Drifting back to the earlier sections of this thread. Do learn the central Thai (standard) dialect. There are 100's of reasons for this but the biggest one is that you'll have more resources available to you for learning!

People from Upcountry will understand Central Thai even if they won't speak it as a normal part of their lives.

I do get a kick out of driving around upcountry and listening to local radio (talkshows and DJ's) Seems like I understand the language better than my Thai friend sometimes.

I swear the funniest thing I have heard is a guy that lives in Pattaya and has no regular GF come to BKK and talk to people in Thai. He "speaks well" but 80% is the NE'ern dialect as spoken to close friends. People peg him as a sex-pat in about 2 sentences. (He does well in nana though)

I do fairly well with my spoken Thai, better with written, and listening is great! Good luck to all of you! Great to see people that are getting it!

Watch a few Thai movies which I quite enjoy, but there are several terms of address I would love to know the English equivalent of if there is one.

Isaan girls tend to call each other 'y-wung' but I have yet to have a satisfactory explanation of what this is in English.

Tough guys call each other 'meung' in the movies which I guess is very informal and certainly not to be used by a farang. I wonder if the English equivalent is something like 'Oi plonker!'.

Finally 'y-burr' which is quite funny as I think it just means 'Oi stupid!'.

Any other good ones?

I'm wondering if this 'y-wung' you refer to is ee-yang (rising tone), the Issan word for 'what?' ee- burr, surr-burr mean foolish, stupid.