Cheap Thai Lessons For Foreigners In Bangkok

[meadish_sweetball]

Movies: Tell me when did you actually see a GOOD thai movie. ..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_Chan

...is already mentioned above. For a good reason, well worth seeing.

Let me add

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangkok_Loco

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Overture

...as well. I love Bangkok Loco, it's very absurd and genuinely funny.

[Joosesis]

Movies: Tell me when did you actually see a GOOD thai movie. ..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_Chan

...is already mentioned above. For a good reason, well worth seeing.

Let me add

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Bangkok_Loco

and

http://en.wikipedia....ki/The_Overture

...as well. I love Bangkok Loco, it's very absurd and genuinely funny.

...and I'm not a big fan of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, but the folks in Cannes sure are.

Blissfully Yours, Tropical Malady, Syndromes and a Century, and, of course, Palme d'Or winner, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.

[Peppy]

Since this is turning into a "good Thai movies" discussion...

เรื่องตลก 69 reuang dta-lok hok gaao "A funny story about 69" (English title: 6ixty-nin9) is a great movie--I did think it got a bit disappointing towards the end though.

And มนต์รักทรานซิสเตอร์ mon rak trahn-sit-sa-ter "Transistor radio love mantra" (English title: Transistor Love Story) is one of my favourite movies of all time--if you haven't seen it, do!

Both of the above were written and directed by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang (เป็นเอก รัตนเรือง), who also did the previously-mentioned Last Life in the Universe (titled เรื่องรัก น้อยนิด มหาศาล reuang rak noi nit ma-ha-sahn "A tiny little enormous love story*" in Thai).

*The Thai title of Last Life in the Universe, reuang rak noi nit ma-ha-sahn, is a play on words. It could also be construed as "A story of enormous love for Noi and Nit"--the two main female characters in the movie are called Noi (little) and Nit (little, tiny, bitty).

[klons]

Whilst in a bank yesterday, they were playing an American movie dubbed in Thai and with Thai subtitles also. It's not likely that the bank

employees installed these subtitles themselves so there must be Thai movies available like that, for the deaf I would think. Has anyone

ever come across any?

[Peppy]

Whilst in a bank yesterday, they were playing an American movie dubbed in Thai and with Thai subtitles also. It's not likely that the bank

employees installed these subtitles themselves so there must be Thai movies available like that, for the deaf I would think. Has anyone

ever come across any?

Most DVDs of Hollywood movies sold in Thailand have options for both Thai dubbing and Thai subtitles--turn on both and you're good to go.

[kikenyoy]

Since this is turning into a "good Thai movies" discussion...

เรื่องตลก 69 reuang dta-lok hok gaao "A funny story about 69" (English title: 6ixty-nin9) is a great movie--I did think it got a bit disappointing towards the end though.

I almost included it on my list, but I feel the same way about the ending. I laughed hard several times during the movie and was really enjoying it, until the ending which I hated.

[harrry]

Bringing this backto the original topic I think maybe your lesssons could be valuable. I think a trained teacher of thai as a foreign language is needed to teach earlier students. Where you have the edge is that for those who know basic thai you can give an insight to people on how thailand really works. You are obviously a thinking young thai who has a good knowledge of Thailand and it's structures. Not exactly culture but I think if I was in Bangkock I would pay those rates for the opportunity to discuss local happenings with a person who is obviously willing to question and who has been educated at one of Thailands finest Universities. But for language I think I would look to others

Edited August 21, 2010 by harrry

[schoopinij]

Thank you for all the comments again

and MR. Tod .. for me there's no need for you to apologized but thank you for that anyway

about the movies ..... I like เรื่องตลก69 so much lol

and I still running my business

[desi]

If anyone fancies trying to teach me some basic Thai over Skype I will pay by PayPal.. nothing serious!

I'll even buy you a few drinks when I arrive next month!

There is a Thai Skype series now in progress.

A list of Skype Thai teachers will be posted next week (message me if you want the list)

[kpmsprtd]

@ schoopinij:

And as it is just conversation lesson I might just take you for a walk and point out to someone and ask you what's she/he doing.. or what is this..

I will make you learn like a child ! and make you speak ! ... I will speak Thai even you don't understand it ! cause I taught my nephew that way too and he's learnt a lot ! lol

You are exactly right, young lady. That is indeed the way. And it is exactly what I need. (Too bad I'm in California.)

Don't ever change.

The world is your oyster.

You go, girl!

