How hard is thai to learn

[Damrongsak]

19 hours ago, minikev said:

My two granddaughters speak 3 languages each at 4 and 5 yrs old.

I'm an early learner. I can speak Spanish and Thai like a two year old. 

[Damrongsak]

On 8/3/2017 at 11:51 PM, seancbk said:

You are not tone deaf, English is very tonal except we use tones for emphasis and emotion.   

You are just not used to ascribing a tone to a different meaning.
 

We use "tones" and word length to change meanings - sarcasm.

 

In addition to tones in Thai, there's the length of the words/vowel sounds.  I do best if I start out on the right key, keep proper tempo and just sing a sentence or two. 

[madusa]

On 8/3/2017 at 0:31 AM, Damrongsak said:

I had the benefit of about 6 weeks of training in the Peace Corps. 25 hours a week, all in Thai.  They used the "silent way" method.  The teacher would say a word, make each student pronounce it correctly, then demonstrate the meaning (silently) until everyone grasped the meaning.  Amazingly effective.  We learned to think in Thai.  A couple people got good at reading and writing in that time.  I only squeaked by.   A couple older volunteers had a hard time because they couldn't hear the tones.

 

I ended up in a small town in Isaan, working with a Thai govt department.  There were very few foreigners, so it was either speak Thai or stay silent for weeks on end. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Way

 

Some years ago, we visited Mexico.  My high school Spanish was really rusty.  So when I was at a loss for a word, a Thai word just automatically popped in there.  I got some strange looks.

Yes, your last part about Thai word popped in because your Spanish was really rusty is very very true.

I speak and work with Japanese for about 20 years so is quite fluent with it then I studied French for a few years sometimes I cannot remember the french word a japanese word with the same meaning would pop up.

The word processing part of the brain gives you a word with the same meaning because it couldn't retrieve the actual word that you want. In the foreign words department of the brain storage there is only one word left the other word has faded away. So the brain gives you what it has got left. And it's done so quickly that before you know it you are already saying it out.

[Kwasaki]

16 hours ago, Oxx said:

 

In English we simply say "tourists".  Are you sure you're English?

 

And do all your "tourist people" visitors really speak pidgin English, as in "why you no speak Thai".

Yes & Yes sometimes Mr Policeman.

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎8‎/‎2‎/‎2017 at 1:03 PM, Oxx said:

 

In a tourist ghetto, perhaps? Pattaya, Bangkok, Phuket?

Even in Lamphun ( about as far from being a tourist ghetto as is possible to find ) I was able to use English most places.

Not so in the village.

 

I tried very hard to learn it, but gave up in the end. It was the tones that did me in. Writing/ reading- never even tried.

Rely on basic vocabulary to get by OK most times.

 

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎8‎/‎2‎/‎2017 at 11:31 PM, Damrongsak said:

I had the benefit of about 6 weeks of training in the Peace Corps. 25 hours a week, all in Thai.  They used the "silent way" method.  The teacher would say a word, make each student pronounce it correctly, then demonstrate the meaning (silently) until everyone grasped the meaning.  Amazingly effective.  We learned to think in Thai.  A couple people got good at reading and writing in that time.  I only squeaked by.   A couple older volunteers had a hard time because they couldn't hear the tones.

 

I ended up in a small town in Isaan, working with a Thai govt department.  There were very few foreigners, so it was either speak Thai or stay silent for weeks on end. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Way

 

Some years ago, we visited Mexico.  My high school Spanish was really rusty.  So when I was at a loss for a word, a Thai word just automatically popped in there.  I got some strange looks.

I had the same thing with Arabic, till I had been away long enough to forget it almost entirely. Now I know hardly any.

It's true though, that as one gets older, the brain just doesn't compute as well. Best to learn at a young age if possible.

[amvet]

7 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

I had the same thing with Arabic, till I had been away long enough to forget it almost entirely. Now I know hardly any.

It's true though, that as one gets older, the brain just doesn't compute as well. Best to learn at a young age if possible.

Some aspects of language learning become progressively more difficult with age, others may get easier. "Older people have larger vocabularies than younger ones, so the chances are your vocabulary will be as large as a native, "

Learning a new language may not always be easy for adults, but there is research to suggest that doing so is beneficial for brain health. researchers at Edinburgh University examined the medical records of 648 Alzheimer's patients ...found that the bilinguals developed dementia later than monolinguals. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/sep/13/am-i-too-old-to-learn-a-language

 

The above makes sense reading Thai Visa and evaluating the posts of the people who don't try and learn Thai. 

[Damrongsak]

So you learn good Thai.  Then you end up in Isaan trying to communicate with a 70 year old village woman speaking the local dialect who is chewing a mouthful of betel nut.  Oh, never get on a local bus in the boonies and ask the old guy next to you if the bus is headed in the direction you want to go.  Despite the nods and grunts of affirmation, he didn't understand a word you said.

[DUS]

1 hour ago, Damrongsak said:

So you learn good Thai.  Then you end up in Isaan trying to communicate with a 70 year old village woman speaking the local dialect who is chewing a mouthful of betel nut.  Oh, never get on a local bus in the boonies and ask the old guy next to you if the bus is headed in the direction you want to go.  Despite the nods and grunts of affirmation, he didn't understand a word you said.

