Learning as Foreign Language , are we really taken seriously?

[CaitlinHappyMeal]

everyone continue to teach us as if we were Thai and not tone deaf.

Just getting back to the tone deaf thing, my sister in law has 40 years teaching experience in music, she is a doctor of music, she is head teacher at a music school and regularly directs professional music theatre productions....when I met my OH who is also a professional musician he was convinced I was tone deaf as I cannot sing in tune for love nor money, his sister said that this was a ridiculous suggestion because in her 40 years experience she has only met 1 person that she considered to be tone deal, although many more proclaimed to be until she put them right. Ironically I was the the 2 nd person that she ever met that turned out to be tone deaf. After visiting Thailand (a lot) over a 13 year period I thought I'd better knuckle down and learn the language properly, now I'm not professing to be great, I would class myself as intermediate in the reading and writing but with the speech and listening I would still class myself as a beginner (a good one tho ?), and if someone systematically barks out one or 2 word syllables I am able to recognise them, so my question is 2 fold, if me, who has been proclaimed tone deaf by such an experienced music teacher can recognise simple tones then why can't a classroom of student who have at least 2 years learning Thai? And secondly how come if tone deafness is so rare you have found yourself in a classroom where all the students are tone deaf? Seriously I would question this school, it's techniques, and the teacher, I know you have a lot of learning experience with languages and therefore should be able to spot a bad learning experience, but I think this one has got past you and you are blaming the language where many others have succeeded? ?

[RaoulDuke]

Just thought I would chime in with a quick observation. Japanese has an rather limited sound system, as evident by the syllabary used in the language. Such a writing system in English would be impossible, due to the vast number of syllable graphemes required to represent all of the possible sounds from the large inventory of vowels and consonant clusters. I haven't done any research on the matter, but it seems to be a plausible consideration that a native Japanese speaker that did not get very much exposure to other languages at a very early age could be at a disadvantage when it comes to learning sound systems of more phonologically complicated languages. Studies show that children react to all sounds in the womb and first few years, but by the time they are 4 years old, their ability to distinguish phones that do not convey a distinct meaning in their language continues to decrease.

Of course, this is also an indication of a pedagogical failure by the language teacher, who probably lacks proper training in teaching phonemic awareness.

Then again, I could just be speaking out my back, but that is what the forum is best for.

[gemguy]

So what you are really trying to say is you are struggling with learning how to speak, read and write the Thai language........Chai My??

[gemguy]

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.

I did not give up on trying to speak the Thai language and now I get along much better while having Thai people understand what I want and what I am saying....and I only speak but say 50% of it at the most.

Makes for a big, difference in how Thai people relate to you in various aspects and circumstances.

Nothing to do with respect for the effort to learn the language or anything like that....rather it just simplifies things all the more so.

Cheers

[Kitsune]

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.

A) Hilararious ! Where are we? In Trailer Trash land? Could you check the definition of words before using them and accusing others ? Linguistics is NOT about knowing how to speak different languages but the Scientific study of languages aims to discover the rules and representations underlying the structures of languages. Subjects are Semiology, Phonetics, Lexicology, Sociolingistic, History, etc...

It's not the cab driver, I had this type of reaction many times.

Thai people usually overact when you use Thai, as if it was a big thing to see a farang uttering a few words of their language,then they make a huge deal about it by pretending it's not understandable.

It's a classic situation, another time it was on the bus, I had 5 other passengers repeating after me "Rongpayabaan Chulalongkon pai mai? " all of them being sick of hearing the ticket lady going "EH???" " ARAI????" and pretending to not comprehend my sentence everyone on the bus had understood the first time. When she realized everytime she made me repeat my question, there was more people joining in, supporting me and repeating louder the exact same sentence I said , that shut her up and she had to finally admit that she understood it.

She tried then to say that she called to "CHULA (and not Chulalongkorn) but I told her everyone knew she was lying. She then tried to put the blame on my accent, but I said everyone else had understood the first time, so she finally shut up.

