Learning as Foreign Language , are we really taken seriously?

[Kitsune]

We are learning Thai as a foreign language, and yet none of the language learning here in Thailand is recognizing this and adapting their curriculum.

One example: tones.

Most of western people don't have the ability to discriminate recognize let alone use tones, and yet every each school in Thailand ignores this and teaches us Thai exactly the same way Thai people are taught.

When learning the alphabet a Thai child has been totally immersed for years in Thai tones, speaking them, hearing them constantly, so he already recognizes them.

And yet we as adults are taught exactly the same way as every five year old Thai child is taught. Nobody seems to care that we are absolutely and literally tone deaf. Telling us ABOUT tones (mid/low/high consonants /vowels and how they couple with the 5 tones) is never going to help us recognize them. Telling us a consonant is the first letter of an old Chinese wooden shoe, or a pointy ceremonial hat is NOT going to help our pronounciation.

No one is ever going to take any school seriously if they don't really look into what makes Thai difficult for learners, and keep teaching as if we were Thais.

As for us,if we want to have a real go at Thai language, we need proper phonetic training. Thai linguistic must start to take foreigners abilities into account.

We need discrimination exercises,where each tone is confronted with the other separately, not an alphabet referring to objects we are never going to see.

Edited September 24, 2014 by Kitsune

[Bernard Flint]

I know people who speak,read and write fluently

[eeeya]

op, you are talking about yourself.

others have success. I suggest you stop thinking about it and keep practicing

[Bernard Flint]

op, you are talking about yourself.

others have success. I suggest you stop thinking about it and keep practicing

Agree Sir

The cost of many years of learning/ maybe private lessons too,can be prohibitive to some peoples pocket.

[Seligne2]

What do "proper phonetic training" and "discrimination exercises" mean? Maybe you are on to something, but I cannot tell from your post.

[eeeya]

"Most of western people don't have the ability to discriminate recognize let alone use tones"

This is crap. keep listening long enough and it becomes clear.

[phuketsub]

Please let's keep this civil.

Tones are are obviously extremely important to learning Thai, but there are many resources available to help you if you are just getting started.

To the OP: You are not 'tone deaf'.

Just think of posing a question like 'really?'

'Really?' (rising tone) indicates surprise.

'Really?' (even tone) indicates a sense of suspicion.

'Really? (low tone) indicates a sense of disbelief.

However in Thai the tones impart different meaning to words with otherwise same phonemic structure. Understanding this is the key to progress.

The best place to start is with just knowing the proper pronunciation of the numbers 1-10, which will put you though the full range.

Learning the Thai tones though the Thai alphabetic system is difficult, or at least it has been for me.

If you need a transitional phase, the resources are available, such as through the AUA/Mary Haas phonetic system.

Anyway, best of luck and please let us know how you are getting on.

[bannork]

Yes OP you use tones already in English but you may just not be aware of it.

The falling tone in Thai can be hard for foreigners to get the essence, imagine shouting to a friend in a forest far away, perhaps out of sight, 'Johhhhhhn' -the tone falls, right? now speed it up and cut that long fall in tone by half or more and you'll get the Thai falling tone.

For the rising tone.ie' Reaaaallly? I don't believe you! ' Start deep and end mid tone, again twice as fast as 'reaaaalllly'.

mid tone- same as any middle class politician in the UK trying to sound reasonable.

High tone- listen to Queen Elizabeth's speeches- 'My husband and I...'

The low tone- anyone from depressing places such as Birmingham can be recommended- Tony Iommi, the lead guitarist in Black Sabbath is a classic example of a low tone user, with good reason.

[CaptHaddock]

Here's what the OP's post tells me about him:

He probably speaks only English and has never been successful at learning another language. Therefore, he doesn't know how to learn a language and underestimates the difficulty involved and the effort necessary to succeed. Since he has no experience with learning a language he doesn't know how to select a competent teacher or a school that will enable him to succeed at it, even if he is willing to invest the time and effort, which is by no means clear. For example, he doesn't know enough to evaluate the school he has chosen as to whether they have produced students who have successfully learned Thai to the level to which he aspires. Like the enthusiasts of the books and tape, self-teaching method of learning Thai he hasn't noticed that he has never met anyone who has succeeded using his chosen method. Sounds to me like no student at his school ever becomes competent at Thai. The odds are very much against him since the vast majority of Thai language schools and teachers are just incompetent.

