Here's why some foreigners find speaking Thai so difficult

[Jonathan Fairfield]

 

 

 

[billd766]

It doesn't help that much if you are partly deaf and partly tone deaf also.

[patrick1968]

 i can speak thai now .............kawwwww

[KhunBENQ]

And she uses my favourite "kao kao ..." example.

Add words with the "g" (non aspirated "k") like sound ("gao" for nine e.g.).

Add words with the "au" ending (ao <> au).

 

-> Now you can fill a page of a dictionary

 

[jonbsails]

hmmm...I suppose I could spare some time to teach her to speak English

[chrissables]

Clear as mud 5555555

 

You can't use the English alphabet to show Thai tones.

Edited December 14, 2016 by chrissables
edit

[Bigstef]

Thai is easy boom boom 

[The Man Who Sold the World]

Shouldn't that be: cow, cow, cow, cow, cow and cow?

 

[Peterw42]

Made me laugh, as I am always having the same joke with GF

[cooked]

I thought it was because most people around here speak Lao or Cambosh.

[cncltd1973]

hilarious!

next lesson: soi

[Torrens54]

It's a Cow of a Language to try and learn but probably not as much as English. Two, Too and To... just for starters.

[godblessemall]

English has its naughty bits too. Which is why Yanks shorten everything... like Hi, Lo, Thru, nite, etc.

 

[bandito]

I can only learn a language by being able to read it first .

I learned English in the same way and using a dictionary.

German I learned by working and sailing for 2,5 years on the Rhine river boats.

Norwagian and Danish by sailing on their deep sea ships.

Thai? Impossible to learn because unreadable plus a tonal language.

CD's or DVD's won't help because I don't understand anything what's spoken through a microphone, that include TV and airport loudspeakers, movies, etc.

 

[gemguy]

It seems that the clever Thais created different words and meanings using tones rather than a new word with different sound and pronunciation.

What ever the reasons the necessary tones are part of what makes the language difficult to learn for most people.

Naturally, anyone learning a new language struggles with certain aspects more so than other aspects of the language they are learning but the  general consensus is, the all important "tone aspect" of Thai language is what people struggle with while learning Thai language.

Maybe it was planned that way...lol

Cheers

 

[zaZa9]

1 hour ago, gemguy said:

It seems that the clever Thais created different words and meanings using tones rather than a new word with different sound and pronunciation.

What ever the reasons the necessary tones are part of what makes the language difficult to learn for most people.

Naturally, anyone learning a new language struggles with certain aspects more so than other aspects of the language they are learning but the  general consensus is, the all important "tone aspect" of Thai language is what people struggle with while learning Thai language.

Maybe it was planned that way...lol

Cheers

 

It was probably planned that way - particularly the 66 letter alphabet.

The class of scribes held a lot of arbitrary power in the royal courts simply because they could read and write.

They even got to make up words... ever wondered why a kangaroo is called that all over the world but in Thailand its been renamed a  'jingjoe' ?

This class did not  hold on to  its exclusive position by making its craft easy and accessible to all ...

[rickb]

I always thought Thai had five different tones.  Yet in the video, Miss Ao (or is it Oo?) mentions six.  So I'm really lost now!!!  I tell my wife frequently that all these words sound about the same.  And she swears that there is so much difference between all of them.  The two words I hate most in Thai are the words for near and far.  In English they are complete opposites.  Yet in Thai, their sound is practically identical to my ears.  So when I ask my wife in English if some place is near or far, and she answers me in Thai, I might as well not have asked the question.  Don't ya love it?

[godblessemall]

Yes, I thought there were only five tones too. I believe Chinese has six and Vietnamese seven!!

IMHO the easiest tones for us to use and recognize are the rising and falling, marked as v and ^ in the Haas transliteration system or + and ๗ in Thai. If you concentrate on getting those right the other three tones are harder for us to hear, but usually a Thai can understand which meaning we intend through context.

That difficult word for near and far is easy if you know that near uses falling tone and far not. The commonest and easiest use of the rising tone is in noodles which is Guit- tiaw and uses rising tone for both words.

 

[gemguy]

3 hours ago, godblessemall said:

Yes, I thought there were only five tones too. I believe Chinese has six and Vietnamese seven!!

IMHO the easiest tones for us to use and recognize are the rising and falling, marked as v and ^ in the Haas transliteration system or + and ๗ in Thai. If you concentrate on getting those right the other three tones are harder for us to hear, but usually a Thai can understand which meaning we intend through context.

That difficult word for near and far is easy if you know that near uses falling tone and far not. The commonest and easiest use of the rising tone is in noodles which is Guit- tiaw and uses rising tone for both words.

 

Of course as you learn to speak Thai those difficult Tones become not so difficult when a specific word is used in a structured sentence and part of a conversation, as you may not say the specific word correctly but the Thai person you are talking to understands what you are saying or meaning to say.

If you try to say just the one specific word only while often enough you did not say it correctly and they may be confused.

Sometime hand gestures will help to communicate when speaking and you are trying to ask them: "Is the distance far away or not so far away"..... while gesturing with your arms held wide open when asking is the distance to walk far away or only a short distance, to walk...for example, when using the word  "Gli"

 

Cheers

[Fookhaht]

I always thought Thai had five different tones.

Each word can have a long or short vowel sound too. Five tones multiplied by two possible vowel-length sounds gives you 10 possibilities for each word.


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