One Guy's Effort To Learn Thai In 8 Weeks

[SoftWater]

I'm looking forward to the video. Hopefully, it'll answer a lot of unanswered questions.

[irishpolyglot]

I'm looking forward to the video. Hopefully, it'll answer a lot of unanswered questions.

What unanswered questions? In the video I only plan on speaking some basic Thai for a minute or two in BKK streets, I won't be giving an hour long lecture about learning strategies

[SoftWater]

I'm looking forward to the video. Hopefully, it'll answer a lot of unanswered questions.

What unanswered questions? In the video I only plan on speaking some basic Thai for a minute or two in BKK streets, I won't be giving an hour long lecture about learning strategies

I'd imagine one question most people would have is just how far have you come in your 8 weeks?

A good test we give ESL learners is asking them to talk for 2 minutes on a topic of their choice - perhaps an introduction about themselves, their family and their work/hobbies/interests. Or you could talk for 2 minutes about your journeys around Thailand, or anything else you felt comfortable about in terms of vocab. They usually only have about 15 minutes to prep, but I think we can overlook that in your situation, so long as its not scripted and is spoken without prompts.

At pre-intermediate level you'd be expected to make a fair number of mistakes in pronunciation, word choice, syntax and fluency, but as you rightly say mistakes aren't the issue. If you can get the majority of your meaning across, I'd say you'd done something remarkable in 8 weeks.

[irishpolyglot]

I'm looking forward to the video. Hopefully, it'll answer a lot of unanswered questions.

What unanswered questions? In the video I only plan on speaking some basic Thai for a minute or two in BKK streets, I won't be giving an hour long lecture about learning strategies

I'd imagine one question most people would have is just how far have you come in your 8 weeks?

A good test we give ESL learners is asking them to talk for 2 minutes on a topic of their choice - perhaps an introduction about themselves, their family and their work/hobbies/interests. Or you could talk for 2 minutes about your journeys around Thailand, or anything else you felt comfortable about in terms of vocab. They usually only have about 15 minutes to prep, but I think we can overlook that in your situation, so long as its not scripted and is spoken without prompts.

At pre-intermediate level you'd be expected to make a fair number of mistakes in pronunciation, word choice, syntax and fluency, but as you rightly say mistakes aren't the issue. If you can get the majority of your meaning across, I'd say you'd done something remarkable in 8 weeks.

I used to do the same process myself as an English teacher. Also, I've taken European proficiency diploma examinations in Spanish and French and from the oral sections I could think of many ways to prove various spoken levels.

However, speaking pre-intermediate Thai is not going to be the purpose of the video; just basic conversations in some extremely common situations: not usually so impressive, but something that a huge majority of farangs living here simply can't do. I was hoping to focus on speaking this month, however work hasn't given me the time (I am literally counting the seconds to 9pm tonight when I have to deliver this project; I haven't been out with friends more than 4 times in the last 3 weeks ), and I still don't have much more than basic pleasantries at a spoken level.

So I actually plan on making all of my progress in the hours before recording the video and have a very patient and good teacher to help me with that. The video will be emphasising how much you can do in an extremely short time, especially if you are confident and not obsessed with mistakes, and it will have another important message that I'm hoping will help people, by actually criticising the video itself.

As I said, the purpose is not to show off any progress that I've made. Nevertheless, I'm hoping that people here will be somewhat pleased with my pronunciation, use of tones, understanding responses and actual application in a real live conversation.

Sorry that I didn't make it to pre-intermediate, but I did very clearly say in my introduction to this this mission that the speaking part was not really the focus, even though I was hoping to reach pre-intermediate if possible. Hopefully any cynics that have been waiting to say "I told you so" that I wouldn't speak fluently (which I never claimed to be attempting), will see the purpose of what I was actually aiming for here, and take something positive from my final messages

Edited February 26, 2010 by irishpolyglot

[SoftWater]

So I actually plan on making all of my progress in the hours before recording the video and have a very patient and good teacher to help me with that. The video will be emphasising how much you can do in an extremely short time, especially if you are confident and not obsessed with mistakes, and it will have another important message that I'm hoping will help people, by actually criticising the video itself.

