Between elephant and plate, Is my Thai tutor any good?

[smo]

I have a Thai lady neighbor in my building. She’s used to be a Pratunam market vendor but not doing anything for the moment. So I pay her to tutor me a few times a week. Her plus is that she can speak survival English – gone abroad a couple of times. Her minus is that her Thai delivery is usually fast and often clipped (she used to sell things in the market after all).

She is not a learned tutor by any means and I wasn’t expecting that. Consequently, she doesn’t understand the problem I have with making the correct sounds (like between elephant and plate) and has no clues of how to get me there. Her usual reactions would be getting impatient and then mildly upset if I still say it wrong after several tries. And since her diction is not very good to begin with, it’s harder for me than usual to catch the right nuance.

She gets bored (yawns) quickly with drills (repetitions) and to make matter worse, she tries to condense the wordings more and more after each drill. She doesn’t see that I need to practice saying whole sentences with all the components present in order to learn the structure of the language.

Re spelling her mantra is that all I need is to master the correct tones of the 44 consonants. If I get them down pat then I can hook them up with any vowels and whatnot and I would be able to pronounce the tone of the word they make up correctly. The problem is that it doesn’t happen that way. And I can not memorize every single sound that each different word makes without having a guideline to go by. So I and she are stuck at this point.

Your advice on how to improve the situation and/or get through this impasse.? Or should I find someone else? On the other hand the street vendor lady outside my soi likes to speak to me. Her Thai is a pleasure to listen to, she says each word clear and stretches it out beautifully. But she is busy selling somtam (or café boran depending on the weather) and doesn’t speak a word of English. My tutor says that she can’t read (Thai) either.

Is

Thanks in advance for your time and input.

[rgs2001uk]

Get yourself to a proper Thai language school, they cost about 6k baht per month in Bkk.

You will be taught by teachers that understand your frustrations, know your weaknesses and can teach you the Thai alphabet, too be honest, I agree with the market vendor, chang and chan are two different sounds.

How long have you been studying for?

It took me about 3 months to memorise the alphabet, writing out gor gai 10 times on 10 different lines sure helps, reading car number plates helps with memory retention.

Its better to get the basics down first, learn to walk before you run, its all about building blocks.

As for the vendor, welcome to the world of learning by rote.

Sounds as if you would be better buying one of those Thai alphabet posters that cost about 20 or 30 baht and have her teach you how to read and pronounce them.

Edited August 18, 2014 by rgs2001uk

[TVeronica]

Jarn = Plate, try to pronounce Yarn with J instead

Chang = Elephant, try to pronounce Charge with Ch-ang

Go on or no, depends on You

[Tuxedo]

Try langauge maching website, it is free. I used to have buddy there. It works well. We used Skype to practice each other.

Be careful to use low educated people to learn you. Your accent will be pure. Anyone who cannot read should not be your tutor.

[canuckamuck]

Jarn = Plate, try to pronounce Yarn with J instead

Chang = Elephant, try to pronounce Charge with Ch-ang

Go on or no, depends on You

In case you are not British and do not pronounce r sounds like ah,

then you would say plate like jahn.

and chang is as above

[asiaexpat]

If learning correct pronunciation and grammar is your goal, then find a language school or professional language tutor. If you just want to be able to understand and speak street Thai, chat with your neighbor and others in the Muban every day.

[kriswillems]

95 percent of Thai people will not be able to teach you the tones or tone rules. Study with a teacher that used to teach foreigners (in a school). Once you know the basics you can take another teacher.

Edited August 18, 2014 by kriswillems

[Smokin Joe]

Jarn = Plate, try to pronounce Yarn with J instead

Chang = Elephant, try to pronounce Charge with Ch-ang

Go on or no, depends on You

In case you are not British and do not pronounce r sounds like ah,

then you would say plate like jahn.

and chang is as above

You saved me the trouble. There is a big difference between Brit or US pronunciation in that example, that's why it is almost impossible to write a Thai word in English so it could be read and pronounced properly.

[Richard W]

Just use a British Received Pronunciation (RP) accent! Seriously, though, phonetic vowel length still survives in RP and matters in Thai, though for Thai front vowels there are also less significant quality differences to back up the quantity differences.

Edited August 18, 2014 by Richard W

[Gecko123]

It sounds like you are just getting started.

If the current tutor is essentially having you practice pronouncing words before you have a handle on the alphabet and the tonal system, this can be really frustrating as it can be really hard for a Westerner to differentiate between the different tones and vowel lengths of words. It is a mistake to assume that any Thai will make a good Thai tutor. A Thai person who has never studied a foreign language will have a very limited appreciation of why Thai is such a tough language for foreigners to master.