They are MANY people like this here, and most Thai people can't stand them anymore that I can.

C) I do know how to state my destination in a cab:This situation was with Thai people screaming on top of my own voice as soon as I opened my mouth. And I did stated that most other drivers do get me "which most other cabs get straight away."

D) This is my FOURTH school and as far as I know (talked to many students coming from different schools), there is no such thing as Teaching Thai as a foreign language in Thailand, meaning they all teach as if we were Thai and were fully immersed in 5 years of hearing and talking Thai language and tones before learning to write.

[Kitsune]

So what you are really trying to say is you are struggling with learning how to speak, read and write the Thai language........Chai My??

What I am saying is that no school teaches tones and yet,this is the most tricky part for any western foreigner.

[Kitsune]

everyone continue to teach us as if we were Thai and not tone deaf.

Just getting back to the tone deaf thing, my sister in law has 40 years teaching experience in music, she is a doctor of music, she is head teacher at a music school and regularly directs professional music theatre productions....when I met my OH who is also a professional musician he was convinced I was tone deaf as I cannot sing in tune for love nor money, his sister said that this was a ridiculous suggestion because in her 40 years experience she has only met 1 person that she considered to be tone deal, although many more proclaimed to be until she put them right. Ironically I was the the 2 nd person that she ever met that turned out to be tone deaf. After visiting Thailand (a lot) over a 13 year period I thought I'd better knuckle down and learn the language properly, now I'm not professing to be great, I would class myself as intermediate in the reading and writing but with the speech and listening I would still class myself as a beginner (a good one tho ?), and if someone systematically barks out one or 2 word syllables I am able to recognise them, so my question is 2 fold, if me, who has been proclaimed tone deaf by such an experienced music teacher can recognise simple tones then why can't a classroom of student who have at least 2 years learning Thai? And secondly how come if tone deafness is so rare you have found yourself in a classroom where all the students are tone deaf? Seriously I would question this school, it's techniques, and the teacher, I know you have a lot of learning experience with languages and therefore should be able to spot a bad learning experience, but I think this one has got past you and you are blaming the language where many others have succeeded? ?

Obviously I meant (Thai language) tone deaf,ie unable to recognize a tone from another

No one is technically tone deaf, but pratically anyone who hasnot been to hearing tones is unable to recognize them.

All I am saying is that it takes trainning but NO SCHOOL GIVES US THIS TRAINNING.

Another example; I tell you what happened last week :From what I undertood , there are about 5 different "KAO"(News/he/come/white/rice/ others?) and I don't know how many "MA" (Dog/come/etc)

The teacher told us something sounding like KAO MA KAO.

The answer was "news of the white horse" (yes that doesnot mean anything), anyway no one got it.

She does that every week

And every week no one gets it

And every week she left us without any clue as to recognize one tone from the other

[Kitsune]

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.

Apparently there are no such things as "primitive (human) languages" and every language is equally perfect for its culture.

Yes Thai people call a deodorant "roll on" while you can argue a roll on can roll many things other than deodorant, but the reality is that in shops it's difficult to find a Thai deodorant in other containers than roll on.

I asked what if I want a deodorant in spray?

Guess what?

They call it "Spray" !

[CaitlinHappyMeal]

Can I ask you when you say you along with the whole class are not getting it, do you mean you cannot recognise the tones or you hear the tones but don't understand the statement ข่าวม้าขาว news of White horse? ☺️

[Kitsune]

Can I ask you when you say you along with the whole class are not getting it, do you mean you cannot recognise the tones or you hear the tones but don't understand the statement ข่าวม้าขาว news of White horse? ☺️

Obviously BOTH

1/ they don't differenciate the tones

2/ consequently don't know what it means

When you don't get tones, this sentence "KAO MA KAO" could means a dozens of different things (he comes white/ rice white dog/ etc...)