Ah, yeah, that will be your undoing among the sceptics: we call this 'coaching' (which is distinct from 'teaching' and 'learning'). It doesn't say anything about language ability, but I don't want to preempt the video and I know you're not phased by negativity in any case!

As before, I look forward to the video and your final summary of what you think you have and what you have not succeeded in showing with this 'experiment'.

Best

Sw

Edited February 26, 2010 by SoftWater

[LivinLOS]

I have refrained from posting as I am one of those long termers with awful Thai.. I find it much harder to casually pick up Thai than other (euro / Indo) non tonal languages.. And really need to take a more structured approach..

But I have followed the thread as I wanted to see the results but..

and I still don't have much more than basic pleasantries at a spoken level.

So what is the purpose ?? I understand you are hopeful of being able to read ANY text handed to you, at a level it is then understood by Thais ?? Hows this working out ??

Basic pleasantries and the like seems like a considerable scaling back of the initial goals ??

Edited February 26, 2010 by LivinLOS

[dmax]

fair play to him , ive tried to learn it for a while, its a nightmare so ive given up because of the cost as well

[irishpolyglot]

Thanks dmax Please don't give up!! I'm certainly not "giving up", I'm going home for St. Patrick's day I'd have stopped this mission even if a greater time investment had produced a very impressive speaking result.

@LivinLOS

For my initial goals, please read the introduction post originally linked to. I'm here in Thailand to dip my toes in my first Asian language, and to get a good understanding of tones and the writing system of Thai. Anything else was just a bonus. I was hopeful of achieving more, but never claimed that that was the original purpose of being here, and I've been very open about the fact that I was not immersing myself in Thai and being a tourist.

I'm sorry if you feel that I haven't achieved anything, but my two posts on memory techniques for reading Thai letters and for shortcuts on the tone rules have gotten very positive feedback from other Thai learners and several people have thanked me for encouraging them through my general positive encouragement in other posts, to give their studies a second chance. For me this is a pretty good purpose for this mission.

My approach to learning languages is very unconventional, and it is based hugely on having confidence that the language isn't a monstrously difficult task, which I honestly believe from years of conversations with learners who have given up, that it is what holds the vast majority of people back from ever even trying. I was intimidated by ever even trying Asian languages myself until this trip, but that has changed now that I see from talking to a lot of learners that the issues people have are definitely the same confidence and negative-filter ones (anyone else care to give me a list of reasons why Thai is hard? I can't get enough of those )

This trip to Thailand was an investment for that confidence and basic understanding, not an attempt to reach intermediate conversational level. That was the "purpose" you asked about, and I've succeeded in it and will use that momentum to encourage others rather than winge about how hard Thai is The initial comments I said about generally getting discouragement on online forums come back to mind now; I really wish some people here could learn to focus on the positive...

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" - Winston Churchill

Edited February 26, 2010 by irishpolyglot

[LivinLOS]

I am not making any judgements at all.. Just trying to understand what your goals are now and how they are doing. Without seeming to be a detractor, you have made many fairly bold claims and I am curious how you feel those are stacking up.

Looking back as you suggest to your initial post the goal was to "read and speak Thai in 8 weeks" specifically to "able to read a given text of several sentences aloud to a local (who is not necessarily familiar with English and European accents), so that they can understand it" with the caveat that its a text you had never seen before (no practising) presumably something like a paragraph of newspaper or similar ??

Secondly within all the links around your blog for "how-to-speak-a-language-pretty-well-starting-from-scratch-in-just-two-months" you have the goal of "I am aiming to speak basic to lower intermediate Thai in the 8 weeks I’m there; asking directions, ordering food, basic small talk and haggling etc. and getting the gist of typical responses, without relying on my phrasebook." with the final of "At the end of my stay I’ll make a short video entirely in Thai, so any curious readers of the blog can hear how I’m speaking."

So is that a fair summary of your intentions as per the initial post ??

How do you feel your outcome is in relation to those stated goals ??

You seem very upbeat about the whole process, despite many posters doubting the likelihood of this happening. So as it is now near the end of the time do you feel that you can 'read aloud a random piece of Thai text and be understood' ??

[SoftWater]

Oh come on, please! There was nothing discouraging, pessimistic or negative about LivinLOS' questions. He was seeking clarification.