P.S. If I at age 52 could write in ภาษาไทย half as well as you write in English at age 22, I would be completely satisfied. I'm sure the same is true for speaking.

[kriswillems]

Teaching your own native language to a foreigner, without having any previous experience doing this, makes you run into all kinds of unexpected questions and problems.

If tried to teach Dutch to Thai people. Although I also have a masters degree and I am a native Dutch speaker, it was much more difficult than I expected. Things that always seemed obvious and natural to me were very hard to understand for my Thai students. I gave up teaching rather quickly.

I've tried studying Thai with educated Thai people that had no previous teaching experience. I am sorry to say I always got disappointed. It was amazing to see how each of those Thai people (with a masters degree) didn't manage to explain the tone rules of the Thai language (although they knew with tone to use). I guess using the tones correctly was just obvious for them and they never suspected that it might be a problem for foreigners.

If you're serious about teaching Thai and you plan to get a higher income than 250B/hour I would advice you to go to teach in a Thai language school for foreigners (for 1 or 2 months). I think the schools that use the union method have a way of teaching that is really logical and structured. A teacher in one of these "union"-based schools get typically 400 to 500 B per hour for private courses.

After teaching in a school, you'll have a huge amount of teaching material and you'll probably better understand the problems foreigners run into when studying the Thai language. You would also be able to charge more than 250B/h.

Anyway, if you look at it as a temporary thing, and your don't want to loose time teaching in a school first, I think 250B/h is fair.

Edited August 21, 2010 by kriswillems

[schoopinij]

Dear Khun Kriswillems

According to your texts that say

"It was amazing to see how each of those Thai people (with a masters degree) didn't manage to explain the tone rules of the Thai language (although they knew with tone to use). I guess using the tones correctly was just obvious for them and they never suspected that it might be a problem for foreigners."

it is quite surprising for me.. you know if you learn how to read and right Thai .. they should've taught you about 5 basic tones we got .. and 3 different kind of alphabet that we manage by tones of the alphabet... low tone alphabets , middle tone alphabet (which could mix with long sound vowels and the tone marks and make the right tone of every tone marks such as กา ก่า ก้า ก๊า ก๋า ... ) , and High tone alphabet. It is hard to explain by text but if you speak it out you will understand.

There's my trick about the tones which I mixed the singing skill with the tones. I don't have enough time to explain about that but I will do it later.

By the way ... TONES are first things that I will teach because it's so important .. plus .. the shape of the mouth when you speak Thai can't be the same as the shape when you speak English or other language ... I will have to teach them to learn that too .. then .. I will teach the words bit by bit ..

sounds like a teaching plan huh? you know it's just like the way i studied English in school

I had to learn how to say THREE ... I bet some Thai people still say like TREE or TEA ..

in the same way foreigners find it's hard to tell the different between ป ปลา and บ ใบไม้ I really hope that my student can learn from me to say it right .

[asiaworld]

Not mean to hijack the topic, but Kriswillems post made me think,(also could serve as a priceless advise 4 schoopinij ). Its been over a dozen of years since i've started leaning thai, live here ( + i speak chinese since my teenage years ), but i still got NO idea about the tones, and how to explain them ! i've tried the "scientific method", and don't think it works well, (some of my relatives are musicians, so i sort of knew about the "tones' of different sort as well). Most of us don't have musical ears !

Nowadays i just try to use basic common sence, and treat it the same way we do treat the stress on certain syllables in most of non-tonal languages, just try to ape peoples speach as much as you can.. So far, so good, i've done plenty of things in thai (like buy/sell/service car/condo), without any complications !

Some mishaps do occure, and i've noticed,that thais, no matter how educated they are, can't be arsed to correct the tonal mishaps, but prefer to ignore/misunderstand it instead, while chinese usually are happy to point out, and correct my mistakes in speach. Maybe that's why my chinese got a lot better, than thai, even after equial exposure to both languages .

[Luukhin]

Why don't you guys use colours to learn tones? Like red for the first tone, yellow for the second tone...etc. Use a highlighter when you read. I think that will help.

[anchan42]

Dear Khun Kriswillems

According to your texts that say

"It was amazing to see how each of those Thai people (with a masters degree) didn't manage to explain the tone rules of the Thai language (although they knew with tone to use). I guess using the tones correctly was just obvious for them and they never suspected that it might be a problem for foreigners."

it is quite surprising for me.. you know if you learn how to read and right Thai .. they should've taught you about 5 basic tones we got .. and 3 different kind of alphabet that we manage by tones of the alphabet... low tone alphabets , middle tone alphabet (which could mix with long sound vowels and the tone marks and make the right tone of every tone marks such as กา ก่า ก้า ก๊า ก๋า ... ) , and High tone alphabet. It is hard to explain by text but if you speak it out you will understand.