If, on the other hand, he studies in a program that has produced graduates who are are competent in Thai and attends class for hours a day, five days a week, and does homework (reading, writing, speaking, and listening comprehension) for several additional hours and has the opportunity for regular one-on-one correction of his speech by a competent Thai teacher, then after a few years he will be able to speak and recognize the Thai tones reliably among his other skills.

[Kitsune]

Not that this has anything to do with the subject, but just to point out how wrong and prejudiced you guys are

- I am not a He but a She.

- I am not an English speaker and I did learn successfully English and other languages (German, Japanese) and had a better experience with Chinese and Hindi and I also get by in Spanish.

- In my class (intermerdiate Thai one/two years study) NO ONE, I mean NONE of the 20 or so students can discriminate any tone.

Every time the teacher comes up with a one syllabe word. (Ma/kao/tam/etc) NO ONES gets it, and we all have between one/two year(s) learning. We all learned the alphabet but to absolutely no use as none of us is able to recongnize any one-syllable or sometimes two syllabes words when taken outof context. We all rely on context to compensate for being tone-deaf.

- I have a bachelor degree in linguistics, and phonetic/ sound/tone discrimination is a classic used in many language learnings.

Unortunately none of the teaching methods here recognizes the need for teaching tone recognition, no school, no website and everyone continue to teach us as if we were Thai and not tone deaf.

[CaptHaddock]

Ms. Kitsune,

I stand corrected on your background. Congratulations on learning English so well. That being the case, what you describe is a teaching failure. Most teaching of Thai here is incompetent, but not all. Surely you realize this if you have had competent language teachers in the past.

I recommend that you find teachers who have both BA and MS degrees (in Thai language) from a school like Chulalongkorn and who also have had specialized training in teaching Thai to foreigners. If you study with qualified teachers you will definitely learn to produce and recognize tones. However, the teacher will not spend a lot of time in tone discrimination exercises. When I studied in the Intensive Thai Program at Chulalongkorn, the teacher did tone discrimination exercises only in Basic 1 and maybe a little in Basic 2. But all the students learned both to recognize and produce the tones, some better than others, of course.

In my own study I really made progress with the tones when I began to study one-on-one with my (very qualified) teachers. Learning to recognize the tones and produce them go hand-in-hand. Without constant, individual correction I tended to think I was pronouncing the tone correctly, but I wasn't. After being corrected I would listen more carefully to the tones in the teacher's speech. So the two skills reinforce each other.

With capable teachers, learning the tones is not that hard, and it turns out to be fun, also.

Good luck to you.

[Zooheekock]

we are absolutely and literally tone deaf.

That is almost certainly untrue. Very, very few people really are tone deaf; they simply don't attend to these things. Nobody would deny that for the vast majority of people coming to a tonal language from a non-tonal one, there is a struggle involved but if you're going to lean Thai, it's just part of the language and, as many people will testify, mastering this is something which is certainly within the grasp of adult learners. You may, of course, also be at a bad school but it's probably not wise to tar all schools with the same brush.

I have a bachelor degree in linguistics

This won't be for everyone but you you should be fine. This post http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/43798-accent-improvement-more-natural-sounding-tones/ has some interesting ideas on using Praat to improve tone recognition/production.

[fire69water]

Ms Kitsune, if you "have better experience with Chinese", which I'm assuming is standard Chinese, I.e., Mandarin, why would you still have problems with tones? Both Mandarin and Thai employ intonation to differentiate meanings.

Edited September 27, 2014 by fire69water

[Kitsune]

Ms Kitsune, if you "have better experience with Chinese", which I'm assuming is standard Chinese, I.e., Mandarin, why would you still have problems with tones? Both Mandarin and Thai employ intonation to differentiate meanings.

I was waiting for that comment.

Yes I am aware that Mandarin is a tonal language too.

And yes teaching Chinese to foreigners in China is as bad as teaching Thai to foreigners inThailand, they both just ignore the "foreigners" part and teach us what they've learnt at school.

But the huge difference with here is that Chinese people are way more friendly and you get alot of opportunities to pratice tones.

Also they are less judgemental when you make a (tone) mistake, they won't make a big deal about it, they understand making mistakes is part of learning...here it's like a criminal offense.

So it was I've picked up way more Chinese than Thai because tone was not such a huge issue when you get it wrong.

Edited October 1, 2014 by Kitsune

[Aforek]

Also they are less judgemental when you make a (tone) mistake, they won't make a big deal about it, they understand making mistakes is part of learning...here it's like a criminal offense.