Frankly, this just harms your credibility. Your response reminds me of another 'famous' Thaivisa poster who regularly replies to all questions, clarifications, and requests for justification as being nothing more than 'negative' and 'anti-[his school]', when in fact people are mostly (I'll grant there are some genuine grievances!) just engaging in reasonable debate.

It's called a forum...if you just want happy clappy cheer-ers-on, it would've been best to stick to your blog where you can moderate out any reasonable demands for justification and clarification.

Edited February 26, 2010 by SoftWater

[irishpolyglot]

It's called a forum...if you just want happy clappy cheer-ers-on, it would've been best to stick to your blog where you can moderate out any reasonable demands for justification and clarification.

See that would be an example of a "negative" statement (as well as an unjustified accusation) The only comments I've ever moderated out of my site so far have been spam. I've clearly made you angry if you are resorting to personal character attacks. Is that what a forum is for?

@LivinLOS

Although the speak-pretty-well-in-two-months post is actually about last summer, what you copied is correct and I aim to do exactly what you quoted me as saying in the video this weekend, apart from the reading goal. I will decide after the video if I will go on and have that tested. If I don't I will clearly say that I didn't achieve the reading aspect at my desired level.

Sorry for implying you were making judgements; just that lately a few comments like Softwater's above have put me on the defensive in this forum... (your double question marks confused me; that's the second time one thread has had simple misunderstanding in the writing tone implied!)

Can't we all just get along?

Edited February 26, 2010 by irishpolyglot

[SoftWater]

It wasn't an accusation, Benny, as you know full well; it was a rhetorical suggestion aimed at making you appreciate that replying to people's genuine questions is a far better way for us all to get along than trying to misdirect them with talk of 'negativity' and 'personal attack'.

Most of us on this forum are pretty experienced at recognising obfuscation - we've had a long training (see the pinned 'Best Thai Language School' thread if you want the evidence).

Best

Sw

Edited February 26, 2010 by SoftWater

[HappyInCM]

My approach to learning languages is very unconventional, and it is based hugely on having confidence that the language isn't a monstrously difficult task, which I honestly believe from years of conversations with learners who have given up, that it is what holds the vast majority of people back from ever even trying. I was intimidated by ever even trying Asian languages myself until this trip, but that has changed now that I see from talking to a lot of learners that the issues people have are definitely the same confidence and negative-filter ones (anyone else care to give me a list of reasons why Thai is hard? I can't get enough of those )

I would think having confidence, a positive attitude and no fear (of mistakes), are things that every successful language learner has in their approach to learning languages and not something unique to one person or even one methodology.

I do applaud your effort and am glad it has energized many. I would have thought however that most got discouraged after the level you will have reached in approximately what, 50 hours of study, if even that? For that amount of time, if you can read Thai even without the tones at a "normal" pace, it is a huge accomplishment and a great foundation for digging into the language.

For myself, I've found the biggest hurdles in Thai are the new sounds (something I had not truly encountered staying within romance languages), the tones (of course) and the seeming lack of grammar/weird ways of presenting thoughts - I cannot be more specific with the latter, but have seen some posts on here from some of the gurus echoing the sentiment that you may need to let go of some ways of presenting things in English - which I think are similar in European languages.

Good luck.

ps one thing that would benefit people would be a flat out assessment of why you didn't reach the stated goals which I think you are implying was a lack of time.

[irishpolyglot]

It wasn't an accusation, Benny, as you know full well; it was a rhetorical suggestion aimed at making you appreciate that replying to people's genuine questions is a far better way for us all to get along than trying to misdirect them with talk of 'negativity' and 'personal attack'.

Most of us on this forum are pretty experienced at recognising obfuscation - we've had a long training (see the pinned 'Best Thai Language School' thread if you want the evidence).

Best

Sw

Thanks SW. I didn't even know what obfuscation meant until you said it there and I looked it up

It's ironic but I've had so many more misunderstandings in English than I ever had in the last 7 years mostly not speaking it. Hopefully that partially explains my passion to try to convince as many people as possible in the world to stop speaking English and learn other languages

@eljefe2 Romance languages have helped me somewhat with pronunciation: the French "eu" sound and the rolled "r" in Spanish/Italian for example do way better than an English R. However other consonants that sound the same to the untrained ear are definitely a challenge.

