Cracking Thai Fundamentals book by Stuart Jay

[edmartech]

Any first hand experience with this book? Better if from someone who bought it. I'm on the fence about buying because I'm not sure if it is for me.

My Thai language skills, I would say is probably intermediate. I can read Thai (but of course not with the proper tones). I can also communicate with basic stuff. Vocabulary of maybe around 400-500 words, possibly more.

Does it have complementary materials on the website? I mean, if the book is teaching about proper pronunciation, is there an option to go to his website to hear it?

I know it is not cheap compared to other Thai language teaching books but I don't mind paying for something that I know I can learn from. I also read that it was not thoroughly proofread so I'm not sure if I'm better off waiting for the second edition. And it might take time though.

[AyG]

No first hand experience, but I think the man is a bit of a charlatan (albeit a linguistically talented one).

The online, interactive version of the book is available at http://jcademy.com/package/details/cracking-thai-fundamentals and costs a ludicrous $299.

[jay1980]

I have the book which I bought when I attended a seminar he gave in BKK last year, I have found some of his tecniques such as the 'mouth map' useful for getting some tones right that I was struggling with before.

[richsilver]

I bought the book a few weeks ago and I am disappointed with it. I am an intermediate speaker of Thai and I found the book of little help.

He spends a great deal of the book talking about the relationship and history of the Thai language to other Asian languages. I'm sure this is very interesting to scholars, but is not in the least helpful for learning the language.

I found his mouth exercises and explanations equally unhelpful.

He often refers to the digital version of the book for exercises and explanation, but this is not useful unless you have purchased it as well!

Additionally the typography is horrendous. There are wild, arbitrary, jarring changes in font sizes and there is so much white space in the book that there are probably about 200 wasted pages! I'm guessing this has to do with the way the book was printed from the electronic version. Nevertheless, it's quite unpleasant. The images in the book are of low quality and often unclear and not helpful.

I am a fan of his on-line videos, but cannot recommend the book.

[krey]

I dont have experience with the book but I do have experience with the online course

when I bought it I was expecting a long course but instead it just had a couple modules which i finished in about a day it was so easy and then that was it. I was unimpressed with the lack of material, yet the course talked about how much you will learn... if the book is anything like the online course I would stay away personally

you might want to try a online course like thaipod101 or learn-thai-podcast, at least then you can hear a native speaker with the tones and such.

hit me up on private if you want a few links to some good reviews on that, i have posted them before but I dont want to be seen as a spammer so private me if you are interested. Cheers

[edmartech]

He often refers to the digital version of the book for exercises and explanation, but this is not useful unless you have purchased it as well!

The online, interactive version of the book is available at http://jcademy.com/package/details/cracking-thai-fundamentals and costs a ludicrous $299.

This is what I was worried about. Buying a book teaching proper pronunciation and then lacking materials to listen to or in this case needing to buy additional materials.

Thanks guys. So I think I have to pass on this one. Bummer because I like his teaching style.

[katana]

The author of the book, Stuart Raj, is a member of the Thai Visa forum and actually posts in this language forum.

[Cloggie]

In my opinion "Thai for Beginners" from Benjawan Poomsan Becker together with the MP3 files is still one of the best ways to learn the language.

[bearpolar]

In my opinion "Thai for Beginners" from Benjawan Poomsan Becker together with the MP3 files is still one of the best ways to learn the language.

in conjonction with her amazing dictionnary app.

[nalaknarak]

No first hand experience, but I think the man is a bit of a charlatan (albeit a linguistically talented one).

The online, interactive version of the book is available at http://jcademy.com/package/details/cracking-thai-fundamentals and costs a ludicrous $299.

I've always wondered if he actually has a background in linguistics. Do linguists or polyglots agree with his methods?

[Jay_Jay]

Hi All and thank you for your feedback. It's always good to get constructive feedback to improve future versions.

I have been running my Cracking Thai Fundamentals programme since 2000. For many years it has been a face to face programme that usually lasts around 16 hours. I run versions in Thai for Thais and in English for English speakers learning Thai. I have also run versions of it for speakers of Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian and Burmese.

The original impetus for the programme came from a director at the Foreign Correspondent's Club wanting a programme for journalists and other members to be able to hit the ground running when it came to learning the Thai language and working in with the Thai culture - and having questions answered that their Thai teachers had traditionally given answers in the vein of "It's just like that" or "You don't need to know". I have a degree in linguistics and have quite a rich background since childhood with many languages including Chinese languages including Mandarin, Cantonese, Middle Chinese and other dialects, Austronesian languages, languages of India including Sanskrit / Pali, Scandinavian languages and Romance languages like Spanish.

There is very little (if anything) about the Thai language that is 'mysterious' or that can't be explained away with a logical and sensible explanation. That was the goal of CTF - to take away the mystery of the language whether it be tones, the writing system, the way meanings are constructed etc, and not only give logical explanations as to WHY they are the way they are, but also to provide exercises and coaching to help learners of Thai get past common obstacles that learners often encounter and help them towards their goal of speaking Thai with a much more natural level of prosody - speaking Thai with more natural rhythms in the language.

The programme developed over 16 years and I have had over 700 people go through the face to face programme since 2000. This isn't my standard work, and I would run only a few workshops a year. The standard price has been 15,000 baht since the early 2000's and hasn't changed since then. Even with that price, I have had people continuing to register and many people have come back several times, getting different things out of it each time. It's important to remember too that people learning Thai aren't just native English speakers. The way I teach a native English speaker is very different from the way I teach a Chinese speaker, Hindi (or other Indian language) speaker, Burmese speaker or Indonesian speaker. Each of those languages have different things within the language that might allow them to get a head start on their Thai. For example - for a person who can write in the script of an Indian language or language that has a Brahmic script will understand the way the tone system and consonant classes are set out along with vowels if Thai is taught directly against their mother tongue's system.