I think that on this forum , no one will agree with this ; in my experience, I have never seen Thai people offended because I made a tone mistake: I agree that they don't correct ( they guess what I mean, sometimes they correct , or does it mean my tones are always perfect ? ) , but make a big deal, never ...

Edited October 1, 2014 by Aforek

[Kitsune]

Also they are less judgemental when you make a (tone) mistake, they won't make a big deal about it, they understand making mistakes is part of learning...here it's like a criminal offense.

I think that on this forum , no one will agree with this ; in my experience, I have never seen Thai people offended because I made a tone mistake: I agree that they don't correct ( they guess what I mean, sometimes they correct , or does it mean my tones are always perfect ? ) , but make a big deal, never ...

- I had cab drivers shouting EH??? like really really loud and in a very obnoxious and nearly aggressive way with face grimacing, just because I enter their cab and gave them my destination, the same I always state (I've been doing that journey every week for 3 years) which most other cabs get straight away.

- I remember my chinese lessons and when we were getting the tone wrong, it was very matter-of-fact thing, the teacher would say "it's the wrong tone,this is the correct one,then let's move on the the next thing.

Here in my class it's like 5 minutes about it : EH what??? You mean DTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA not DTAAAAAAAAAAAA, because if you say DTAAAAAAAAA instead of DTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, people are going to pass you an old pair of wooden chinese clog that Thai people used to wear at home during a spring festival where my mother live in the Norhern province, but the festival and the shoes are long forgotten, but my mum has kept a picture of them, even though even she, does not use this word, she prefers to use that one which is also completely obsolete but so traditional Thai and such a reflection of our beloved history. so I am going choose to ignore that you are here to learn everyday Thai, and forcefeed you with useless unwanted Thai history and tradition ... Let me spell for you this very unused vocabulary that most people have all forgotten about and that you are very likely to never ever need and let's practice the pronounciation even though you still have no clue which tone it is and still don't know how to differenciate it from the other one that you mistaken with, because all I did was repeat it loudly and emphatically as if it's going to make you retain anything and most importatly differenciate it, I know that was the very reason why we came to this vocab but I have no clue as to how make you recognize a tone from another, so I am giving you a huge lecture on something else until you get so bored of it,you won't ask anymore tricky question and I won't loose face.

[fire69water]

I think what you have experienced is the basic problem of natives teaching their language to foreigners: lack of empathy for beginning learners. Because they acquire their language ability from infancy, natives have absolutely no experience of not knowing their language.

[Zooheekock]

I enter their cab and gave them my destination, the same I always state (I've been doing that journey every week for 3 years) which most other cabs get straight away.

You claim to have a degree in linguistics but after three years you are unable to give your address without causing confusion? Hmm. Well, perhaps the driver was just in a crappy mood. Or perhaps it was something else.

Generally, and to no great surprise, one can obviously experience frustration in Thailand and in the past, I have certainly had exchanges where my interlocutor seemed to making exactly zero effort to get past my errors but I have never experienced or heard reliable reports of the kind of thing you describe. And if your other complaints are genuine, you just seem to have a bad teacher. In that case, just leave and go to a better school.

[fire69water]

Ms Kitsune, if you're still having problems with Thai tones, may I suggest my other post http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/758724-the-teaching-of-tones-to-foreigners/?p=8378468

[Trentham]

Not that this has anything to do with the subject, but just to point out how wrong and prejudiced you guys are

- I am not a He but a She.

- I am not an English speaker and I did learn successfully English and other languages (German, Japanese) and had a better experience with Chinese and Hindi and I also get by in Spanish.

- In my class (intermerdiate Thai one/two years study) NO ONE, I mean NONE of the 20 or so students can discriminate any tone.

Every time the teacher comes up with a one syllabe word. (Ma/kao/tam/etc) NO ONES gets it, and we all have between one/two year(s) learning. We all learned the alphabet but to absolutely no use as none of us is able to recongnize any one-syllable or sometimes two syllabes words when taken outof context. We all rely on context to compensate for being tone-deaf.

- I have a bachelor degree in linguistics, and phonetic/ sound/tone discrimination is a classic used in many language learnings.

Unortunately none of the teaching methods here recognizes the need for teaching tone recognition, no school, no website and everyone continue to teach us as if we were Thai and not tone deaf.

OK so you are a "she" but you are a wank*r also. If everything you wrote in this post is true you would have no problems understanding tones or the teaching thereof.