Lack of time was a huge contributor, but there are a few others and I will state all of them on the blog (or here) once the project has ended, since this weekend still has lots in store for me!

The total hours of study would be closer to 15-20 than 50.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Edited February 26, 2010 by irishpolyglot

[SoftWater]

It's ironic but I've had so many more misunderstandings in English than I ever had in the last 7 years mostly not speaking it....!

Agreed. Partly because we're an argumentative bunch of...

[irishpolyglot]

OK everyone. Here it is!

http://www.fluentin3months.com/say-something/

Go easy on me

[loong]

The video may or may not have been interesting.

I'm sorry to say that with such a lot of background noise I could not hear what you were saying, so have no idea how well you have done

Edited March 1, 2010 by loong

[irishpolyglot]

The video may or may not have been interesting.

I'm sorry to say that with such a lot of background noise I could not hear what you were saying, so have no idea how well you have done

Sorry about the noise, but the whole point was to do the video out in the open! I don't have an external mic to attach to my shirt I'm afraid!

However, I think it's quite an exaggeration to say you can't hear what I'm saying. There's no noise in half of the scenes and even when there is noise, I speak loudly. If you listen again you'll hear me fine

I could have done the video in a sound-proof room, but that would have defeated the purpose

[tombkk]

OK everyone. Here it is!

http://www.fluentin3months.com/say-something/

Go easy on me

For eight weeks, that's good enough for me!

The noise is a problem, as some sentences I cannot hear and other may or may nothave the correct tone, but the Thai people they were addressed to seem to understand you.

You do have a strong British (Irish?) accent, but are nevertheless understandable. But then, I am used to listening to foreign accents and your challenge is to be understood by Thais who have not been exposed, so I am not qualified to judge this.

I am looking forward to the video in which you read a text aloud.

[tombkk]

My approach to learning languages [snip]

For myself, I've found the biggest hurdles in Thai are the new sounds (something I had not truly encountered staying within romance languages), the tones (of course) and the seeming lack of grammar/weird ways of presenting thoughts - I cannot be more specific with the latter, but have seen some posts on here from some of the gurus echoing the sentiment that you may need to let go of some ways of presenting things in English - which I think are similar in European languages.

[snip]

I only had a problem with one vowel, and I don't have the software to write it: It's the "ue" in "Don Mueang".

Other than that, the tones were the biggest obstacle, and then the vocabulary as there are no similar-sounding words in European languages.

There is no lack of grammar, to the contrary: There is a distinct grammar, and it is very different from European grammar. If you don't follow it, they will simply not understand you. What makes you say there is no grammar in Thai?

[loong]

The video may or may not have been interesting.

I'm sorry to say that with such a lot of background noise I could not hear what you were saying, so have no idea how well you have done

Sorry about the noise, but the whole point was to do the video out in the open! I don't have an external mic to attach to my shirt I'm afraid!

However, I think it's quite an exaggeration to say you can't hear what I'm saying. There's no noise in half of the scenes and even when there is noise, I speak loudly. If you listen again you'll hear me fine

I could have done the video in a sound-proof room, but that would have defeated the purpose

I listened to the video twice more. 1st time without looking at the screen and I could not make out 1 single word apart from ครับ. Of course you will be able to hear it because you know what you are saying. The 2nd time watching it and reading the subtitles I could "hear" more. I admit that my ears are not so good, but at around 1 minute into the video, at the sunglasses stall it sounds like you say "No,no,no, 200 Baht" in English

And no, I'm not being negative or knocking you. I like to see people succeed and I think it a shame that the sound quality allows no indication of how successful you were.

Maybe it would be a good idea to get a Native Thai to listen without watching and see if they understand. My other half is very busy with work lately, so I don't see much of her, but I will plonk some headphones on her if I can and see if She can understand.

[loong]

My GF listened to the video, facing away from the screen and I'm afraid that she was only able to understand สวัสดีครับ and ตกลง. She could understand the vendor telling you that the cost was 5 Baht.

She also thinks that you say "No,no,no, 200 Baht" in English at the sunglasses stall.

She, like me, was able to fill in some gaps when watching the video because one can guess what is being said.