Edited October 4, 2014 by Kitsune

[CaptHaddock]

Kitsune,

I am beginning to think you are a waste of time. You just seem to want to complain that your Thai teachers are wrong. And, indeed, they probably are incompetent. But your failure to learn tones is your problem, not theirs. You have two choices: you can leave Thailand because the teaching of Thai language here is so abysmal or you can get yourself a competent Thai language teacher. Frankly, you don't show any interest in trying to solve your problem, just whining about how bad your teachers are.

[belg]

so OP, do you have some magic for us ?

do you have something to sell that works ?

[Zooheekock]

Well, who would have guessed. This is actually yet another tediously stupid what-I-hate-about-Thais/Thailand thread. You don't get many of those on this forum, do you?

Kitsune - I don't know whether you are a liar or not but you have certainly shown yourself to be a rude and unpleasant individual. I'd be willing to be bet my house that the problems you have are nothing to do with language and everything to do with your personality. So a suggestion for you: stop worrying about learning Thai because even in the wildly improbable case that you become fluent, taxi drivers are probably still going to hate you. Instead, start learning how to behave in public and how not instantly to rub people up the wrong way. I think you find that a much more productive use of your time.

[Kitsune]

Kitsune,

I am beginning to think you are a waste of time. You just seem to want to complain that your Thai teachers are wrong. And, indeed, they probably are incompetent. But your failure to learn tones is your problem, not theirs. You have two choices: you can leave Thailand because the teaching of Thai language here is so abysmal or you can get yourself a competent Thai language teacher. Frankly, you don't show any interest in trying to solve your problem, just whining about how bad your teachers are.

Oh it's another if you don't like it leave comment.

Hint : Thai language is ONLY spoken inThailand

So nopoint in learning Thai if I leave

[Kitsune]

Well, who would have guessed. This is actually yet another tediously stupid what-I-hate-about-Thais/Thailand thread. You don't get many of those on this forum, do you?

Kitsune - I don't know whether you are a liar or not but you have certainly shown yourself to be a rude and unpleasant individual. I'd be willing to be bet my house that the problems you have are nothing to do with language and everything to do with your personality. So a suggestion for you: stop worrying about learning Thai because even in the wildly improbable case that you become fluent, taxi drivers are probably still going to hate you. Instead, start learning how to behave in public and how not instantly to rub people up the wrong way. I think you find that a much more productive use of your time.

Sorry when did "rub people thewrong way"?

[Kitsune]

so OP, do you have some magic for us ?

do you have something to sell that works ?

Yes tone discrimination.

Work for many languages.

Where to get it here is another story

Anyone?

[BudRight]

so OP, do you have some magic for us ?

do you have something to sell that works ?

Yes tone discrimination.

Work for many languages.

Where to get it here is another story

Anyone?

I really don't know where you can find exactly what you are looking for. Good or not, it may be not exist.

Consider that most people on this forum at some point knew nothing about Thai at all, yet learned it anyway.

When I was learning the tones I concluded the same thing as you did. I kept practicing, practicing, until I discovered that I had been wrong.

I have confidence that you will come to the same conclusion if you cultivate peristence rather than frustration.

[Kitsune]

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

That's exactly what I mean

When the teachers says KAO MA KAO

it could means

- he enters

- his white knee

- white rice horse

- etc

No one gets it

[Kitsune]

so OP, do you have some magic for us ?

do you have something to sell that works ?

Yes tone discrimination.

Work for many languages.

Where to get it here is another story

Anyone?

I really don't know where you can find exactly what you are looking for. Good or not, it may be not exist.

Consider that most people on this forum at some point knew nothing about Thai at all, yet learned it anyway.

When I was learning the tones I concluded the same thing as you did. I kept practicing, practicing, until I discovered that I had been wrong.

I have confidence that you will come to the same conclusion if you cultivate peristence rather than frustration.

