Six months of study of Thai language тАУ A success story
I read reports by people who have been trying to learn Thai for years, there are even people who live in Thailand and donтАЩt make an effort, therefore here my story to share my experiences and to encourage others.
Books, websites and Thai Language School mentioned here do not present recommendations, as I donтАЩt have a profund knowledge of the market. If you really want to learn Thai, it probably doesnтАЩt make much difference which book or course you use. (The only thing to avoid is romanization.)
On 01.12.2010 I arrived in Thailand with about zero knowledge of the Thai language (I knew from previous holidays that тАЬSawatdeeтАЭ means hello and тАЬbaanтАЭ is house). Now I can read and write (and to a lesser extent speak and listen) basic Thai.
Courses I attended (all at Thai Language Solutions Phaya Thai branch, no ED-visa):
Speaking and Listening 1: 50 h 6500 Baht + Text books 2*500 Baht
From begin of December to mid-January, 3 h/day 5 days/week.
(This course uses romanization, but there was no reading and writing course starting in begin of December and I wanted to start immediately. Later it turned out that it was quite useless, as I learn visuel and different systems of romanization are just confusing.)
Reading and Writing 1: 8 h 1200 Baht (out of a 50 h course for 7500 Baht, then switched to intensive) Mid-December to mid-January 3 h/day 2 days/week.
Intensive Reading 20 h private tuition 8000 Baht
Mid-January to mid-February, flexible
It turned out that private tuition is better than studying in a class: the higher costst are easily compensated as you have the teacherтАЩs full attention and you only hear Thai from a native speaker.
During my hibernation in Thailand (11 weeks from December to February) I had the chance to practise my Thai with my Thai friends and to get help from them. On the other hand, 78 h of classes in 11 weeks might look meagre, but this was a holiday and I used it to <del>sleep</del> travel around in Thailand and Laos.
In March, back in Europe, the real work started: learning words and reading and listening, on average 2h per day, every day. I use flashcards to translate words in both directions and read English sentences and their Thai translation textbooks, then cover the sentence and try to write it down in Thai. (and soon only read the English sentence and try to write it down in Thai). And listen to audiofiles of Thai Basic reader and reading the Thai script, translating unknown words, and finally listen without reading until I understand. With flashcards, I learned the entire vocabulary (720 words) of тАЬThai for beginnersтАЭ, and this enables me to understand half of general Thai texts (written by Thais for Thais). An amazing achievement! I can touch-type Thai as well (I printed out a Thai keyboard and looked at the printout while typing words for the flashcards).
Literature I use:
Poomsan Becker:Thai for Beginners (book only 299 Baht)
Tiger Press Thai Phrasebook with Tones (195 Baht) + CD (95 Baht) (not available in every bookshop, I bought it in Khao San road after having a look through a copy and seeing some things I liked, especially literal translation together with translation by sense)
Lanna Innovation Thai Consonant and Vowel Cards (250 Baht each)
David Smyth Thai an Essential Grammar (pdf free)
http://www.intermediate-thai.org (free, which I consider rather beginners level)
http://siamwestdc.com/thaireader-UH/index.htm Thai Basic Reader (free, which I consider intermediate, this suits my requiremets almost perfect, speed of speech a bit slower would be nice)
Stuart Campbell and Chuan Shaweevongs THE FUNDAMENTALS OF THE THAI LANGUAGE (Fifth Edition) (free in internet, I agree with others who said that is is an excellent book)
Working with different sources is very important for me: When I read something in book B and remember that I read in book A before the effect for learning is much bigger than reading it twice in book A.
Let me draw some paralles between Thai and French (maybe these are far fetched, if you donтАЩt speak French and are not interested in grammar, just skip it) and to a lesser extent German and Russian.
Thai demonstrative adjectives and demonstrative pronouns come in different forms:
demonstrative adjective: р╕Щр╕╡р╣Й р╕Щр╕▒р╣Йр╕Щ р╣Вр╕Щр╣Йр╕Щ
demonstrative pronound: р╕Щр╕╡р╣И р╕Щр╕▒р╣Ир╕Щ р╣Вр╕Щр╣Ир╕Щ
the same is true for some French possessive adjectives and pronouns:
possessive adjective: notre, votre
possessive pronoun: le n├┤tre, le v├┤tre
If you need a mnemonic: the French pronouns have a circonflex, which is used in romanisations to indicate the falling tone in the Thai pronouns.
There are endings in many French words (especially masculine or feminine singular and plural past participles and adjectives: ├й, ├йe, ├йs, ├йes) that are written in different ways but pronounced the same, similar to Thai words where an ending in N or T can be represented by different vowels, or even worse an ending vowel with a gaaran. And I often donтАЩt know if a French adverb ends in тАУammant, -emmant or тАУ ├йment, because it all sounds the same to me (maybe a native speaker pronounces differently and hears which ending is correct), whereas I often have problems to decide which S to use: sua, rusi, sala. Similar the Russian prefixes ╨▒╨╡╨╖ and ╨▒╨╡╤Б (maybe again problem only due to my wrong unclear pronunciation of hard and soft S).
Early during my studies of French language I notices that many internationally used abbreviations have the order of letters inversed or partially inversed (NATO тАУ OTAN, UNO тАУ ONU, AIDS тАУ SIDA, VAT value added tax тАУ TAV taxe ├а la valeur ajout├йe, NMR nuclear magnetic resonance тАУ RMN r├йsonnance magn├йtique nucl├йaire, HIV - VIH) and later I read that French is postmodifying, i.e. (most) adjectives follow the noun, same as in Thai!
The pronunciation of voiced consonant like their voiceless counterpart at the end of a word appears in German and Russian as well. Amazingly, this even affects the same consonants: the pairs G -> K, B -> P, D -> T (romanized for Thai and Russian). When we say in German тАЬGuten TagтАЭ, the first G sounds like G, the final G sounds like K.
My breakthrough with tones came when I read that high class consonants are all those who are pronounced with rising tone. If itтАЩs rising tone, itтАЩs a high class consonant. If itтАЩs a high class consonant, itтАЩs rising tone. This sounds like a bootstrap, and it is. But it reinforces class of consonant and tone. Starting from high class + long vowel = rising tone we can extend to live syllable (as it makes no difference for the phonetics if there is long vowel or a voiced consonant), and the rest quickly falls into place.
IтАЩm not an expert of neither French, nor grammar, nor Thai, nor do I know which is the best book or language school. I can just tell you that the approach described above works for me (self-assessment, we will see on my next holiday how I far I can really get). If you find a mistake or disagree on certain points, let me know.
Problems that remain: use of classifiers, different fonts, word order, dictionary order, unwritten vowels in unknown words. The absence of gaps between the words does not pose a problem. So far, learning Thai (once I got used to the alphabet and the tones) is considerably easier than French or Russian.
I remember a sign in a couldnтАЩt read as it was in a font not used , and weeks later I came across the same place and I suddenly understood. Or the optician chain Charoen: I couldnтАЩt make any sense of the Thai letters, until I learned that there can be unwritten тАЬaтАЭ sounds and the тАЬoeтАЭ sound is wrapped around тАЬchтАЭ and тАЬrтАЭ and the unwritten тАЬaтАЭ.
I rember that I asked Thai friends to tell me the names of letters I didnтАЩt know at that thime or didnтАЩt remember in January. I remember how I sat in classes reading slowly in February: first determining which sound a letter makes and then calculating the tone. I did this backwards: live or dead syllable from the end consonant, tone mark or short or long vowel, class of initial consonant. It was exhausting! I almost had headache after doing so for half an hour. Now I do it forwards with not much difficulty.
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