Problems With Tones

[LazyYogi]

The thing is, when you learn to read and write Thai (correctly) it makes tones easier because there are rules of pronunciation. It isn't just arbitrary. For example, syllables starting with high-class consonants will always be rising, falling, or low tone. Dead syllables will never be mid or rising tone.

Remembering tones improves your spelling. Remembering the spelling improves your tones. Remembering both improves your pronunciation. Better pronunciation helps you to understand and be understood. Is communication not the whole point of learning a language?

[Peppy]

Remembering tones improves your spelling.  Remembering the spelling improves your tones.  Remembering both improves your pronunciation.  Better pronunciation helps you to understand and be understood.

Completely agree. If you're conscious of tones in both reading and listening, advances in one skill will improve the other, and then it will spill over into your writing and speaking as well.

What helped me the most was becoming aware of the tones in just a few common words first, and then learning to "transfer" the intonation to other words. For example, try and focus on the tones in these five words:

น้อง / nawng (high tone) : younger sibling, or a pronoun used by speakers to address people younger than them

หญิง / ying (rising tone) : a female, woman, or girl, commonly heard as part of the compound ผู้หญิง / puu ying

ดี / dee (middle tone) : good, nice, alright, fine

มาก / maak (falling tone) : much, very, a lot

อยู่ / yuu (low tone) : to stay, to reside, to be (in or at a place), to live, to remain (in a particular state or doing a particular activity)

All of these words are extremely common, everyday words that you should be able to hear frequently regardless of the company you keep or the media you listen to. I've picked these particular ones since other words with the same sound but different tones as the above are rather rare, and you're much less likely to run into them. Now, when you hear these words, pay special attention to the tone. When you think you can reproduce the tones as you hear them, practice transferring the tones to other words. For example, when you say พี่ / pee (older sibling, term of address for someone older than the speaker), think of the falling tone used in มาก / maak. When you say ผี / pee (ghost), think of the rising tone in หญิง / ying. When you say ไม้ / mai (wood), think of the high tone of น้อง / nawng. When you say ใหม่ / mai (new), think of the low tone of อยู่. And so on.

If you simply master the five tones in these five words and can transfer the tone to new words you see, you'll have no problem reading the tones correctly, and of course it will also help your listening. If somebody says "nang" (with a short vowel), you can think, "Did he say 'nang' with a tone like 'maak', or 'nang' with a tone like 'ying'"? If you heard "nang" with the falling tone of "maak" then you heard the word "sit down"; if you heard it with the rising tone of "ying" then you heard the word for "movie".

[ninjat]

ok, enough discussions. I think most of us agree that tones are important, so what about some recommendations on how to learn tones the right way?

[appleman]

However to understand spoken thai, other than the most basic 'frozen phrases', I think a good grasp of thai pronunciation/toning is most definitely at the top of the frickin' list . True, when reading, a lot of the words can be gleaned via context; but can you differentiate the thai words for; white, rice, knee, enter, news or he/she, or the words; tiger, shirt, or mat just by hearing them as stand alones? (Granted the previous words are some simple examples )

I'm pretty sure if I order 'cow su-ay' somewhere that serves food, they will know which type of 'cow' I want without any tonal clues

I'm also pretty sure if I'm wiping my shoe on some grass and say 'khee maa' nobody is going to thing I am riding a horse.

or even mix'n'match your examples 'ow su-am su-ar see-cow', I'm hardly likely to be wanting to wear a rice tiger.

Do Thais talk about colours without using 'see'? I've never noticed that.

But to be fair, in a noodle shop I tried to order 'gu-ay tee-ow gai naam sai' and they didn'y understand because I had the rythm wrong ......

Although in a noodle shop I don't understand how they could possibly be so stupid as to not understand I wanted noodles ........ so I memorised the entire phrase for future use.

'Naam dtaan' is another word nobody seems to recognise no matter how I try, so I just write it on a piece of paper.

Dear Sarasbloke,

I'm sorry but it is not the noodle shop owner that is "stupid". If you can't get the people to understand your pronunciation of "naam dtaan" then your Thai must surely be terrible and you must think a lot of yourself to give anyone advice on speaking Thai. If you speak without tones only your paramours and those wanting your money very badly will make the effort to decipher your attempts at spoken Thai. Sarasbloke's advice is pure rubbish.