Edited March 1, 2010 by loong

[dvc]

OK everyone. Here it is!

http://www.fluentin3months.com/say-something/

Go easy on me

A good effort, but you fall short with your enunciation of the tones. The only word you come close to hitting the mark on, is, ครับ. The fact that you’re understood by the Thais you engage with, is more a testament to their ability to reconstruct inaccurate tones. Most likely they deal with foreigners, and their attempts to speak Thai, on a daily basis.

If you were to be dropped in the middle of Nakorn Nowhere, and asked to find your way back to Bangkok, the outcome may be quite different.

[anchan42]

Impressive!! I have to say I am impressed. Background noise is certainly a problem. I could not even get what Thais were saying in some part of the video.

I can understand 70-80% of what you were trying to say even with the noise. The scene where you ordered cow-pad and fanta is the most impressive assuming that there is no rehearsal with the waiter before the video was actually taken.

Of course, there are lot of things you can improve upon like pronunciation. I don’t think your tones are too bad but you seem to get aspirated and unaspirated T mixed up a bit. No big deal though and should be easily fixed. What the heck, I have been taking English seriously for 15 years and still have problems with pronunciation.

Also at times you seem to be confused with Thais’ responds. Maybe because it still take a bit of time to process the input in Thai.

Two thumps up from a native speaker.

[irishpolyglot]

OK thanks for the comments everyone!

I suppose different people distinguish noise differently. If you can't hear what I'm saying in the restaurant for example (couldn't really have been any clearer...) then maybe your computer speakers aren't so good. As I said on the site, this isn't Rosetta Stone's recording studio! In the real world there's noise...

Please note that I also had to understand what was being said to me in noisy Bangkok streets and chaotic markets, and under pressure of being filmed and knowing that people from thaivisa.com would be nitpicking everything about the video. That definitely adds to nervousness that you would have anyway the first time you ever attempted to speak a language in your life!!!

@tombkk I won't be making that video. I leave tomorrow so I'll just say on the summary that proving that I could read any text aloud to Thais was the only part of the mission I definitely didn't complete. As far as I'm concerned, I was successful or mostly successful in the rest of what I had initially aimed for, and anyone else could do much better than me in less time if they were more committed.

@dvc Very convenient saying after the video (and after I said on the forum several times that I was going to film in Bangkok) that I could only really prove myself if I had done it elsewhere... So you think I only got one word right in the whole video?

You may be right in what you said, however most people I've talked to here say that in full sentences the context is much more clear and saying precisely the right tone (or enunciation?) isn't as crucial as when saying the word in isolation. Even Thais don't speak right some of the time...

On top of that my goal was never perfection. It was always reaching some level of practical Thai in a short time. This obsession with perfection is the only thing really holding other farangs in Bangkok back from doing exactly what I did in the video. It's not that impressive, but people living here for TWO or more years still can't do it!!! I'm hoping to convince some of them to try.

I had successful basic two-way conversations in Thai, so not having precisely the right enunciation, getting some tones wrong etc. isn't the point. The point is always communication. If I can communicate with them because of what I've learned or because Bangkok Thais are more flexible in understanding bad Thai, then I don't really care because the point was to speak it in Bangkok. Communication in Thai is happening, and that's all that matters

Edited March 2, 2010 by irishpolyglot

[HappyInCM]

My approach to learning languages [snip]

For myself, I've found the biggest hurdles in Thai are the new sounds (something I had not truly encountered staying within romance languages), the tones (of course) and the seeming lack of grammar/weird ways of presenting thoughts - I cannot be more specific with the latter, but have seen some posts on here from some of the gurus echoing the sentiment that you may need to let go of some ways of presenting things in English - which I think are similar in European languages.

[snip]

I only had a problem with one vowel, and I don't have the software to write it: It's the "ue" in "Don Mueang".

Other than that, the tones were the biggest obstacle, and then the vocabulary as there are no similar-sounding words in European languages.

There is no lack of grammar, to the contrary: There is a distinct grammar, and it is very different from European grammar. If you don't follow it, they will simply not understand you. What makes you say there is no grammar in Thai?

my comment about "seeming lack of grammar" was in regard to the OP saying:

"European languages, can be adapted and if I can find a fast and efficient way of learning Thai writing and tones, which as far as I can tell are the major difference (everything else, including learning vocabulary [and even correct use of stress as mentioned above], being the same or actually easier than in European languages, especially grammar)."