I am an old bloke with none of your qualifications but I get it.

[Docno]

Also they are less judgemental when you make a (tone) mistake, they won't make a big deal about it, they understand making mistakes is part of learning...here it's like a criminal offense.

I think that on this forum , no one will agree with this ; in my experience, I have never seen Thai people offended because I made a tone mistake: I agree that they don't correct ( they guess what I mean, sometimes they correct , or does it mean my tones are always perfect ? ) , but make a big deal, never ...

- I had cab drivers shouting EH??? like really really loud and in a very obnoxious and nearly aggressive way with face grimacing, just because I enter their cab and gave them my destination, the same I always state (I've been doing that journey every week for 3 years) which most other cabs get straight away.

<snip>

I'm not getting this. Sounds like you're saying that multiple cab driverS have acted aggressively with you when you say you're destination when "most other cabs get straight away." If you meant a single cab driver gave you a hard time about something, well that's not evidence of anything other than you got a jerk for a driver. No-one denies they exist. However, I have never experienced anything negative from Thai people when I try my pathetic Thai and get my tones wrong ... most times they let it pass, occasionally they correct me in a friendly/jokey manner (usually these are friends), and sometimes they won't understand me. But I never have anyone react badly or correct me in a condescending or aggressive manner. Never. And to be honest, you seem to have a bit of an 'attitude' in your posts ... perhaps it's just frustration coming through. But if you're impatient with people not understanding you (and I'm not saying you are), you can't expect the most warm and friendly behaviour in return. [i've even had one Bangkok cabbie go out of his way to tell a police officer at a traffic stop (for a VIP convoy) that his farang passanger speaks Thai... a bit of an exaggeration on his part, but he seemed genuinely impressed, especially after I shared my knowledge of Carabao tunes.]

[oztaurus]

When I first started grappling with Thai I used my hands to visually emphasize the tone - literally placing my hands high, low, mid, rising and falling. By accessing different neural pathways to learning it cemented the differences more quickly.

The other thing I found useful (though much more difficult to get any Thai to help me with) was to learn all the similar words at the same time so that I could learn "if I mean 'this word' but I say it with the wrong tone, it end up meaning 'that word'". Unfortunately Thai teach and learn by spelling, not sound. Thus when I say I want to learn all the "cow" words ... they might tell me about

ข้าว rice

ขาว white

ข่าว news

because that is the way they learn it.

If I am really lucky they might tell me about

เข่า knee

เขา he/she

เข้า enter

because of the different vowel structure.

but they definitely won't give me

คาว fishy (odour)

because that starts with ค

[smotherb]

Not that this has anything to do with the subject, but just to point out how wrong and prejudiced you guys are

- I am not a He but a She.

- I am not an English speaker and I did learn successfully English and other languages (German, Japanese) and had a better experience with Chinese and Hindi and I also get by in Spanish.

- In my class (intermerdiate Thai one/two years study) NO ONE, I mean NONE of the 20 or so students can discriminate any tone.

Every time the teacher comes up with a one syllabe word. (Ma/kao/tam/etc) NO ONES gets it, and we all have between one/two year(s) learning. We all learned the alphabet but to absolutely no use as none of us is able to recongnize any one-syllable or sometimes two syllabes words when taken outof context. We all rely on context to compensate for being tone-deaf.

- I have a bachelor degree in linguistics, and phonetic/ sound/tone discrimination is a classic used in many language learnings.

Unortunately none of the teaching methods here recognizes the need for teaching tone recognition, no school, no website and everyone continue to teach us as if we were Thai and not tone deaf.

I too applaud your English comprehension and writing abilities, and I congratulate you on your bachelor's in linguistics. However, being tone deal is a medical diagnosis. I doubt so many farangs are tone deaf. I suspect, it is your unfamiliarity with the Thai language and its consequent pronunciation.

[chirunr]

The OP states "Nobody seems to care that we are absolutely and literally tone deaf." And she further states that she has a degree in linguistics.

She should know that when she calls to her friend "Hey, John.", she is speaking the word John with an unmistakable falling tone.

Or when she asks the question "You are going?", she is speaking the word going with an unmistakable rising tone.

My observation is that the claim of tone deafness is usually nothing more than an excuse for not wishing to devote the time and effort to listen to tones. I admit that learning to hear and to speak tones is difficult, but certainly not beyond the ability of any dedicated learner.