My advice is to get a handle on the alphabet and the tone system through school, as an earlier poster recommended. If this isn't convenient you can consider self-study or possibly finding a university student to tutor you. A foreigner with a good handle on the language can also be invaluable in introducing you to the language. This is sometimes an overlooked resource. Once you have the alphabet and the tonal system under your belt, you will be better able to evaluate the teaching capabilities of your tutors. If you are really serious about learning the language, the sooner you abandon transliteration systems, the faster your long term progress will be. For a variety of reasons, you cannot become proficient in the language relying exclusively on transliteration.

The best resource books for beginners which I have found are:

"Thai for Beginners" by Benjawan Poomsan Becker ISBN 1-887521-00-3 which also comes with tapes/CD, and

"Thai-English Student's Dictionary by Mary R. Haas ISBN0-8047-0567-4

These two resources have the benefit of using the international phonetic alphabet to aid in pronunciation which is the most accurate and reliable guide to pronunciation. Hope this helps.

[smo]

OP here,

Big thanks to all for your advice and various suggestions. To answer some of your questions:

My first two months in BKK (feb and mar of this year) I did go to school, a reputable one in Times Square at Asoke. Paid the usual fees and went to level 1 and level 2, dutifully 5 afternoons a week. It was fun, two issues though: a) tons of materials to absorb – impossible to do so since we don’t really have time to practice what we learned the day before and then we get loaded with more new stuff the next day, the teacher doesn’t correct our pronunciation - even though we were usually no more than ten in a class, she probably neither had enough time nor energy to give us individual attention. So we corrected one another during breaks, had lots of laughs but sadly realized that no Thai was going to understand us left to our own device.

So I stopped going to school and tried to teach myself, got all kinds of books (including a collectors-item copy of “Fundamentals of Thai Language” that I paid dearly for back home on ebay) and was hoping that I could learn on my own in the morning and then practice with the tutor in the afternoon. I also got bored with transliteration pretty early on, and decided to plunge head on into the alphabet. That was fun, all the posters and “running ants” copy books I got them all. Often was the main attraction in the coffee shop where I’d come in and “set up” shop with my learning materials. Also I’ve gotten to know all the “khai ya” (pharmacies) around the whole neighborhood.

Things came to a head when I am done with the posters and started building words. The writing wasn’t too bad, but the spelling/reading was where I and my tutor bucked heads. She says, “if you can pronounce all your consonants correctly AND with the correct tones, then you’ll have no problem pronouncing the words made up with that consonant.” Well, pardon me but it ain’t that simple: a low-tone consonant when matched up with certain vowels or cluster doesn’t necessarily come out low-toned. Her answer was “that is because you don’t pronounce your consonant correctly.” Round and round we go. It dawned on me very quickly that she doesn’t know the tonal rules and doesn’t care one straw about them, can’t blame her since it was her mother tongue which she for sure didn’t learn at school.

I’ve been using a very interesting “writing” book ( Reading and Writing Thai by Somsonge Burusphat) that I have made some nice progress along with. But when it comes to the tonal rules, things become quite complex and I don’t feel I could trudge through on my own.

[KhunBENQ]

Remeber that there are many online sources where you can listen to the correct Thai pronounciation,

(like http://www.thai-language.com)

Transcriptions like seen in the thread will never bring you there.

Listen:

Plate, จาน (chan) http://www.thai-language.com/mp3/E131106.mp3

Elephant: ช้าง (chang) http://www.thai-language.com/mp3/E131108.mp3

Even the Google translator does a fairly good job.

Enter English word on the left, translate und press the loudspeaker symbol on the right side.

Female voice, synthesized.

https://translate.google.de/#en/th/

Use "dish" to get "chan".

(if you click the Thai word, you see alternatives)

Edited August 19, 2014 by KhunBENQ

[kriswillems]

He's a flowdiagram about the tones I ever made. They teach you this in school, so maybe you've quit school too early?

Edited August 19, 2014 by kriswillems

[Richard W]

Transcriptions like seen in the thread will never bring you there.

When this forum was new, we worked out a transcription scheme. I suspect it fell by the wayside because people didn't remember the tones. It was based on the RTGS in so far as it was unambiguous, with length marking for the exceptional cases. Thus we would have written the two words as [F]chaang and [M]jaan.

[fire69water]

There are two significant differences in pronunciation between 'elephant' and 'plate' in Thai:

1. 'elephant' is aspirated, i.e., pronounced with a puff of air. 'plate' is unaspirated.

