Contemplating About Learning Thai

[ChristianPFC]

Abstract: I'm looking for a school in Bangkok where I can learn Thai for beginner for the duration of two months, about 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. Read, write, speak, listen, no romanization. Start around November this year.

I've been to Thailand 3 times so far and it seems I will continue to return once or twice per year. There are a lot of reasons to come to Thailand, the crucial point is: the boys are cute and easy! (I'm a gay German who likes far-east-Asian men.) Between my current and my future occupation, there is a gap of some months, which falls into winter, and winter in Europe is a season of the year that is not pleasant. Therefore, I want to spend it in an extended holiday in Thailand and use this to learn Thai (as I have to fill this time with a useful occupation, I can't be idle for long times).

I'm looking for a school preferably in Bangkok, within walking distance to BTS or MRT so I can live in walking distance to the school and as well as travel around by BTS and MRT and travel to other parts of Thailand. My idea is having lessons of Thai language some hours a day (how many would you recommend?), in the afternoon (or at least not before 10am as I like to sleep long and this is a holiday). Language of instruction English or German (or Thai only if you can convince me that this is suitable for beginners). I prefer learning in group in a classroom to learning online, with video or with private teacher (maybe private teacher if I'm considerably slower or faster then the group). Maybe include phonetics, position of tongue and lips when forming Thai sounds. I know there are plenty of books available and there is good material online (some of it made a very good impression), which I surely will use later, but for the beginning stick to well-tested ans successful classroom approach (13 years in school - without repeating a year – and 5 years of study at university, yes, it really takes that long in Germany!). Furthermore, having fixed dates and times gives a structure to learning, when I'm alone with a book I can do it now or later, or maybe tomorrow.

Read and write only? There seem to be a lot of Farang who can only understand and speak Thai, I would rather do the opposite: read and write (and touch type) only or start with reading and writing (with no sound associated to the letters) and speak and listen later. However, I have no idea what it would be like to read without forming a sound in my brain (this happens automatically whenever I read). Has anyone ever heard of the approach to read and write first and listen and speak second?

My experiences with languages so far. My mother tongue is German, my English is quite fluent (judge yourself, are there any mistakes hat reveal that I'm no native speaker?), my French is advanced and my Russian is intermediate. I learnt these at school and kept the knowledge alive by reading in these languages. (Therefore, my reading understanding is far better than writing, speaking, understanding.) I'm interested in languages, linguistics, grammar (you can't scare me with grammar books).

My learning type. I think I'm a visual learning type. I read far more than I write, speak or listen. When I hear an unknown word, I want to know how it's written to look it up in a dictionary. I do well in exercises that include fillig gaps in texts or translate from German or English into the target language. I don't have much imagination, if I get a picture and have to tell a story relating to this picture it's a torture for me, the problem is not the target language, the problem is to think of a story to tell! I successfully use flash card for memorizing the translation of single words (English, French or Russian to German), entire sencentes (from German to French) or grammatical rules. I create them myself on the computer and print them on standard paper (8 cards per page). My flash cards are single-sided (simplifies creation and printing), the upper half is in one language, the lower half in the other language, and only one half peeks out of the deck, so there is no need for flipping. There are ways to do this (revising flashcards) on the computer, but what's the point? I use them when I walk to work or go shopping and I can put them in my pocket. I find it easy to remember jokes (the short ones, one or two sentences, question-answer, Chuck Norris facts and so on), proverbs, idiomatic sayings, words with unusual properties (homophones, the same letter several times, palindromes, and so on). Learning the names of tropical fruits and Thai dishes will probably be easy, as I like tropic fruits and Thai food (not spicy) as well.

How far can I get? Let's assume 2 months x 4 weeks x 5 days x 3 hours = 120 hours of lessons (+ more preparing at home). Is this sufficient to be able to read and write fluently (i.e. be able to read unknown word with correct pronunciation) and be confident about the tones? The tones is the problem! I can learn grammar and vocabulary alone at home in Europe with a book, but I have to get a decent pronunciation before I do so. A Thai friend of mine had German lessons for 120 hours and speaks a decent German. (I did not believe him and it further turned out that his sister married a German and he visited her in Germany, so he spent more time learning and practising German). For comparison: after about 500 hours of learning Russian I have a good grasp of the cases (6 cases, 3 genders, singular and plural) and have a rough understanding of general texts and a good understanding of scientific texts (related to my work) and went through around 2000 flash-cards. With this little effort, I think my Russian is far better than the English of many Thais I dealt with, even those who are in daily contact with Farangs.

Apart from knowing the meaning of romanized versions of common Thai words that occur in forums, a scrolling through "Teach yourself Thai", many hours of reading this forum and Thai language related websites I have no knowledge of Thai. There are plenty of books about Thai and plenty of schools that teach Thai for foreigners and private tutors, but my ideas of learning Thai are quite specific, so I didn't read everything available on the net and see what fits, but ask you instead. I'm under no illusion that there will be a "fast", "quick", "easy" way to learn Thai nor that I will become fluent like a native in some weeks. Educational Visa is not important for me as I will stay only 2 or 3 months in Thailand (and can integrate visa-runs into my holiday; actually visa-runs is something I only read about so far, maybe getting an ED visa is cheaper or simpler than doing visa-runs?).

Thank you for reading all this. As I rarely have the chance to exchange thoughts about learning languages with others, I used this occasion to voice some of them. Which school do you think fits my ideas of learning?

Edited September 3, 2010 by ChristianPFC

[Colabamumbai]

Call thailanguagesolutions google them ask for Pormipon tell her want you want. and she what she can offer you. I was a previous student. I have seen no complaints about the school since I have been a member of TVF. You can mention Colabamumbai from TFV. I have nothing to gain by giving you this info, I do not work for them.