Learning as Foreign Language , are we really taken seriously?

[Kitsune]

Yes it was in Thai

It was the ticket lady in the bus

And of course she understood

which proves again that she was pretending

[jcisco]

Wow you really are the glass half empty sort aren't you, a bigger list of things your life is excluded and self precluded from in that short post is staggering.

However, basically you want to learn Thai , best way to learn is how they have learned it. The language is actually so poorly documented in many aspects you can only ever gain some facets if you had the cultural experience of education I'm Thailand. That is not to say one cannot become fluent in the language, though maybe lacking on some of the depth of experience and knowledge you have been so quick to devalue.

Lastly, your greatest challenge is your brain not your ability to make sounds with Thai. You have spent a lifetime tuning your brain to your native language, Thai is quite different with the information encoded differently than say English.

Anyways good luck, your attitude is pretty lacklustre but nevertheless enjoy.

Edit: I really still do not quite get why you are so frustrated, you seem more than well equipped to go on and perhaps develop better courses and techniques for the local market, I do understand that actually obtaining the skills to do so from practical experience seems to be escaping you. Why are u studying Thai anyways ???

Pants the Great Wall

[Kitsune]

As no one seems tounderstand what I am talking about ......................

To make sound discrimination easier for learners, you :

1/ Identify by pair the sounds which are the most difficult to discriminate (phonetic research is necessary). For tones it could be rising/high for example

2/ Take each of the culprit sound and pair it with an other easier. HIGH- LOW and RISING-FALLING and start one syllab word

a/ rising or faling?

b/ rising or faling?

c/ rising or faling?

then same thing with high-low,etc

3/ then you do a sequence of the easiest recognisable sounds, starts with 2 syllabs

BA MA .... Was it rising- falling or falling - rising ?

4/ Then you increase the sylabs

BA MA KAO Was it rising- falling- rising or falling - rising - falling or etc?

5/ Then when the student are comfortable with the two (easy ) tones to discriminate, you graduate to the more difficult pair

For example HIGH- MIDDLE tone et go through the same process again

6/ and gradually pair more difficult tone to reach the most difficult

It's done for French Spanish, English, Italian, German and all western languages why can't we use it for Thai?

[SlyAnimal]

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?

I agree with the above poster, it'd be worthwhile for you to try out a private tutor. Learn Thai Style has various tutors all over Thailand, and even in some overseas countries, you could get one of them to assist you, or of course if you have some Thai friends / wife etc, then they could probably help you.

Kitsune, the activities which you're describing, would probably work well in a tutoring situation. However in a classroom situation teachers don't usually teach pronunciation, I assume that this is because it's an inefficient use of time, to spend a lot of time working with individual students rather than teaching the entire class.

Also as a general note, try to listen to how Thai people speak, and say words the same way they do. So even if you know they can understand you, if you hear them say a word (which you correctly identify), which sounds slightly different to how you say it, then try to emulate them, and in this way you'll likely improve your Thai.

Likewise, listen to how Thai people speak, as sometimes what they actually say is quite different to what you might be taught in class. As sometimes you'll learn things in class, either directly from the teacher or in response to questions, which aren't necessarily what people actually say. e.g. Some people will say "_____ ที่ไหน" (____ Tee Nai), which is correct, but it's not really what Thai people say, as depending on the situation, it can be kinda demanding/insistent, instead they'll more often say "____อยู่ไหน" (____ You Nai). By saying sentences which are more, sorta expected, then the listeners will often understand you more easily when speaking.

For learning to listen to the tones, that's just practice. I'm not an expert by any means, however the more I practice my speaking of the tones, the better I'm able to recognise the tones in speech (At a normal conversation speed, I'm still pretty horrible though. I'm just lucky that identifying the tones during a conversation, usually isn't necessary in order to identify the meaning of the conversation lol).

[Kitsune]

I first went to a school and paid to have private tuition.

None of the teachers could provide me with tones discrimination practice and exercises.

Yes PRACTICE PRACTICE.

Most Thai people don't want to help me practice, they really don't.

Or if they do, I'd rather not since they have an agenda, either because they want to sleep with me or they want something else out of me.

The rest really don't want to help or they don't have the time.

[steveromagnino]

To make sound discrimination easier for learners, you :

1/ Identify by pair the sounds which are the most difficult to discriminate (phonetic research is necessary). For tones it could be rising/high for example

2/ Take each of the culprit sound and pair it with an other easier. HIGH- LOW and RISING-FALLING and start one syllab word

a/ rising or faling?

b/ rising or faling?

c/ rising or faling?

3/ then you do a sequence of the easiest recognisable sounds, starts with 2 syllabs

BA MA .... Was it rising- falling or falling - rising ?

4/ Then you increase the sylabs

BA MA KAO Was it rising- falling- rising or falling - rising - falling or etc?

5/ Then when the student are comfortable with the two (easy ) tones to discriminate, you graduate to the more difficult pair

For example HIGH- MIDDLE tone et go through the same process again

6/ and gradually pair more difficult tone to reach the most difficult

It's done for French Spanish, English, Italian, German and all western languages why can't we use it for Thai?

Western languages don't have tones so it is irrelevant.

Your method seems to be sort of ok, although arguably more difficult than just having someone teach you how to say 5 tones, in order, and then with that tool, to start being able to identify instinctively which tone appears when as a result of practise.

If you need to go through the thinking about it part, then that means the student has insufficient familiarity with the tones to be able to comprehend them at normal language speed.

Now of course, learning as a crutch, speaking more slowly, repetition and so forth can help, but there is no replacement for just learning how to say the 5 tones, listening to yourself say them, and then being able to identify them as they come up.

BTW the only difficult tones to identify should be mid and low (without enough context). All the rest are pretty simple.

I found the tongue twisters are fun and help you to get the tones right; I guessed (correctly) someone would have put these up on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FznaEf1LkJU

Listen to the first one, who is selling the fried egg

and it should be

who mid

selling rising

egg low

chicken low

Can you hear that?

New wood doesn't burn does it

wood high

new low

doesn't falling

burn falling (note the word for burn is written the same as not but is also a falling tone just like wood and would are written the same but mean differently)

? high

etc etc

See how you go. Write what you think the tones are for the rest, I will check in due course and see how you got on.

[Richard W]

Your method seems to be sort of ok, although arguably more difficult than just having someone teach you how to say 5 tones, in order, and then with that tool, to start being able to identify instinctively which tone appears when as a result of practise.

There is a worldwide tendency to say words differently in isolation to in context, so having a frame makes sense.

[steveromagnino]

Your method seems to be sort of ok, although arguably more difficult than just having someone teach you how to say 5 tones, in order, and then with that tool, to start being able to identify instinctively which tone appears when as a result of practise.

There is a worldwide tendency to say words differently in isolation to in context, so having a frame makes sense.

Exactly; the words for fishy smell (mid tone) and news (low tone) in isolation cannot be easily identified from eachother, and likewise someone saying just that one word and expecting you would know what they were talking about it unlikely to help.

Now if I say a phrase that uses multiple sounds, then it is simple because I can compare, estimate where the mid tone is, and that makes the low tone and midtone easy, and the vowel length is usually self evident from the translation and context.

As I have said before, practice, and adding to that yes, you need to say in a series, so people not only say it as they would in conversation but also you recognize it in conversation.