2. 'elephant' ends with an 'ng' and 'plate ends with an 'n'. It's the difference between 'sung' and 'sun'.

[kokesaat]

A top notch school would be best....but here's what worked for me...second best:

Find an educated Thai who can speak English and wants to practice English (there are thousands). Make a deal......one hour of English conversation for one hour of Thai instruction. Be firm in your instruction from the very beginning.....that is, you want to learn how to pronounce the different sounds of the alphabet and then learn the tones. No hanky panky, no letting you slide easy. 'Teach me once, then slam your hand on the desk if I make a mistake.'

Most Thais will shy away from being firm....but if you keep emphasizing it, most get the message. Use your Benjawan Becker books as a guide, especially when it comes time to decypher the tones.

It can be done.....I've used a pharmacist and two college grads over the past few years. I may not be be able to speak fluently, but what I can speak, most all Thais understand what I'm saying. That's the most important thing to me.

[SlyAnimal]

From the sounds, you need some help with your basic pronunciation of some of the letters, as words like Jaan & Chang should have very very different sounds.

What I did to learn my sounds, was the same way that Thai kids learn the sounds/alphabet, I watched + sang the below song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T02AkRj6Pcw

This version has some English phonetics as well, but don't use them too much, just keep them as a bit of a reminder. Instead, listen to the song, and sing it the way that they do, then you'll get the correct pronunciation of the letters.

Once you've done that, check out the tone rules table which I've attached, it's the easiest version of it that I've found on the internet. It also includes a list of the consonant classes.

You should also try to find one of those wall hangings which has the consonants, and another one which has the vowels, and stick it up somewhere for you to refer back to at times.

With these materials + your tutor, you should be ready to go.

1/ Learn the alphabet song so that you know the consonants + correct sounds. Get your tutor to help you by listening to you sing, and then correcting you. Also get her to listen to you say each letter, and then correct your pronunciation.

2/ Get your teacher to write out letters, and you then identify then to her. She can then correct your pronunciation. Then swap, she says a letter, and you write it. As you learn the consonants, start to learn which group they belong to. One way I can think of to do this, would be when practising writing the consonants, put them in 1 of 3 columns, depending on their class. And always do that when you write with them.

3/ Then start to practice the vowels, learn them in a similar way to how you learnt the consonants. As you're learning the vowels, start to make some short words with each from the Gor Eei Gor Gai song. If you can associate a vowel with a short word which you can pronounce correctly already, you'll then be able to pronounce other words which use it correctly as well.

4/ Now start to learn the tones (not tone rules yet). For this, your tutor can drill you on the Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga until you can say all of the tones correctly, and continue to give you short practices each session to ensure you have it sorted.

5/ Next the tone rules, so study the chart which I included. The best way I found to remember this, is for mid consonants remember Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, as the tones go in order e.g. กา ก่า ก้า ก๊า ก๋า go mid/low/falling/high/rising. High consonants are the same, except ขา is rising instead of mid. For mid/low consonants short & kpt endings are both low. Low consonants are either mid if "normal", and otherwise are falling or high. If you remember an easy word, which you know the tone for and know how to spell, for some of the different situations, that'll help you too e.g. I always remember that ไม่ (no) is falling, so low class consonants with อ่ are falling. Get your tutor to test you by writing out words which you can then read with the correct tone, and then have her say words which you can write down a phonetic spelling for. As you get better, you could try reading passages for her etc.

I'm not sure if this is all for you or not, you might feel that you're already well past these steps, but most of these are how I learnt to read/write (Although I had a "gap" in my learning, where I stopped my self study before I learnt the classes/tone rules, if I could go back again, I'd learn them in the way I've described above though). These are also very similar methods to how Thai kids learn, and so your tutor will probably be of a lot more help than if you just try to learn Thai "The Farang way" (Except the part about the tone rules, they don't really learn the rules, they just kinda "work it out" because they have massive vocabularies (with correct tones) even before they learn to read/write).

You'll need to do a lot of study yourself though, and your tutor would mainly be for testing you + listening to your tones/sounds + speaking so that you can hear the correct sounds.

Tone Rules Table.pdf

[smo]

There are two significant differences in pronunciation between 'elephant' and 'plate' in Thai:

1. 'elephant' is aspirated, i.e., pronounced with a puff of air. 'plate' is unaspirated.

2. 'elephant' ends with an 'ng' and 'plate ends with an 'n'. It's the difference between 'sung' and 'sun'.

