The joy of Thai

[StreetCowboy]

Some of us perhaps feel that a language that promotes feudal attitudes is not graceful in the way that French is; perhaps some of us who are exposed to the more proletarian dialects find the language as gratingly amelodic as Beijing Chinese, or as whingingly grating as Hong Kong Cantonese.

Speculation, Cowboy- Ray French widnae pit up wi/ thon

SC

[Gecko123]

Some of us perhaps feel that a language that promotes feudal attitudes is not graceful in the way that French is;

Thai "promotes feudal attitudes"???? As if English doesn't have remnants of its feudal past embedded in the language. Shall I address you as 'mister,' 'sir,' 'my lord,' or 'your majesty'?

By the way, have you see the recent Oxfam International study about global concentration of wealth? Some might argue that with the middle classes being hollowed out and the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, that many in the West are little more than feudel serfs. These days, if I still lived in the West, Thailand's agrarian economy (which is becoming more diversified every day) would be the least of my concerns.

perhaps some of us who are exposed to the more proletarian dialects find the language as gratingly amelodic as Beijing Chinese, or as whingingly grating as Hong Kong Cantonese.

No language is so inherently melodic that it is pleasant for a non fluent person to listen to, especially for extended periods of time. In my opinion, 'Does the language sound pleasant to my ear before I understand its meaning?' is a useless measure for evaluating a language, because almost no language passes this test. That goes for French and English too. Most people can't listen to more than an hour long speech in their native language before their minds start wandering. Of course, listening to a language you can't understand is going to be fatiguing and unenjoyable for most.

As for your comment about "proletarian dialects," I guess you've never watched an episode of 'The Eastenders', or listened to a Texan with a big wad of chewing tobacco tucked in his cheek spitting out driving directions to a Walmart. Not very pleasant listening, is it?

Sorry, StreetCowboy, you're entitled to your opinions, but your reasons for disliking the Thai language simply don't resonate with me.

Edited February 9, 2015 by Gecko123

[A1Str8]

cutest girls are available when u speak thai , otherwise they wont even look at u

That's so not true.

[Gecko123]

cutest girls are available when u speak thai , otherwise they wont even look at u

That's so not true.

No one's going to win this argument, but you have to admit that some really cute Thai girls don't speak English, and being able to speak Thai would improve your chances of successfully striking up a conversation with them.

[Gecko123]

I'd like to thank carter1882 for his truly inspirational contribution to this thread. (post #57)

I'd also like to thank claffey, laisilica, northernjohn, stickylies, starky, and especially Trembly for their contributions and interest in the thread.

Happy Valentine's Day to one and all.

[kannot]

Yes I'm lazy so I don't wanna learn Thai. How the heck do you know if your experience is better than mine. It's like me sayin I'm not a fat alcoholic so my thai gf experience is better than yours. May I help u with ur horse sir?

No one said their experience was "better" than yours.

The most meaningful basis of comparison would be between an individual's experiences before and after they learned Thai. I, as well as many other posters, made that comparison and reported that being able to communicate in Thai helped enhance their lives here. I say this in the hopes of motivating more people to learn the language. The last thing I want to do is discourage anyone.

The message I was trying to convey in the OP was that if you decide that you're unwilling or unable to learn Thai, that's all fine and good, and I fully understand and appreciate that not everyone can invest the required time and effort. But if you decide not to, please don't turn around and concoct a bunch of lame and irrational excuses (as summarized in the OP) which denigrate Thai people and their graceful language just so you can feel better about that decision. That's just not being fair or honest.

The OP targeted lame and irrational excuse making. It did not target people who can't speak Thai.

Whats graceful about it?

I can't say I care for the challenging tone of your question, and I am very tempted to tell you to figure out the answer to your questions for yourself. However, with the understanding that my serious effort to answer your question will be respected, I will respond as follows.

Even an early intermediate student of Thai ought to have a dawning awareness that Thai is a very graceful language. Thai has many 'built-in' characteristics that encourage and help facilitate interpersonal verbal communication which can accurately be described as graceful.