Learning Thai grammar to me would seem much much harder than learning French grammar for an English speaker. I think this was another underestimation of the difficulty in learning Thai.

[irishpolyglot]

@eljefe2 Since my look over Thai was superficial, there are clearly lots of parts that I've missed so feel free to tell me what you mean by Thai grammar being "harder" than a European language like French.

French has noun genders, irregular plurals, definite/indefinite articles, complicated rules for use of prepositions, multiple conjugations (depending on time being used) and a host of other things that don't exist at all in Thai. Expanding to other European languages like German or a Slavic one, you also have noun cases to deal with, which complicates matters a lot! There are so many examples and most of it doesn't exist in English either.

The impression I got was that, presuming you have mastered tones, reading, enunciation, vocabulary etc. Thai rules for words going together are way less complex than European languages. I'm interested to hear some examples of where this is not the case, however I am still sceptical that the list could be "harder" than any list I could give of any European language. Thai is indeed "harder" in other aspects. But would the work involved in learning Thai grammar differences actually be much greater than in mastering the equivalent in most European languages? From what I've been told by other learners, this is simply not true.

You can give me a list of differences if you like, but my argument is that the work involved may be considerably less compared to European languages.

I'm interested in discussing this as it's something I'll be mentioning in the summary post.

Edited March 2, 2010 by irishpolyglot

[HappyInCM]

@eljefe2 Since my look over Thai was superficial, there are clearly lots of parts that I've missed so feel free to tell me what you mean by Thai grammar being "harder" than a European language like French.

French has noun genders, irregular plurals, definite/indefinite articles, complicated rules for use of prepositions, multiple conjugations (depending on time being used) and a host of other things that don't exist at all in Thai. Expanding to other European languages like German or a Slavic one, you also have noun cases to deal with, which complicates matters a lot! There are so many examples and most of it doesn't exist in English either.

The impression I got was that, presuming you have mastered tones, reading, enunciation, vocabulary etc. Thai rules for words going together are way less complex than European languages. I'm interested to hear some examples of where this is not the case, however I am still sceptical that the list could be "harder" than any list I could give of any European language. Thai is indeed "harder" in other aspects. But would the work involved in learning Thai grammar differences actually be much greater than in mastering the equivalent in most European languages? From what I've been told by other learners, this is simply not true.

You can give me a list of differences if you like, but my argument is that the work involved may be considerably less compared to European languages.

I'm interested in discussing this as it's something I'll be mentioning in the summary post.

I too thought Thai grammar was a slam dunk compared to French or Spanish (the only other 2 languages I know). To me, French is just more of the same type of rules that you find in English. e.g., noun genders. So, just more memorization. Whereas Thai really has different ways of presenting things. I don't find the use of classifiers to be a big deal (other than more memorization).But for the difficulties, just look at some of the stuff that comes out of google translate and you will see what I mean. Also, at least for me, it's very hard to let go of all that structure in English and I tend to want to add more and more to Thai - that's part of the difference conceptual way of speaking. Maybe slavic languages are less similar to English than French or Spanish, but to me Thai is like a real foreign language. There's just no one-to-one mapping of concepts.

one of the advanced speakers can probably be more specific. Or tell me I'm wildly off although I think tombkk certainly agrees that there's a non-trivial grammar in Thai.

[kpmsprtd]

Benny, I would happily be your travel partner on a road trip to anywhere. However obscure the place, however little known the language, it wouldn't take long before we would be communicating with the locals. We would go from no capability to some capability, eagerly guessing and making as many mistakes as we could as quickly as we could, knowing that our ability to (eventually) recognize something as a mistake means that learning has been accomplished, and that the more mistakes we recognize the more we have learnt. What I found most fascinating about the video was your possibly unintentional demonstration of how much Thai culture you learned along with the language. Well done, sir.

The only thing I would caution both of us on is the possibility that our language learning methods, with an early focus on speaking using what little we know, may in fact decrease our chances at future fluency. Let me provide a link to the document that may have permanently prevented my return to the EFL industry I used to be part of.

J. Marvin Brown - From the Outside In

[katana]

Interesting link. Thanks for posting.