Euro Talk/rosetta Stone Cd Rom.

[Richb2004v2]

I have once again been taking a turn at learning more Thai. This was brought about after I recently bought a CD ROM to learn basic Arabic. The software was so effective I have now bought the same one for Thai. This is made by Euro Talk: Talk Now and was purchased at my local software outlet. The problem is that although effective it is very basic so I would like the next level of either this or a similar thing. I've tried to find level 2 but have not been able to so far. I also bought the Rosetta Stone CD ROM but after trying it I remember why I didn't use it the last time. It is not at all user friendly and is not as effective as you would expect. I think you need to be able to speak Thai already in order to use it:)

I apologize if this thread is a regularly repeated topic. Any advice appreciated.

[Colabamumbai]

There is a good webiste I don't know if I can post the url here but the name is thailanguage. I have found it very useful to prepare me for a 6 month Thai course in Bangkok. Biki also gives you a short free course. I think that you need to be surrounded by the language to learn it efficiently and quickly. There are also videos on utube.

[hiero]

I hear you about pimsleur, I find it quite good for structure but i couldn't imagine how you could know without guessing some of the pictures. I was in a similiar situation to you a while back, these computer related things you might like:

http://www.youtube.com/user/algworld - they have about 25 hours of levels 1-5 of thai classroom lessons to watch. I found them all useful but level 5 has this great female teacher, she speaks fast but very clear and is funny,interesting and I have to say pretty which does help. I'm not too sure about levels, they seem pretty much the same except I would say that for level 5 you'd need to be able to already understand thais speaking at normal tempo as she is pretty quick.

A piece of software I could not do without is Anki, whenever I read a new word, phrase or fact that I want to store I just quickly add it to anki and when I have 5 minutes to kill now and then flick back through the cards. Ever learn a learn a load of thai only to forget it a few days or even hours later? this should help, and there are a few decks for Thai freely available as well (one of which is mine with about 500+ cards).

its4thai is worth a go as well, it's only a few bucks.

Edited January 13, 2010 by hiero

[Parvis]

I have Rosetta Stone and agree you need some basic Thai and to be able to read to get a benefit from it. I do find Rosetta Stone useful - but outdated. I am now looking for the next step up - but cannot find any. Any suggestions - recommendations??????????

Edited January 14, 2010 by Parvis

[SoftWater]

I have Rosetta Stone and agree you need some basic Thai and to be able to read to get a benefit from it. I do find Rosetta Stone useful - but outdated. I am now looking for the next step up - but cannot find any. Any suggestions - recommendations??????????

Have you looked at the wiki project created by David, Desi, Kris and others? Its got audio files, Thai script and translation. Though some will call it 'too traditional' it could be the next logical step from where you are now; its nicely structured and very comprehensive. At the very least, it would be good supplementary material for a conversation class.

Thai Language Wiki

Edited January 14, 2010 by SoftWater

[Parvis]

Thank you Softwater - I have not looked at it yet - but I will in the next 2 days. At this point I don't know what you mean by "too traditional".

The only thing I normally object to is some form of "transliteration". I can read Thai - even though not fluently. My objective is to speak "conversational Thai" as soon as possible. I can hold a "limited conversation" at this point - but just too basic. I think Software is an underutilized method of learning Thai - because of limited availability of anything beyond a beginners level.

[Richb2004v2]

I managed to find another CD Rom language course today. It is called 'Tell Me More' and consists of 3 CDs with a lot of exercises claiming 800 hours of work and 5000 exercises. The problem is that like The Rosetta Stone course it seems to assume that you can already read and speak Thai. It gives you a picture with Thai text and Thai audio and expects you to know the answer. I don't understand what the aim of these things is! If I could read and understand the question I wouldn't want to learn it. Another waste of a couple of hundred Baht it seems.