[AnotherOneAmerican]

Not that this has anything to do with the subject, but just to point out how wrong and prejudiced you guys are

- I am not a He but a She.

- I am not an English speaker and I did learn successfully English and other languages (German, Japanese) and had a better experience with Chinese and Hindi and I also get by in Spanish.

- In my class (intermerdiate Thai one/two years study) NO ONE, I mean NONE of the 20 or so students can discriminate any tone.

Every time the teacher comes up with a one syllabe word. (Ma/kao/tam/etc) NO ONES gets it, and we all have between one/two year(s) learning. We all learned the alphabet but to absolutely no use as none of us is able to recongnize any one-syllable or sometimes two syllabes words when taken outof context. We all rely on context to compensate for being tone-deaf.

- I have a bachelor degree in linguistics, and phonetic/ sound/tone discrimination is a classic used in many language learnings.

Unortunately none of the teaching methods here recognizes the need for teaching tone recognition, no school, no website and everyone continue to teach us as if we were Thai and not tone deaf.

Most Thais don't understand the word when spoken alone or out of context either.

[maderaroja]

I gave up trying to speak Thai. When I did try, the Thai people always pretended that they could not understand me. It's a primitive language, anyway.

[GlobalCtzn]

From my experience, if you learn to read and write Thai it will help greatly with both your understanding of and the proper pronunciation of the tones. You will start to see the patterns of tones that go in certain places and orders. How much time do you spend with Thai people practicing your Thai? Practicing Thai with other farang is usually very counter productive, as I have found most farang are really not committed enough to get it right. They get frustrated quickly, and find all sorts of reasons why the Thai language 'does not make sense', or 'is impossible for farang to speak', etc. Also one must be willing to make facial contortions that feel a bit silly at first to many, and also be willing to partially 'sing' the language if you will. I know some farang that know a lot of Thai, but insist on speaking it with their native Texan or NY or whatever accent, and just never seem to reach the point of letting go and risking looking foolish to copy the intonations the way the Thai do. Treat it like a joke or game and try to copy copy copy their sound. I wish you good luck in your endeavor, and take it from a guy who had a very hard time in the beginning and was greatly frustrated for years, it is possible and it is super rewarding when you start to get it. It will absolutely change your experience in Thailand for the better in too many ways to list here!

[kaorop]

From my experience, if you learn to read and write Thai it will help greatly with both your understanding of and the proper pronunciation of the tones. You will start to see the patterns of tones that go in certain places and orders. How much time do you spend with Thai people practicing your Thai? Practicing Thai with other farang is usually very counter productive, as I have found most farang are really not committed enough to get it right. They get frustrated quickly, and find all sorts of reasons why the Thai language 'does not make sense', or 'is impossible for farang to speak', etc. Also one must be willing to make facial contortions that feel a bit silly at first to many, and also be willing to partially 'sing' the language if you will. I know some farang that know a lot of Thai, but insist on speaking it with their native Texan or NY or whatever accent, and just never seem to reach the point of letting go and risking looking foolish to copy the intonations the way the Thai do. Treat it like a joke or game and try to copy copy copy their sound. I wish you good luck in your endeavor, and take it from a guy who had a very hard time in the beginning and was greatly frustrated for years, it is possible and it is super rewarding when you start to get it. It will absolutely change your experience in Thailand for the better in too many ways to list here!

yes the same here, I have some friends who have spent sometime learning thai, but when they speak it,

they use an almost mono tonal voice and when i observe the thais listening i can see they are not understanding much at all.

seems the guys are concentrating on getting the right words out but lose the tonality

yes sing it, try to get a flow and rhythm, you will still make mistakes but it will be easier to understand, not that im any good myself.

its also that thais are not used to western accents and mistakes with the thai language, where as English speaking countries have had immigrants with accents making mistakes for many many years.

wish I had the determination and time to learn more, but my free time is spent on the language of music and music is the language of love. 555

[jigagee]

Checkout :

Currently having a makeover Jcademy.com

so try this http://legacy.jcademy.com/ temporarily

[CaitlinHappyMeal]

I learned to read and write Thai last year, when you read and write it then you know how to pronounce the word in which tone, the thing that is most difficult is letting go of the years you have been pronouncing things wrong. Stick with it, it does get easier, the final thing that clicks into place is listening and recognising tones of native speakers, but it's like anything practice makes perfect, keep going, find a different teacher or school if you really feel like you are not progressing at all, it may just be that where you are at does not suit you ?