For example, many Westerners have commented on the Thai people's seeming pre-occupation with relative status. This attention is reflected in the Thai language as well. Thais use words such as "pii" and "nong" which reflect the relative age of the speakers, or words like "than" to show deference to higher relative social status. There is also vocabulary which is reserved exclusively for the royal family. While some Westerners may choose, ignorantly, to deride this as simply a slavish attention to relative status, this aspect of the Thai language is actually quite useful in helping people avoid interpersonal conflicts by providing opportunities for the speaker to reassure the listener that their social status is not being challenged during a verbal interaction. This aspect of the language helps avoid confrontation. This is a quite diplomatic and graceful characteristic of the language. It should also be noted that this characteristic can be found in many other Asian languages as well, for example, Japanese.

Secondly, Thai has many "helper" words which encourage the listener to consider and accept what the speaker is saying. Words such as "duay" "na" fall into this category. These words can be viewed as diplomatic overtures to try and persuade the listener to accept the speaker's point of view. This diplomatic aspect of the Thai language can well be regarded as graceful as well.

Finally, many have commented that Thai is an imprecise language, and anything but graceful and eloquent. Consider, for example, the verb "satuean jai" (สะเทือนใจ). If you look in a Thai-English dictionary for the definition of this word you will find definitions ranging from "to move (someone) deeply," "to traumatize", "to move (someone)," "to hurt (someone)" and "to touch (someone)." From an English speaker's perspective, you could perhaps be forgiven for concluding that Thai was a very imprecise language. But you would missing the point entirely!!! What Westerners fail to grasp is that that broad range of meaning serves a very valuable purpose. Thai is not a blunt, in-your-face language. The ambiquity about the speaker's intent is intentionally built into the language. The idea is to allow the listener to digest the speaker's intent without forcing the listener to lose face, and be humiliated in the communication process. This confrontation avoidance characteristic is embeded in the Thai personality and reflected in their language, and is truly one of it's most graceful characteristics.

u c the problem with the written word.....you think Im challenging you but Im not, Im curious how its graceful as from what I understand its rather a vague language unlike German which is precise, but reality is this is what Ive been told only hence I asked why is it graceful?

[Dumbastheycome]

I really don’t know whether or not I should contribute to this thread, given the OP’s reminder of his intended purpose – the joys of communicating in Thai.

I live in a totally Thai environment. I know 2 foreigners here and don’t see them for more than a few hours each a year. My wife speaks reasonable English as do some of her friends, her adult sons very little – although I actually think that impression is down to shyness re. her oldest son of 30. My daughter-in-law speaks a little but is eager to learn & certainly not self-conscious about her mistakes J. But generally, very little English is spoken around me.

I’ve always enjoyed learning languages – formal French, German, Spanish lessons at school and Classical Greek as an added extra with no real goal in mind, some Irish & Manx(!!!) just out of curiosity and all largely forgotten now, although I surprised myself by holding a conversation in very hesitant German a year or two ago after 35-odd years of not using a word of it, which made me realise that perhaps the knowledge was still lurking in there somewhere.

I have a reasonable Thai vocabulary, can count, tell the time, know colours, common goods at the market, know adequate words & phrases for booking a hotel room, know about catching buses & trains, can read – or at least, can reproduce (most of) the sounds I see in Thai text, although often the sounds don’t form words I’m familiar with – and can read a Thai bus station ticket office destination/fare board. I can formulate past, present & future of verbs as well as “probably”, “used to” and similar. I can often understand more than 50% of the conversations between my wife & her friends, somewhat less when the conversation is in Isaan Thai rather than Central.

My problem is two-fold. I have GREAT difficulty in understanding most male speakers whereas I find female speakers much easier – maybe it’s the pitch of the voice or perhaps men are more prone to mumbling. I know it’s a common excuse, but tones are a problem for me – maybe ear damage after 40-odd years of motorcycling & working in engineering plants. Whatever it is, with one or two exceptions I find listening to men causes me to miss 90% of what they say. Secondly, I’m not much of a conversationalist even in my native English and never use two words where one will do, tending to be a very quiet person. Possibly, I use that as an excuse not to speak Thai – I often prefer to be on the fringes of a conversation rather than an integral part of it. I know in my mind the Thai words I need to say but there’s some sort of block that prevents it coming out of my mouth – I guess that amounts to a huge lack of confidence. My English written communication can be very good but my verbal communication is abysmal – same with verbal communication in Thai. Reading back those last sentences, they sound ridiculous even to me & no doubt sound the same to those of you reading this. But that’s the situation.

