Learning passa Thai

[billyhouston]

Though not a linguist, French, Latin and Russian were compulsory at school. Latin was great as there was no listening or speaking and the grammar was well defined. French was fine as there was little speaking required and testing was by way of the dictée, which is the French fashioon. Russian is largely phonetic and once the cyrillic alphabet had been mastered was fairly straighforward.

Thai, on the other hand, proved to be a nightmare for someone who cannot distinguish the tones. It seems that the preferred method of teaching is conversational, whereas I'm much more at home with learning the grammar and the vocabulary. I am further disadvantaged because, being lazy and having a partner who is a capable linguist, I have no need to know anything other than the basics in Thai. My partner is not Thai, but has an excellent 'ear' and is a good mimic which serves him well. His ability to slip from Thai to Shan, Burmese, Mandarin, Karen or other ethnic languages always amazes me. My total incompetence in this field, and many others, has led to our splitting of the chores, 50:50. I do the 'mathematics' and he does all that is 'not mathematics'...... though, occasionally, I do some ironing.

[Marc K]

oh ma gosh, learning some paasaa Thai can be fun! yes, you will make some mistakes, who cares, and let's not be completely paranoid about what they are saying behind our back, we do the same. the key, as has been said, is learning to hear the tones, which takes a lot of practice. i remember the first time i heard the various "a's" they all sounded the same, now, if spoken by a careful speaker, you can clearly hear the difference. Thai language has no pesky tenses (yipes, French!), no conjugations (yipes, Russian!), no genders (yipes, German!), few prepositions, no articles...

so i took up learning conversational Thai some years ago, not so hard, given i have learned 4 other languages before, but what really kills me is Thai spelling. I would desperately love to learn to read, and perhaps write. the reason is that once you get past the touristy places in Thailand, the number of signs in English dwindle to almost zero. it drives me nuts.

this is the part that it is most frustrating, as Thai words contain so many (to us) extraneous letters in them. in fact i didn't realize how crazy English spelling was until i attempted Thai spelling. Our language is also rather crazy - might, dough, laugh, know, etc etc. So I guess I can't complain. It would be nice if someone invented a "simple English" spelling system, as well as a "simple Thai" spelling system.

[StevieWonders]

“Just because you’re paranoid that doesn’t mean they aren’t after you” - Catch-22

I find that if you treat each guy as a one night stand, ever ready to move on to the next “conquest”, you’ll usually be treated somewhere along the continuum from indifference to contempt. Build up some sort of relationship and entropy takes over that continuum and a (sometimes wary) friendship develops. That’s more difficult when you’re a sex tourist here for a fortnight. It’s the basis of the bar boy question “How long you be in Thailand?”

[snotface]

Yep, the tones are the hardest part of learning Thai. I used to overdo them in the early days, which got some smiles from taxi drivers and the like. 'Song' meaning two has a rising tone and I would turn it almost into an operatic aria. An English friend, who has never made the slightest attempt to learn Thai despite living here for over twenty years, does not let this inconvenient fact stop him from pontificating about the language and he insists that Thais speak too quickly to use the tones themselves. Wrong! Once your ear gets properly tuned in you can always detect the tones. I was fortunate in that my female Thai teacher for several years, although not great overall, was very strict about tone pronunciation. I still have to take care when pronouncing words like 'glai' (mid-tone) meaning far and 'glai' (falling tone) meaning near. Depending on how keen they are to please me, Thais tell me my Thai is anything from 50 to 90 percent clear. I suspect it's at the lower end of that scale but that's enough to be easily understood in tourist areas and usually understood elsewhere.

Apart from the tones, as Marc K says, Thai is much easier to learn than English. If you live here as I do, it's worth learning to read and write Thai too. You can nearly always work out how to pronounce a word from the spelling, Thai being a phonetic language. There are some tricky words of Sanskrit origin but most are straightforward. I'm not up to reading legal documents or newspapers (which have lots of slang words) but it's a real advantage to be able to read signs etc in the street. I don't use my written Thai much, which would be time-consuming for me. In messages to Thais I mainly use English as they all have access to translation apps. If they write in Thai to me, that's no problem. My main difficulty is still comprehension if Thais speak too fast. And if it's a bunch of guys jabbering away in an Isaan dialect - forget it, I just tune right out.