[DavidHouston]

Friends,

I have a question about "tone". How is it that otherwise polite, rational people in face-to-face social contexts take on a harsh, ad hominem, impolite "tone" when in public forums? We may disagree with certain posters; we may not accept their premises; we may believe that their assertions are not supported by sufficient data, but is this any reason to be offensive, ill-mannered, and rude?

It is true that the language forum is more decorous than many others, especially the current events forum where bashing one's political opponents is the accepted order of the day. (What every happened the Churchillian witty repartee?) However, relative less bashing is still not as good as individual courtesy and interpersonal respect.

My suspicion is that the impersonal nature of the Internet with its use of ฉายา, code names, and essential anonymity, as well as the lack of face to face conversation or body language, leads us to drop the essential politeness that we learned in kindergarten.

Please, I ask all of you, let's try to stay within the bounds of good manners in responding to others with whom we may disagree.

Thanks.

[MikeyIdea]

The thing is, when you learn to read and write Thai (correctly) it makes tones easier because there are rules of pronunciation. It isn't just arbitrary. For example, syllables starting with high-class consonants will always be rising, falling, or low tone. Dead syllables will never be mid or rising tone.

Remembering tones improves your spelling. Remembering the spelling improves your tones. Remembering both improves your pronunciation. Better pronunciation helps you to understand and be understood. Is communication not the whole point of learning a language?

What is learning to read and write Thai correctly? Thai children learn to read and write Thai without learning the rules, they are too difficult so they are first taught to memorise each combination, then they learn the rules after they already can read and write. Is the farang way correct? Or is the Thai way correct? The western way force the impression that consonants are more important than vowels while the people who we want to understand what we say think the opposite

Learning to read and write makes the tones easier IF you can hear the difference between the tones, if you can't then it just forces you to differentiate between what you practically can't differentiate. You are obviously not going to do a very good job with that, and you will create the bad habit of not doing a very good job with it. It is beneficial for you to wait creating bad habits until you can hear the differences well enough to get close and thereby have less bad habit to correct

I am not saying - Wait until you can understand well, I'm just saying - Wait until you can hear the differences between the different tones well. Pronunciation wise, you are only digging your own hole that you will have to work yourself out of later if you don't

Edited June 14, 2010 by MikeyIdea

[MikeyIdea]

A counter point to your theory is that fahrangnarak (I believe) posted something about the US teaching its embassy employees (I believe it was them) to ignore the tones (at least in speaking I think he said) during their 6 month intensive course. Maybe he will comment here on this and how it contrasts with the take care of the tones up front theory.

Missed answering this one

I can't see that as a counter point at all. If the US Embassy employees were taught Thai ignoring the tones, then they don't speak Thai when they think they speak Thai, that is all. Simple

Addition: And while their own non-tonal language can be taught that way, the speaking of a tonal language cannot.

Edited June 14, 2010 by MikeyIdea

[HappyInCM]

A counter point to your theory is that fahrangnarak (I believe) posted something about the US teaching its embassy employees (I believe it was them) to ignore the tones (at least in speaking I think he said) during their 6 month intensive course. Maybe he will comment here on this and how it contrasts with the take care of the tones up front theory.

Missed answering this one

I can't see that as a counter point at all. If the US Embassy employees were taught Thai ignoring the tones, then they don't speak Thai when they think they speak Thai, that is all. Simple

Addition: And while their own non-tonal language can be taught that way, the speaking of a tonal language cannot.

Is there anyone who speaks a foreign language correctly after 6 months of study? No, or very very few. My point is not that the US thinks they can teach you to speak correct thai in 6 months, but with their almost unlimited money, resources (other than time), and presumably testing on previous batches of students, they have come up with the idea that it's best (where best is obviously some measure of Thai language ability or future Thai language ability) to do it this way. The open question is whether they're going for just 6 months of study or maybe they think is that for the first 6 months of study this is best and then at some later point they really start drilling the tones into you.

I understand you're passionate about the idea that one must learn to hear the tones before doing anything else, but this is just a counterpoint to that approach; you may argue that they don't care as much about long term ability to speak perfectly but presumably they do want their employees to communicate with Thais in Thai and not some new version of Thai without tones. But, I'm sure the US Gov't Thai teachers don't yell at the students when they do get the tones right - just they don't stress it presumably - meaning they're using this time to expose them to Thai and its during this time they will gain the ability to start hearing the tones.

In hindsight, I personally might have preferred to just do the tones first, but I'm unsure what method one would use to not learn anything other than the tones. I guess hire a private tutor to just sit there and say different tones and test you're ability to differentiate them?