I know … confidence grows with practice. On the rare occasion now when I try speaking Thai, I can make my initial statement – which usually appears to be intelligible if not entirely grammatically correct – but then frequently have trouble understanding the response, which stifles the conversation flow. I’m constantly exposed to Thai and SHOULD be totally comfortable listening & speaking after 5 years in the country. It’s very frustrating to WANT to speak Thai but for the reasons I’ve given – whether or not they’re genuine & valid reasons in your view – it just doesn’t come.

Fire away - tell me I'm being ridiculous. I'm sure it's well-deserved.

A good post that raises some important questions. You feel frustrated that your comprehension, especially of colloquial Thai, isn't sufficient to understand everthing. You think you may have some physical problem that prevents you from being able to hear the Thai tones because why else would you still have difficulty with tones after five years? You have never studied Thai with a competent teacher, but expected to "pick up" the language on your own by immersion.

Does that summarize your first problem at least? If so, then in my opinion you have got the whole thing exactly wrong. You attribute your limited success to some inherent problem in your learning ability, but you never question the completely dubious method you have chosen. Any normal Westerner can become fluent in Thai. The fact that so few do is because they vastly underestimate the amount of work involved and they pick one of the methods that is virtually guaranteed to fail. In your case, why would you expect to be able to "pick up" the Thai language on your own, without competent instruction? Have you ever met any Westerner who did that? Me neither. Why, if the results you have got after five years are not satisfactory do you still not raise the question of whether "picking it up" on your own is ever going to work? Have you achieved milestones in the past year that demonstrate progress? If not, why would you persist in believing that the "picking it up" method is ever going to work? I doubt that it will.

The first month that I started studying in the Intensive Thai Program at Chulalongkorn U. I attended the mini-graduation ceremony for the group of students (most Japanese, a couple of Chinese, and one token American) who were completing the then one-year program. Each student gave a short, extemporaneous talk thanking his teachers and sometimes making a few jokes which the students and Thai audience all laughed at in unison. So those competent students demonstrated the effectiveness of the Chula program. I now study privately at another school where I have also encountered advanced students and graduates who have demonstrated a high level of competence in the language. In the past year I have had some small milestones of specific activities that I now pursue well enough in Thai to dispense with English. So, those two facts taken together form the basis of my confidence in the program I am following. If you haven't seen others succeed with your "pick it up" method and you can't point to concrete examples of improvement in your own skills, then the method you have chosen is not working. It has nothing whatever to do with hearing, etc. I am, by the way, 65 years old and wear hearing aids.

Other methods that are similarly guaranteed to fail are: using books and tapes on your own without a teacher and attending one of the many junk schools teaching Thai. Once again, if you don't meet any successful graduates of your method, it's because there aren't any.

You seem to be motivated. That being the case you can certainly become fluent in Thai, but you need to study with a competent teach who will correct you every time you make a mistake in grammar, usage, or pronunciation of tones, short and long vowels, and consonants. It might be possible to learn this without a teacher. You might also conceivably be able to teach yourself to play the piano without a teacher. But neither approach would be the smart way to go about it.

By the way, Thai men do not typically speak as clearly as Thai women. Nor do more educated Thais of either sex speak a more correct or clear version of the language, as we would expect in the West. There are reasons for this of course, but that's just the way it is.

smug. bs. Not "anyone " or "everyone". And when Thai often struggle to understand other Thai without repetition and confirmations unless pedanticly enunciated. It is my guess that outside of your schoolroom environment you are no better understood than most non Thai. Colloquial variations are not well tolerated anyway so accented Thai is often dismissed as incomprehensible. But congratulations for your personal success.