I don't think tourists, even regular ones, need feel any guilt about not learning Thai. A few stock phrases go quite a long way. If you live here, it's another matter. I think it's just common courtesy to make the effort, as well as having all sorts of practical advantages. I can see why those with longstanding Thai partners might not have a strong incentive but it would still serve them well. Thailand and its culture is strange to us in many ways and it's all just a bit less so when we learn the language, if only (like me) to an intermediate level.

[Smiles]

"...How do other boyfriends, partners or offed-guys cope with us falangs when we- as I put it to P without gaining his approval- try to respect the local language? ..."

No problem ... he learns English. You help when asked.
Works for me.

On a different tack ... how does one say (or write) "Snotface" in Thai?

[snotface]

On a different tack ... how does one say (or write) "Snotface" in Thai?

I should think 'naa kee mook' (all three syllables falling tone). Try it on Suphot. If he punches you in the face it's probably correct.

[Mancs]

I tried to learn Thai at first. I can manage some simple phrases and numbers. But then I realised it's more important that the lads learn more English to help their careers, as MB or whatever in the future, rather than I speak more bad Thai. So I do my duty and speak English. But even a little Thai is very useful in the provinces. Then I had to learn some Vietnamese, as I like Vietnamese men. Once I found a very old woman in Hanoi who could speak French. The only use my bad French has been put to before is talking to men in Tunisia and Morocco.

[a447]

As a visitor to Thailand I can get by with a bit of conversational Thai. The problem is, I can ask a question but can't always understand the answer.

But if I were living there full-time I would definitely learn as much Thai as possible. It would drive me crazy not being able to read signs or having to stick to the touristy areas where English may be understood.

I think the best way to learn a foreign language is to make friends with people who do not want to use you to improve their English.

I was thrown to the wolves at the age of 13 when I was put into a Japanese high school where nobody spoke English - including the English teacher! - and it was a case of sink or swim. Lucky for me, spoken Japanese is relatively simple, especially when compared to European languages with their verb conjugations and complicated tenses. It's the non-verbal cues you need to be able to pick up on, being able to constantly read between the lines, plus deciding which level of politeness to use that are difficult. I'm an expert at reading body language, thanks to my years of practice.

The written language is a whole different ballgame and I had to learn all the Chinese characters in 1 year instead of over 6 just to catch up and be able to read the text books. I've got a fairly good memory so I was able to do it but it was a hard slog, that's for sure. I have enormous respect for students in Taiwan who have to learn 7200(!) characters - and they write the traditional complicated characters, not the mainland Chinese simplified ones.

Thai tones put many people off learning the language, but so does the Thai attitude that farang will never be able to learn it because it is too hard. Anyone willing to persevere can eventually master any language.

It's just that it is way easier to give up.

[Marc K]

An English friend, who has never made the slightest attempt to learn Thai despite living here for over twenty years, does not let this inconvenient fact stop him from pontificating about the language and he insists that Thais speak too quickly to use the tones themselves.

I have just never understood this phenomenon. I've heard all the excuses ("it is not easy" -- so what?), "Thais should learn English" -- their culture is based in their language and religion, "I've tried but failed" -- well try again, no disgrace in that).

And yes, sorry for seeming racist, but it does seem it's the English who suffer this fate the most. Even though they have a slim 20km channel separating them from another linguistic world, not to mention Scottish speakers, Welsh speakers and others in their own land) they make no attempt to understand that learning another language is a way for us to break out of our native culture and try to understand the world outside us.

Of course the fortnighters have bigger things on their mind (like "lust"!) but long-timers who see no value in attempting at least a kindergarten vocabulary in Thai are really truly missing out.

And if you ever visit my home in Hawaii I do hope you will learn at least a few more words in Hawaiian than the tourist industry teaches you. There is far more beyond "aloha" and "mahalo" as there is beyond "sawasdee krub" and "kawp koon krub".

[StevieWonders]

Of course the fortnighters have bigger things on their mind (like "lust"!) but long-timers who see no value in attempting at least a kindergarten vocabulary in Thai are really truly missing out.

Missing out on what, exactly? They have no literature, no science and their “Buddhism” is thinly disguised animism, as corrupt as late medieval Catholicism in Europe. As for politics ...