I do think this discussion is pretty central to problems with tones and when to tackle them.

Edited June 14, 2010 by eljefe2

[SoftWater]

What helped me the most was becoming aware of the tones in just a few common words first, and then learning to "transfer" the intonation to other words.

Yep, this is exactly how I did it too, and still do, if I'm uncertain what tone I'm hearing or what tone I want to use, I run through a mental checklist of my exemplar words. Here's the one's I use just for the sake of demonstration, but you can only do this by finding your own exemplars - one word for each tone that you hear regularly and know exactly how it sounds when you hear it, how to say it perfectly, and (of course) what tone it exemplifies.

Falling - mark (มาก)

Low - khai (ไก่)

High - chang (ช้าง)

Rising - nai (ไหน)

The only reason those words became my exemplars were because they were the first and most regular words I ever heard. Notice that you can use these regardless of the vowel length. The exemplar for high tone works just as well for rorn (ร้อน) as it does for rot (รถ). It took me a long time to figure out that the vowel length doesn't change the tone AT ALL (of course, I knew it in theory, but when I spoke short vowel high tones I unconsciously changed it to a higher and flatter tone than it should be for, oh I dunno, four or five years or so.. ).

[MikeyIdea]

A counter point to your theory is that fahrangnarak (I believe) posted something about the US teaching its embassy employees (I believe it was them) to ignore the tones (at least in speaking I think he said) during their 6 month intensive course. Maybe he will comment here on this and how it contrasts with the take care of the tones up front theory.

Missed answering this one

I can't see that as a counter point at all. If the US Embassy employees were taught Thai ignoring the tones, then they don't speak Thai when they think they speak Thai, that is all. Simple

Addition: And while their own non-tonal language can be taught that way, the speaking of a tonal language cannot.

Is there anyone who speaks a foreign language correctly after 6 months of study? No, or very very few. My point is not that the US thinks they can teach you to speak correct thai in 6 months, but with their almost unlimited money, resources (other than time), and presumably testing on previous batches of students, they have come up with the idea that it's best (where best is obviously some measure of Thai language ability or future Thai language ability) to do it this way. The open question is whether they're going for just 6 months of study or maybe they think is that for the first 6 months of study this is best and then at some later point they really start drilling the tones into you.

I understand you're passionate about the idea that one must learn to hear the tones before doing anything else, but this is just a counterpoint to that approach; you may argue that they don't care as much about long term ability to speak perfectly but presumably they do want their employees to communicate with Thais in Thai and not some new version of Thai without tones. But, I'm sure the US Gov't Thai teachers don't yell at the students when they do get the tones right - just they don't stress it presumably - meaning they're using this time to expose them to Thai and its during this time they will gain the ability to start hearing the tones.

In hindsight, I personally might have preferred to just do the tones first, but I'm unsure what method one would use to not learn anything other than the tones. I guess hire a private tutor to just sit there and say different tones and test you're ability to differentiate them?

I do think this discussion is pretty central to problems with tones and when to tackle them.

I have never studied Thai, yet I speak more Thai than other languages combined since more than 10 years back now. It wasn't easy but it was fun And I am glad that I did it the easy way. Meaning that I tried to learn music using my ears, I did keep quiet until I could hear the different tones reasonably well and I thereby started off “not too bad”, and I had less to correct to make pronunciation decent. I feel pride when I fool people on the phone – although I can’t keep it up forever of course. I benefited from having less to correct, for sure. I hope that some of you read what I advice and that it can help you. It is common sense and it works: It’s more difficult to correct what you already have made a bad habit off.

No one can learn to speak a language correctly in 6 months, very few can learn to do it decently even. Absolutely no-one coming from a background only in tonal languages can learn a non tonal language in less than a few years the first time. I don’t know what the Americans are thinking but I can tell you that they have not come up with a shortcut to good pronunciation. Everything is about compromise: They may have a perfect compromise but for what? What is their goal? Is it learn to communicate as quickly as possible using a pronunciation that is decent enough to be passable? Yes, probably just that. Why would an embassy programme funded by tax payer money have higher goals than that for their expats on X year contracts? It’s a compromise like everything in life is: They gain a bit in the beginning and they lose a bit (more than a bit actually) if they raise the pronunciation goal later. They have a good compromise if I have gotten their goal right. They have a bad compromise if their goal is to produce Americans with good Thai pronunciation.