I am sure you did like 90% of the students in my class which are males with (younger) Thai girlfriend (not judging) with time on their hand to help with language learning. So they are not worried, they KNOW they will get the tone practice anymay.

I won't.

I am relying soly and entirely on my school to help me learn Thai and I think it's unfair to teach us as if we were Thai or assume we get home practice

Edited October 6, 2014 by Kitsune

[Dancali]

I am sure you did like 90% of the students in my class which are males with (younger) Thai girlfriend (not judging) with time on their hand to help with language learning. So they are not worried, they KNOW they will get the tone practice anymay.

I won't.

I am relying soly and entirely on my school to help me learn Thai and I think it's unfair to teach us as if we were Thai or assume we get home practice

Agreed. I went to a prominent Thai language school and they spent almost no time trying to explain tones. I think they expect you to pick it up elsewhere, which is odd.

On the other hand, they are really not that tricky and mysterious. I think somebody in this thread already gave a nice breakdown. But here's how I think of the 5 tones:

"Rising tone": Like the English question tone of "really?"

"Middle tone": Middle range, flat tone

"High tone": Kind of like the "rising tone", but starting higher. Like you're trying to emphasize something in English.

"Falling tone: Kind of like in English if somebody said you had a crush on Johnny, you would exclaim "Nooo!". Just listen to a Thai person say "mai" (no) and it sounds the same.

"low tone": Low and slightly falling

This makes more sense if I can voice the examples myself.

[Kitsune]

I am sure you did like 90% of the students in my class which are males with (younger) Thai girlfriend (not judging) with time on their hand to help with language learning. So they are not worried, they KNOW they will get the tone practice anymay.

I won't.

I am relying soly and entirely on my school to help me learn Thai and I think it's unfair to teach us as if we were Thai or assume we get home practice

Agreed. I went to a prominent Thai language school and they spent almost no time trying to explain tones. I think they expect you to pick it up elsewhere, which is odd.

On the other hand, they are really not that tricky and mysterious. I think somebody in this thread already gave a nice breakdown. But here's how I think of the 5 tones:

"Rising tone": Like the English question tone of "really?"

"Middle tone": Middle range, flat tone

"High tone": Kind of like the "rising tone", but starting higher. Like you're trying to emphasize something in English.

"Falling tone: Kind of like in English if somebody said you had a crush on Johnny, you would exclaim "Nooo!". Just listen to a Thai person say "mai" (no) and it sounds the same.

"low tone": Low and slightly falling

This makes more sense if I can voice the examples myself.

I know all this

It does not help me to recognize KAO from KAO, KAO, KAO or KAO.

Knowing there are 5 tones does not make us recognize them

No ones recognizes them in my school

[Kitsune]

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

Really ?

I find it hard to believe...

Why would our teacher quiz us with nonsensical "KAO MA KAO" (news of the white horse) ?

Amazing

[Aforek]

It does not help me to recognize KAO from KAO, KAO, KAO or KAO.

Knowing there are 5 tones does not make us recognize them

No ones recognizes them in my school

Look here, she gives the five pronouciations for the word "kao", look at her hand when she pronouces them ;

falling tone, you must go up first then fall; rising tone, you must go down first then rising tone

[steveromagnino]

That video is quite clear. I am awful with languages, and yet I'd say that the ONLY way to master the tones is pretty simple. It's like boxing. If you want to box like a pro, you first need to start with technique and then an absolute boat load of practise.