Possibly! But maybe not! Fact is, it is always easy to find (poor) excuses as to why it doesn't make sense to learn the language. 

 

With regards to the quote above: well, if all your (daily) interactions are limited to speaking to a 70 year old village woman chewing a mouthful of whatever as well as sitting next to grandpa on a local bus in the boonies, then learning central Thai might indeed be an excercise that you can neglect without any regrets. On this I am indeed with you. Maybe learning your local Isaan dialect would be more rewarding in the end. ;-))

Edited August 6, 2017 by DUS

[Damrongsak]

1 hour ago, DUS said:

... Maybe learning your local Isaan dialect would be more rewarding in the end. ;-))

Nah.  It would make it harder to ignore my wife and her siblings when they are yapping at warp speed. 

[inThailand]

<deleted>...what are you two toss pots talking about?  

[A1Str8]

It's easy. I've never learned it. 

[seancbk]

9 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

I had the same thing with Arabic, till I had been away long enough to forget it almost entirely. Now I know hardly any.

It's true though, that as one gets older, the brain just doesn't compute as well. Best to learn at a young age if possible.

I learn't Arabic from ages 0 to 5+.   I can't remember any of it now as we left the Middle East when I was 6 and my parents didn't think it was necessary for me to continue speaking Arabic.

Wish I still could.

 

[amvet]

10 hours ago, Damrongsak said:

So you learn good Thai.  Then you end up in Isaan trying to communicate with a 70 year old village woman speaking the local dialect who is chewing a mouthful of betel nut.  Oh, never get on a local bus in the boonies and ask the old guy next to you if the bus is headed in the direction you want to go.  Despite the nods and grunts of affirmation, he didn't understand a word you said.

The old crone can probably speak 5 different languages my village old crone can.  How many do you speak?  I had an older lady stop the Song Tau and buy me a glass of fresh squeezed sugar cane juice a few weeks ago and another ask me over for lunch.  Politeness and some language fluency goes a long way.  

[Damrongsak]

7 minutes ago, amvet said:

The old crone can probably speak 5 different languages my village old crone can.  How many do you speak?  I had an older lady stop the Song Tau and buy me a glass of fresh squeezed sugar cane juice a few weeks ago and another ask me over for lunch.  Politeness and some language fluency goes a long way.  

In this case, it was the wife of one of the Thai farmers I worked with.  He was also a very skilled knife maker, and he let me help him at the forge.  I learned a lot.  He also showed me how to put a chicken to sleep.  A man of many talents.  He would tell his dogs to clean up bits of trash and they would pick them up and deposit them on the compost pile.

 

Just chilling with those folks and using non-verbal communication more often than not worked just fine. 

[amvet]

12 minutes ago, Damrongsak said:

In this case, it was the wife of one of the Thai farmers I worked with.  He was also a very skilled knife maker, and he let me help him at the forge.  I learned a lot.  He also showed me how to put a chicken to sleep.  A man of many talents.  He would tell his dogs to clean up bits of trash and they would pick them up and deposit them on the compost pile.

 

Just chilling with those folks and using non-verbal communication more often than not worked just fine. 

It's been my experience that most Thai people think Farang are not smart enough to learn Thai and in most cases I would agree with them. 

[Damrongsak]

27 minutes ago, amvet said:

It's been my experience that most Thai people think Farang are not smart enough to learn Thai and in most cases I would agree with them. 

I'm sure things have changed since I went there 40 years ago.  I'm sure my Thai has not improved materially in that time after 3 years in country.  Way back, they really made you feel good if you could speak just a bit. 

[Ulysses G.]

I studied Thai for my first few years, but never learned to read or write. I can get most things done and understand a lot, but only if it is pretty simple. However, I spent many years using it and am no pro. 

I tried learning Vietnamese when I lived there for a while and found it much more difficult than Thai. 

 

The best Thai I have ever heard spoken by a farang would be Joe Cummings who used to write the Lonely Planet guidebook and Thai/English dictionaries.

There is also a muscular German guy named Raymond who is not far behind him and speaks a bunch of other languages as well. He has lived in Chiang Mai for something like 30 years and was pretty fluent within his first few years. He studies constantly and keeps on improving. I usually can't follow him as he speaks as quickly and fluently as a Thai. 

Edited August 9, 2017 by Ulysses G.

[zzaa09]

On 8/8/2017 at 4:50 PM, Ulysses G. said:

I studied Thai for my first few years, but never learned to read or write. I can get most things done and understand a lot, but only if it is pretty simple. However, I spent many years using it and am no pro. 

I tried learning Vietnamese when I lived there for a while and found it much more difficult than Thai. 

 

The best Thai I have ever heard spoken by a farang would be Joe Cummings who used to write the Lonely Planet guidebook and Thai/English dictionaries.

There is also a muscular German guy named Raymond who is not far behind him and speaks a bunch of other languages as well. He has lived in Chiang Mai for something like 30 years and was pretty fluent within his first few years. He studies constantly and keeps on improving. I usually can't follow him as he speaks as quickly and fluently as a Thai. 

The well-known Ajarn Adam Bradshaw - Almost as fluently flowing as I am.......

[georgemandm]

On 02/08/2017 at 4:03 PM, Oxx said:

 

In a tourist ghetto, perhaps? Pattaya, Bangkok, Phuket?

Why would you call them ghetto, 

are you just joking?.

they are not ghetto.