There are easily over 20 distinct vowel sounds in the Thai language, all tonal languages have many more vowels than non tonal languages do. So, after being able to hear the differences between the tones… It does help speed up learning a lot to learn reading Thai, but then comes the next step and the same fundamentals apply to that step; You must concentrate on the vowels and learn to pronounce them decently, don’t create habits difficult to break. Learning to read Thai helps a lot; It is impossible to use the 5 vowels in the standard western alphabet to distinguish between all the vowels in a tonal language so I agree; better learn Thai.

My advice: You will automatically concentrate on the consonants when you read Thai / learn to read Thai. Remember that the vowels are much more important to get right than the consonants. Thais can guess consonants, they’re actually even pretty OK at guessing consonants, it’s the vowels that they are bad at guessing.

In the old days people used tapes, I never used them because I was in Thailand and got my exposure anyway but I believe that the old tapes worked pretty well. There should be internet equivalents nowadays I think. I hope this will help

OK?

[Peppy]

Regarding MikeyIdea's above post on the importance of vowels: It's interesting to note that in the many different dialects of what we call the Thai language (Standard, Central/Supanburi, Southern, Northern/Northern Laos, Isan/Central Laos, etc. etc.), the pronunciation of certain consonants can vary widely, but the vowels generally remain the same, while in the various dialects of English the opposite is true: Consonants sound pretty much the same whether you're from California, Scotland, or Australia, but the vowels are often quite different.

[HappyInCM]

Regarding MikeyIdea's above post on the importance of vowels: It's interesting to note that in the many different dialects of what we call the Thai language (Standard, Central/Supanburi, Southern, Northern/Northern Laos, Isan/Central Laos, etc. etc.), the pronunciation of certain consonants can vary widely, but the vowels generally remain the same, while in the various dialects of English the opposite is true: Consonants sound pretty much the same whether you're from California, Scotland, or Australia, but the vowels are often quite different.

Do you find this true for what I would call "Central English" - that spoken on BBC and CNN? I find them both to be very easily intelligible to me and both pronounce words in almost the same with some small differences in vowels and syllable stress. As opposed to someone from Boston or Newcastle or Cork or Glasgow; the latter 4 are all equally difficult for me to understand at full speed. I would say people from those areas can probably understand "Central English" because they are exposed to it on TV and such, but not the other way around. So, is English really that insensitive to vowel changes or are we just used to understanding the English spoken on TV in addition to our own localizations?

btw - I'm not arguing that vowels are not important in Thai - maybe as or more important than tone in that Thai speakers seem pretty good at understanding Laos speakers.

ps the other thing I notice is that because I'm exposed to all these dialects, I've gotten better at guessing words from the context and grammar of a sentence. In isolation many words would be hard to differentiate in some of these accents - e.g., hat vs hot.

Edited June 15, 2010 by eljefe2

[HappyInCM]

I have never studied Thai, yet I speak more Thai than other languages combined since more than 10 years back now. It wasn't easy but it was fun And I am glad that I did it the easy way. Meaning that I tried to learn music using my ears, I did keep quiet until I could hear the different tones reasonably well and I thereby started off "not too bad", and I had less to correct to make pronunciation decent. I feel pride when I fool people on the phone – although I can't keep it up forever of course. I benefited from having less to correct, for sure. I hope that some of you read what I advice and that it can help you. It is common sense and it works: It's more difficult to correct what you already have made a bad habit off.

Can you elaborate on how you did learn the tones? Especially before learning anything else about the language - I guess words. And how much Thai did you already know at that time.

Edited June 15, 2010 by eljefe2

[LazyYogi]

The thing is, when you learn to read and write Thai (correctly) it makes tones easier because there are rules of pronunciation. It isn't just arbitrary. For example, syllables starting with high-class consonants will always be rising, falling, or low tone. Dead syllables will never be mid or rising tone.

Remembering tones improves your spelling. Remembering the spelling improves your tones. Remembering both improves your pronunciation. Better pronunciation helps you to understand and be understood. Is communication not the whole point of learning a language?