In order to reach more people, it had to go beyond just me in a classroom. I set out a few years ago to look at each part of the face to face programme and try and develop interactive versions - that would enable learners to develop mastery through exercises. Not just watching videos. This is where the online version came in. I originally had it on Jcademy.com. People were asking for real life applications of the things learned during CTF, and so I developed the Thai Bites series, showing how all of those concepts came together in real life. I then teamed up with Glossika based in Taiwan with their Spaced Repetition system and bundled all that together. They have a year's worth of learning there - and that is where the $299 price came from. One off price for everything being bundled together.

I have subsequently pulled back on Jcademy and have moved everything to my own site - http://stujay.com and brought the price down to $9.99 per month for everything (not including Glossika), as I wanted to make it available to everyone who had a copy of the book and vice versa.

Now - the book. There are many things that I couldn't go into detail about in the online course. This is where the book came in. I wanted the book to be a 'book book' - not an e-book, that would sit by the learner throughout their entire 'Thai speaking' life. I wanted it to help lay the right foundation from the get go and then be there to answer any 'head scratching' moments that popped up along the way. Although I wrote the book in English, the readers are from all different language backgrounds, so I have tried to include something in there for everyone. There are things in there that will resound with some people and work for them because of their background and other things won't. That's ok. Hopefully though, there's something in there that can help everyone.

I must note that the book IS NOT your standard language learning book with 'Lesson One - John and Mary at the bus station' etc. It is a book to help lay down 'A Thai Operating System For the Mind' and can (and should) be used in conjunction with all the learning systems that you're already using. I have never used only one resource to learn a language and I don't believe that anyone should (or would).

The problem with the book is that I have over 100 fonts in there of many languages - and many fonts that aren't fonts. They are of scripts that don't have fonts yet, so I have had to include image files to build words up. All of this proved a nightmare for editing. I was lucky enough to have a British born editor who could also edit Thai. The problem was though that his computer didn't have all the fonts and if just one was missing, or one bit of formatting got messed up or character deleted, it flowed on throughout the book and ruined the rest of the book's formatting. The result - he had to do a red-pen edit on a printed manuscript of the book and then I had to tediously go through every single page and try and marry his red-pen edits up with the place in the digital file - within the template supplied by the publisher. I then went back and forth for months with the publisher (in the US) as they had never done a book with this many fonts / this many languages with complex scripts and their system was choking. In the end, I had to make a call - send the book to print with all the edits we did, or wait another several months before it would be ready for print. I didn't have that luxury of time, so I made the call. I hope that the typos and formatting issues don't detract too much from the content and the learning experience. I have created an erratum section on my site so that errors can be logged and will be fixed in future editions if / when they happen.

I'm passionate about languages and learning - and the last thing that I want to do is add negativity to the learning process that could hinder someone else's opportunity to learn.

I have included the entire first section of the book here for you to read http://stujay.com/2015/09/07/introducing-cracking-thai-fundamentals-ctf-the-book/ .

I hope this has answered any questions as to what the book is about and my motives for writing it along with my other stuff. Like I said in the beginning - thanks for the feedback. All feedback is noted.

[MUSTYJACK]

I am an intermediate level speaker, and can read and write Thai too.

I had lessons on and off for years, and just as it says in this book, there comes a time when you hit a wall and either get fed up learning or dont get the answers you want.

I found that by learning on my own and using radio and TV to listen to more Thai, my comprehension gradually improved. At home with my Thai wife, we always speak English. Her English was excellent way before i could even speak a word of Thai.

I bought this book a month ago and have gradually read most of it. It has not really helped me with my Thai, and I was disappointed to find that purchase of this (quite expensive) book does give access to the online course which is referenced many times in the book.

It is quite an academic tome, although not written in an academic style, and some of the subject matter and linguistic theory is certainly fascinating. But I bought this book to re kindle an interest in Thai learning, and I'm sorry to say it has not done that, possibly because some of the books learning methods regarding tones and pronunciation are in conflict with the way I have already learnt these aspects of Thai. To relearn these basics all over again would be very confusing.

Some of the diagrams and tables relating to phonetics are poorly printed and almost unreadable, again one is directed online, but I was unable to find them on the website without signing up for the course.

Am I sorry i bought it, definitely not. It is very interesting and very readable, and has given me an insight into phonetics and other Asian languages, but it assumes you have a knowledge of the International Phonetic Alphabet, and learning that is in itself a mammoth task. I think it is easier to pick up pronunciation and tones by everyday exposure to Thai, the mouth exercises shown in the book are complicated and hard to understand. Plus who expects a foreigner to speak EXACTLY like a native. Foreign accents are cute to a native after all !

For a beginner, one would need the online course as well and a native speaker to help with the extensive use of Thai script and help with pronunciation.

Beckers books and Higbie and Thinsans Reference Grammar are of far more use to a beginner, but Jay himself has never claimed that this is a definitive learning book and says it should be used with other courses and books.

Once you have the basics, there is only one way to learn this language, and that is to get out there and use it, suffer the embarrassment of your mistakes and slowly learn from them.

It is unquestionably an interesting read and a unique take on phonetics, but I dont think many will improve their Thai by using this book

Edited March 2, 2016 by MUSTYJACK

[CaptHaddock]

My Thai language skills, I would say is probably intermediate. I can read Thai (but of course not with the proper tones). I can also communicate with basic stuff. Vocabulary of maybe around 400-500 words, possibly more.

A vocabulary of 500 words would put you at a very beginner's level, not intermediate.

[bearpolar]

untrue as in those 500 words, you can multiply every Kai, Sai, etc into 30 extra words