There's my trick about the tones which I mixed the singing skill with the tones. I don't have enough time to explain about that but I will do it later.

By the way ... TONES are first things that I will teach because it's so important .. plus .. the shape of the mouth when you speak Thai can't be the same as the shape when you speak English or other language ... I will have to teach them to learn that too .. then .. I will teach the words bit by bit ..

sounds like a teaching plan huh? you know it's just like the way i studied English in school

I had to learn how to say THREE ... I bet some Thai people still say like TREE or TEA ..

in the same way foreigners find it's hard to tell the different between ป ปลา and บ ใบไม้ I really hope that my student can learn from me to say it right .

I find Kris comment quite understandable. Tone rules and 3 class of alphabet are taught in primary school and , for most Thai who do not study language major,are soon forgotten.

Implicit and explicit knowledge of language are tow different things. Acquiring language as a child and learning it as an adult are also different.

Tone rules are acquired at very young age and do not need to be taught explicitly. If you are a native Thai speaker, you don't really need to know 3 class of alphabet to be able to read.

I know that ถี่ and ที่ read differently without having to even think about alphabet class. To explain why would be totally different matter.

Having a native speaker's input is undoubtedly helpful. Having a trained native speaker's input can make big difference. I struggled with some consonant cluster sounds for years before I met a profession English teacher who solved it in 10 seconds.

[mangkorn]

I'm not sure what assumptions people made about schoopinit's reference to "culture," but the only example she gave was this one:

"...I think that it is quite important to you if you would like to speak Thai, because I have some foreigner friends and sometimes I found that they know the words but they have some kind of face expressions that are not polite for Thai people..."

That kind of advice is invaluable. Certainly worth the modest fee that she is asking.

"Culture" is much more than folkloric dances. (In one country I know, standing with your hands on your hips may provoke a fight.)

[Baa_Mango]

I think culture can be important when learning a language.. not so much old history, or some magical rules about feet, or wai'ing some ผู้ใหญ่ or something, but the way people talk has a lot to do with culture. Could be some idioms or sht like that (just like in english we have all that stuff but we already know the meaning of them where as someone learning as a 2nd language wouldn't), or just pop culture stuff. I think having a young person who can also speak some decent english teach some stuff could be quite helpful. Pop culture and ภาษาพูด are so different then the book stuff. I am learning so much stuff from the people i hang out with at university that i know would be quite hard to get otherwise. Anyways what i was meaning by this post was that some parts of culture are vital to get good at a language as well as being able to be understood. Also if you speak strict BriT english and you go to amerika people will be all shaken up with that type of talk right? But if you learned everything you know from some hollywood movies and gansta rap than you will fit right in with whatever demograph is down with that stuff. i think what todds good point is though is that its stupid to pay someone to listen to them just up themselves - magical culture - importance of blah blah etc.. but certain parts will have a big impact at the end of the day in your speaking and listening

[Groongthep]

Professor Wiworn Kesavatana-Dohrs Ph.d of the University of Washington...has recently published a book distributed by Silkworm Press here in Thailand in which she states that "basic reading and writing ability in Thai should be learned from the onset in order to avoid using transliteration systems that hinder the mastery of correct pronunciation and itonation".

I think that theory is a bit of a myth actually, and I've certainly yet to see any empirical reseach to prove it. Reading doesn't teach you correct pronunciation and intonation - copying native speakers does.

She's the one whose got a book out called "Everyday Thai for Beginners". It's got abso-tively posi-lutely NO engrish transliteration or transcription. Sadly neither does it even have the RID pronunciation guide; which once you can read thai gets you pretty close to a words pronunciation.

I hafta agree with "SoftWater" and his response. I can read fine, back translate most everything I read into engrish (meaning I am comprehending what I am reading). However, my pronunciation and intonation when I read aloud to my thai friends often leaves them almost rolling on the floor with laughter as it's so off the mark . I pause at the wrong time during a sentence (like in the middle of a compound word, use the wrong tone or vowel length for a word, or something else.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that the textbook by Professor Wiworn Kesavatana-Dohrs comes with a CD that contains all the material in the book pronounced by a native speaker (herself). So for those who need it, copying sounds from a native speaker is also included in this book (CD) to help those who never learned the proper pronunciation of the characters and clusters when learning to read Thai in the first place.