What is learning to read and write Thai correctly? Thai children learn to read and write Thai without learning the rules, they are too difficult so they are first taught to memorise each combination, then they learn the rules after they already can read and write. Is the farang way correct? Or is the Thai way correct? The western way force the impression that consonants are more important than vowels while the people who we want to understand what we say think the opposite

Learning to read and write makes the tones easier IF you can hear the difference between the tones, if you can't then it just forces you to differentiate between what you practically can't differentiate. You are obviously not going to do a very good job with that, and you will create the bad habit of not doing a very good job with it. It is beneficial for you to wait creating bad habits until you can hear the differences well enough to get close and thereby have less bad habit to correct

I am not saying - Wait until you can understand well, I'm just saying - Wait until you can hear the differences between the different tones well. Pronunciation wise, you are only digging your own hole that you will have to work yourself out of later if you don't

It doesn't matter if you are taught the formal rules or you just learn from rote memorization like school children. In both cases you will learn the sounds that go with the written language which was what I meant by "correctly". You learn that this letter plus this letter make this sound, and you can produce the sound out of your mouth (or at least come close). In a way I was questioning the idea that someone could really say they can read without knowing tones. Such a person would not even be able to say the names of the letters.

[MikeyIdea]

I have never studied Thai, yet I speak more Thai than other languages combined since more than 10 years back now. It wasn't easy but it was fun And I am glad that I did it the easy way. Meaning that I tried to learn music using my ears, I did keep quiet until I could hear the different tones reasonably well and I thereby started off "not too bad", and I had less to correct to make pronunciation decent. I feel pride when I fool people on the phone although I can't keep it up forever of course. I benefited from having less to correct, for sure. I hope that some of you read what I advice and that it can help you. It is common sense and it works: It's more difficult to correct what you already have made a bad habit off.

Can you elaborate on how you did learn the tones? Especially before learning anything else about the language - I guess words. And how much Thai did you already know at that time.

We should remember one thing. Thais are trained to memorise. They memorise their own dialect and they memorise the central dialect. They memorise reading and writing. That is also why Thais aren't used to / aren't good at reading out sounds from written letters. They are simply not used to do it. That is also why it sometimes even seems like they forget the connection between letters and sound. It's not necessarily there in the first place

Regarding Peppy's comment that consonants often stay the same but vowels change, and eljefe2's comments Not quite the same as the consonants are more important and the vowels less so, the important point I think is how very important the vowel sounds are in tonal languages. Although vowels don't change (or very little anyway) between different dialects, the tones often do. The poor Thai, trying to understand a westerner who doesn't get his tones right, also gets confused going through the regional pronunciations he has memorised. Add the differences between similar vowel sounds and the importance of getting the length right. Now we understand that guessing what a farang says isn't easy

"There are more like 20 vowels in English I believe; we're just lazier in representing them in the alphabet."

Not only lazier in representing them, that's the mistake that westerners do. The whole point is that the vowels also mean less.

How I learnt them? I tried not to speak the tones for at least 6 months, I often asked my wife to repeat "same words with different tones", close <-> far away, come <-> dog <-> horse, new <-> silk <-> burning <-> wood, rabbit <-> south, white <-> rice, vegetable <-> live (as where do you live?). First I just listened, then I made small games where I asked her to say the words, and I tried to answer what it meant. I was lucky to have a wife who pointed out when I got the vowels wrong too so we made games about that. Then I understood that the length of the vowel changed words… so we made games about that. Now we mixed tones and vowels and long and short ones. I had a patient wife who helped me with finding good combinations to point out the differences, that was very important. She also spoke good English so there was never any need for me to speak Thai with her. While that made it possible for me not to try to speak, it also stopped me from learning much Thai… I heard from so many people that I spoke (surprisingly) clearly but they were fooled into thinking that I therefore spoke a lot. I actually didn't.

So I did learn words at the same time as the tones, sort of. I learnt selected words in my head using the lovely voice of my first wife And when I clearly could hear the difference between her tones, then I started to try to sound them myself. I did it badly in the beginning but at least I could hear that I was off so I could try to improve myself. I should have done a better job with the vowels, I should have done more of the same with the vowels, it's just that I didn't understand how very important they were back then

The marriage failed after 7 years and I went into a Thai world and my Thai improved rapidly. I could easily go a month not speaking anything but Thai outside the office, and I used more and more Thai at the office. Several years later I made a big mistake and only spoke Thai with my daughter for the first 3 years… Bad bad idea, Don't make that mistake

If you have a wife who speaks good English and wants to speak English with you, then you will (most likely) never be able to speak Thai well. You need a partner or someone who is patiently willing to spend time to help you. Learning a tonal language is a big effort for westerners, it takes months and years. You will have to be Very Determined to succeed without a supportive home environment.

Edited June 15, 2010 by MikeyIdea

[SoftWater]

@Mikeyidea - An interesting story with many home truths that I recognise - thanks for sharing.