I simply cannot fathom anyone in a class after more than 3 months having an issue with following tones. It requires you to practise them yourself repeatedly. Either your teacher sucks which also probably means as students you are failing to present what you are struggling with so you need to ask to practise it again possibly slower and more times until you get it, or the class of people are genuinely stuck with a pretty basic element of most Asian languages and the emotion of most western languages also, and have not yet found the tool to unlock how to understand this.

the order is very specific:

mid low falling high rising

again and again and again. Practise saying them to yourself, ask a bilingual speaker to say them for you for any vowel/consonant vowel sound again and again, say yourself, ask for correction. again and again and again. When you can replicate it yourself then you can start to see that they are not 5 incomprehensible things that all sound the same, they are different.

falling and rising should be pretty easy. high is actually both high with a slight rise to it so again easyish. mid and low are a LOT more similar, so these are the trickier ones but certainly not impossible to pick out, particularly with context.

Incidentally, the same approach for Dtor and dor and Bpor and Bor (ต ด ป บ) applies - if you cannot yourself make the sound correctly, you will really struggle to hear the difference, because in English they sound the same since these sounds don't exist. For the same reason, many Thai people cannot hear a difference between Centrun and Central - their mindset doesn't allow it until they know the difference of the L sound at the end.

To expect someone to follow that you mean white or news or rice from the context is not necessarily reasonable, just as poorly spoken English is usually not considered worthy of someone's time to wait around trying to decipher. It is not my impression, having worked in China at times, that Chinese have much patience for understanding pidgeon Chinese either. I've listened to some foreigners speaking Thai and it is close to imcomprehensible because not only is the pronounciation difficult, but the sentence order and the way things are expressed with a limited vocabulary is very peculiar. But we've all reached that stage here, and some of us have got through it.

Having said that, in general in my personal experience I have found Thai people to be far more tolerant of both mistakes and willingness to try to understand; there are however times where you encounter someone who simply refuses to understand - I know I do not speak perfect Thai but from time to time I will meet someone (often a GF of a foreigner or someone in the tourism industry) who will point blank refuse to understand a word I say because they see my face and presume I cannot speak Thai. I have had a situation where my brother (who looks a lot more Thai than I but speaks far worse) will play the role of translator; I would say something in Thai, she would answer in English to me that was incomprehensible to me, then she would repeat what she meant in Thai to him, at which point I would understand what the point of her comment actually was supposed to be.

[Kitsune]

it's not after 3 months that we don't get tones

The other students have been there up to two years

[eeeya]

I've been in classes where someone asks the teacher to go through all the Mai's all the kao's and everyone has a good old chuckle when the teacher says "passa Thai gnai" (Thai language is easy). Fact of the matter is. You gotta put in the time and it starts to make sense. I've lost count of The amount of times I've wanted to through the table out the window and storm out. But I just try to keep the mindset that its just for fun and there's no pressure for me to be a 100% super natural Thai speaker in 3 months or I'm doomed to hell for all eternity.

Every day, just a little bit. Always moving forward.

[Aree Wongwanlee]

I am afraid I don't have a degree in linguistics (which I assume is the study of languages and how languages come about and how languages are used) but I do know one thing - if you want to learn a language you have to love it. If you hate the Thai language (for some reason or another) or despise the Thai people, you might as well not get started at all because you are doomed to fail if you try to learn the Thai language. I have a colleague (from an unnamed western country) who has been here for 5 years and he claims to be able to speak Thai. Until I heard him speaking Thai. And heard him telling me about how stupid the Thais are, how they just get drunk and beat their wives blah blah blah. Then he wonders aloud why the salesgirls at the shopping complex couldn't be bothered to sell him anything.

So ...

[Kitsune]

Who said I hated Thai language? Or Thai people for that matter?

And what a stupid thing to say!.

Why would someone hate a language?

A language is a tool, to communicate like a hammer is a tool to put nails in, why would someone hate a hammer?

This is plain silly.

[steveromagnino]

Kitsune

Daily how many times do you practice saying the 5 tones?