But that’s not all there is – “ch (aspirated or not)-aang” alone is not going to do it. The main vowel in elephant – though started out as a simple “aa” - when finally exiting your throat will have become a cluster sound similar to “ain’t” (say it without the t) right before you combine it with “ng” to end the word. If you missed that tail-end of the vowel sound you “ain’t” pronouncing elephant correctly. This is what made me give up transcription/transliteration altogether.

[smo]

5/ Next the tone rules, so study the chart which I included. The best way I found to remember this, is for mid consonants remember Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, as the tones go in order e.g. กา ก่า ก้า ก๊า ก๋า go mid/low/falling/high/rising. High consonants are the same, except ขา is rising instead of mid. For mid/low consonants short & kpt endings are both low. Low consonants are either mid if "normal", and otherwise are falling or high. If you remember an easy word, which you know the tone for and know how to spell, for some of the different situations, that'll help you too e.g. I always remember that ไม่ (no) is falling, so low class consonants with อ่ are falling. Get your tutor to test you by writing out words which you can then read with the correct tone, and then have her say words which you can write down a phonetic spelling for. As you get better, you could try reading passages for her etc.

Thanks for the video (I loved it!) and your guidance. I will study it closely. My tutor and I have proceeded past the alphabet (consonants and vowels). But she doesn't believe in the consonant classes high mid or low. I tried to separate them just by face value (visual recognition), but couldn't do it without the audio understanding : the ability to distinguish or group them by sound. Hence the inability to go on with the tone rules.

[SlyAnimal]

How I learnt to put them into groups, as I learnt the consonants 3 years before I finally learnt their classes (which I only did 2 months ago), was to think of the following:

High:

3x "S"s สษศ(ซ is low)

ห since it changes the class of other consonants

ข is the first letter after ก

ถผฝ the "inner circle" are all high class

ฉฐ where then the only ones I really had to "learn" the class for

Medium:

ก makes sense because of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

อ is about as middle as you get

ตดฎฏ all of the "D"s (I actually forgot about ฒ when I was learning them)

บป the "B"s and I also thought of this group as containing all of the "mixed" sounds e.g. "bP"s & "dT"s

จ was then the only one I had to really learn

Low:

All the rest, the most difficult part here was just remembering the letters as a lot I'd just forget when testing myself, since there's so many of them

I hope this helps. I found it quite easy once I actually knuckled down to do some study, and had it sorted within a couple of hours using the memory hooks I've described above.

[Richard W]

One of my pet peeves is the way the Thai consonants are presented to learners. When presenting the full set, it should be presented in a table, as at http://www.thai-language.com/ref/phonetic-organization-consonants . The regular patterns are no coincidence - they have arisen naturally from the way the consonants were classified for Sanskrit over 2000 years ago and the way Thai tones split, yielding the tone rules. Thus Sly Animal's set of "d"s and "b"s ('also mixed bp and dt') is simply the leftmost 2 columns of the table. Phonetically they're just the unaspirated stops.

In the 4th column (which contains ฝ) the three high /s/ letters ศษส are missing - the Indians exiled them to the lists so they could haver a neat 5 by 5 table (which Thai extends to 5 by 8 with some elements missing) and so the 4th column just has the letters added for Thai - ฃ (now obsolete) and ฝ. But for this, the high consonants would just be the 3rd (ผ) and 4th (ฝ) columns plus ห, which doesn't fit the column, just as H and He don't fit the periodic table of elements very well. The phonetic ordering of the Thai alphabet simply breaks down for the last four consonants, which were just tacked on the end as they were added to the category of consonants - 'placeless' ห by the Indians, ฬ for Pali, อ as its interpretation changed from initial vowel to consonant, and ฮ as the tones split.

[recom273]

My first two months in BKK (feb and mar of this year) I did go to school, a reputable one in Times Square at Asoke ...

Was this UTL ? anyway, it doesn't matter which of the one ..

I found the morning sessions better than the afternoon. There is an extra hour, the students seemed more serious, where the afternoon session was more relaxed and 'lazy'

With any language, its best not to think that you are going to learn exclusively through the classes, I studied hard and made it through a few levels, colleagues studied harder and I could see the benefits. There were also some guys who thought they would learn through osmosis and dropped out at level 2.

I found that after study, I knew far more about Thai grammar than my wife, when I asked my tutor, she explained that a Thai probably wouldn't know about higher and lower class consonants, etc .. i don't know if thats true .. so pronunciation aside, maybe stick with a decent tutor. I never had a problem with the staff or their methods, they seemed quite well disciplined, I got kept behind for a rollocking a few times.

Another option you are free to do; instead of passing yourself and pushing yourself through the levels thinking you are making process, retake levels.

I also think, after i learnt to read and write, I was in a better position to comprehend the information i had absorbed in previous levels.