I started to suspect as much about the point you make in your last paragraph a couple of years ago, but resisted the temptation to blame others or my situation, but I have to say the proof is in the pudding. Despite seven years of 'book study' and a pretty decent 'knowledge of' Thai, my ability to use and understand the spoken language is disappointingly poor. I believe, as you say, that in my current situation this will not change even after another seven years. People talk a lot about 'motivation' as the key to success, but the real key to motivation is necessity.

Sw

[Johpa]

We should remember one thing. Thais are trained to memorise. They memorise their own dialect and they memorise the central dialect. They memorise reading and writing. That is also why Thais aren't used to / aren't good at reading out sounds from written letters. They are simply not used to do it. That is also why it sometimes even seems like they forget the connection between letters and sound. It's not necessarily there in the first place

It may be argued that the Thai education system is overly reliant upon rote memorization, but rest assured that young Thais enter the schools at the age of 5 already quite fluent in their mother tongue and usually, thanks to the media, understanding Central Thai, without having had to resort to rote memorization, or any formal training what so ever, just like every other child on the planet.

I have found that nearly all literate Thai can read out loud, but just as with speakers of other languages, that is a skill on its own that improves with practice. Compare my reading aloud skills with that of an elementary school teacher and I come out rather poorly.

[Peppy]

Regarding Peppy's comment that consonants often stay the same but vowels change, and eljefe2's comments – Not quite the same as the consonants are more important and the vowels less so, the important point I think is – how very important the vowel sounds are in tonal languages. Although vowels don't change (or very little anyway) between different dialects, the tones often do. The poor Thai, trying to understand a westerner who doesn't get his tones right, also gets confused going through the regional pronunciations he has memorised. Add the differences between similar vowel sounds and the importance of getting the length right. Now we understand that guessing what a farang says isn't easy

Actually, what I said about Thai was the exact opposite: that vowels usually sound the same, but consonants often change drastically across dialects--as you note above.

I agree with you about the importance of getting the vowels right if you wish to speak intelligible Thai. Tones and vowels aren't necessarily related, of course. The vowel does carry the tone, but the tone can be right even if the vowel is wrong, and vice versa.

 People talk a lot about 'motivation' as the key to success, but the real key to motivation is necessity.

Absolutely. What's "necessary" often depend on your perspective, so you can create your own necessity, too: When I first moved in with Mrs. Peppy six years ago, we spoke mostly English at home. I wanted to get more practice speaking Thai, so we agreed to speak only Thai/only English on alternating days. I was very strict about this myself, but after about a month Mrs. Peppy started using Thai even on English days; after three months there wasn't a word of English in our relationship, and it's been that way ever since. She often laments the fact that her English speaking abilities are so rusty as a result of being hardly used for half a decade (though her comprehension remains good, perhaps in part due to the number of English-soundtrack movies she watches), but the necessity for her to speak it isn't there anymore, since we only associate with (non-English speaking) Thai friends and family, and she doesn't really have the motivation to create the necessity for herself.

[MikeyIdea]

Actually, what I said about Thai was the exact opposite

Apologies

Don't give up guys, tones and vowels are the only difficulty in the whole language almost

[midnightjay3]

We have the same problem.

Thai accent is a bit difficult to copy. What I did, I listen to Thai movies and songs, although most of the words there are hard to catch up, I think it could really help polish my tune.

Edited June 23, 2010 by midnightjay3

[mangkorn]

My advice; stick with bangkokian thai, and give the regional dialects a pass until you've got central thai down fairly proficiently. Even is extremely rural areas, I've had NO problem getting thais to both speak and understand central thai.

Funny you say thais don't want to talk to you, because I find (even given my serious demeanor ), that most thais will interact with me just fine, and once they know I can speak thai, they'll even go out of their way to chat with me after they've seen me walk past their shop a few times.

As far as being interested in impressing the locals. .. I personally didn't undertake learning the thai language to impress anyone, but to communicate with them in their language instead of what passes for engrish in this country.

I agree, and would even add that Central Thai also works perfectly fine in Laos - if one can actually put together coherent sentences with proper syntax, and have a real conversation. As Tod often says, speaking two-word Thai combined with baby-talk engrish is never going to produce any meaningful conversation about anything, anyway.

Apart from the all-important tones, sentence structure is the real key to being able to speak, and to comprehend what is spoken by others.

[MikeyIdea]

Apart from the all-important tones, sentence structure is the real key to being able to speak, and to comprehend what is spoken by others.

Getting the vowels right when speaking is also crucial. And the length of the vowels.