If you do it for say 30-60 minutes a day, running through various consonants, then it should be easier to 'crack this nut'

Ma

Na

Ha

La

Mee

Bee

Kee

even ones with no words, just while you are in the shower run through them again and again and again, listening to yourself as you say them. Think about 2 things. What is the tone relative to the tones before and after it. What is the vowel length relative to the tones before and after it. Can I hear the tone changing at all when I say each tone?

middle pitch: middle pitch obviously

low pitch holding the sound slightly back in your throat a lower note than middle

falling (exaggerate and lengthen it slightly from as high as you can to the point of the low tone in a continual drop)

high higher than middle with a very slight rise to it to the point your throat is naturally starting to constrict slightly

rising start at the low pitch and finish at the point of the high tone in a continual rise

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV1F8ZE_AyA

Jump to 9.05. Thai tones. This is reasonably simple to follow but you will still only get it by actually practicing yourself. This has the EXACT word you are struggling with HORSE and DOG.

then again. and again and again. If you still can't get this after an hour of practicing we try something else. I do believe within a week you will be able to hear some not all of the tones, but when they come quickly you will start to get confused and want to give up. Stick with it, over time you will get some of the tones, then most of the tones, maybe one day you will be able to catch all of the tones, but that's pretty slick and beyond my capacity (I know my limits).

If it helps, I know that to the person listening there is a noticeable difference between ป บ and ด ต but I couldn't hear it until my language coach when I was acting forced me to do exactly this, going through the physical action of getting the shape of my mouth right to make the sound correctly, and practicing it repeatedly. He wrote out a ton of tongue twisters to practice them. I cannot say I hear it 100% of the time for ป บ when people speak mumbling, but its fairly close, it's only because I can do it myself that I can hear the difference between the two.

Another thing...if you have a smart phone or recorder, record you saying the tones and play it back. get a Thai person you know to say the 5 tones slowly and clearly and record that. Mimic them. In fact that's one of the best things to think about to master Thai; don't try to be yourself speaking Thai, pretend you are putting on a funny voice, and that makes it a lot easier to do some of the sounds that seem unnatural to you. As it is only 'playing'.

In response to your previous comment if you only hear 1 word, it is almost impossible to know the difference between a mid and a low tone, and can be a little difficult to distinguish vowel length of any tone as both of these are individual speaker dependent although contextually it usually becomes clear and over time you have to actively think about it to get confused.

They are called tongue twisters for a reason - if you heard the news of the white horse or equally the news of the dog entering or the knee of the white dog then you have enough context to be able to start to easily and readily deduce what is actually going on provided:

- you can identify which of the 5 tones is for which sound

- whether the vowel is short or long

- you have the vocab that encompasses all the possibilities to answer confidently therefore the correct translation

Work on the tones and see how you go; you don't make an omelette without breaking some eggs, and you don't EVER improve at Thai without putting in the yards on the tones - for what it is worth I do appreciate having read this thread, as I increasingly don't use Thai at work, so sometimes I need to think about how I would say news of the white horse :-) and actually get it right. The 'kao' words ain't so easy to remember all of them.

Edited October 8, 2014 by steveromagnino

[WorkingTourist]

I think you should consider going with a private teacher.

The one I had, had me read conversation out loud (I would first add tone marks), and would correct my pronunciations when I got it wrong. I wouldn’t expect that you get much practice with a teacher correcting you (like this) in a classroom setting, yet this is really what you need to learn to speak the tones, and speaking the tones comes before hearing them.

Can you currently pronounce any of the tones (other than neutral)?

As for people not understanding you; Thailand is a big country with accents and migrant workers (even from neighboring countries), so don’t expect everyone to understand the same level of broken thai. Those used to dealing with farang are probably better at deciphering monotone thai with incorrect grammar.

Generally though I find that thais are rather good at understanding my broken thai, and the stories you tell sound alien to me, I often experience the opposite; I utter two words in thai and they start to tell me how good my thai is and want to smalltalk and tell everybody around us that I can speak thai…

I am curious about your incident with the driver that did not understand you wanted to go to the hospital because it sounds like you had a longer conversation with the person afterward, was that done in thai?