me to know what my level is. Very long I've thought that I didn't progress at all. Only when I meet Thai people that I haven't seem for a long time, I'll know that I did progress, because our conversations go much easier or they just tell me my Thai has improved.

I also did the competency test, but I feel like they gave me a score that is much higher than my level really is.

Edited April 24, 2009 by kriswillems

[Barabbas]

I don't want to go into many details here, but while my wife was having her MA in Russian, I was beginning to study Thai at BA level. The most noticeable thing is her classification of my speech - having started as a "word by word" speaker, I then progressed to "sentence by sentence", then "toddler", then the ridiculous "robot speech", having finally arrived to a "common street peddler level" after 5 years. Now, 10 years have passed and I still feel like a 1 grade pupil, confronting incredibly large boulder of knowledge in front of me. The problem is I don't have much time to go into the fine details, that's where the forum comes in for help

Edited April 25, 2009 by Barabbas

[songhklasid]

G'day everyone,I completed a 60hr course in pattaya (got a certificate) over 2 years maybe 3 visits,I still work in aust,I know lots of words, meanings, can get by,have heard " put thai geng" on maak maak occasions, What I do is listen to cd's repetivly travelling to & from work in aus, it's funny how some words stick, But it all goes out the window when I enjoy too many cleansing singhas when back in country, ah well it's all enjoyable.

regards songkhlasid.