Getting that kind of thing right takes a lot of work; mostly I'm happy to be able to communicate, but I was wondering…what do you think the chances are of anyone reaching a similar level of functional ability in 8 weeks?

your thai is functional, understandable but far from acceptable in written form….

but congrats…. you have mastered the basic already….

am interestingly awaiting your first post.

wish you best of luck.

just when can we expect you in thailand?

I've been living on Koh Lanta for 2 months & I've got maybe 20 words of Thai- just when I thought I'd got the hang of a word & I'd use it to Thai people they'd giggle at me and not have a clue what I'd said! I can at least order my favourite Thai meals without using English, which is a good thing.

Despite not having any Thai the local shop keepers (Fried Chicken stall lady, Fruit Man & Lady, & cafe owner) They've been friendly & warm & I say hello (in Thai) everyday & they've given me free things- usually offerings of food- fruit, Thai biscuits etc.

I attempted to learn how to say Sticky Rice- one of my favourites- sweet or savoury but I was told that the way I was saying it meant holding on, rather than sticky- and my ears couldn't tell the difference between the 2 ways of saying the words!

A friend of mine, someone I met while here came to study Thai- she was in Thai school for 5 hours a day & 2 hours of homework each day for 6 weeks still couldn't get the Thai waiters to understand her pronunciation when tested out her newly learned Thai (She is a language teacher back home in Holland)

have fun & I wish you good luck- you may need it

I have been in Thailand for less than 6 months (and I knew about 2 words when I came here last July) so I’m still quite a functional beginner when it comes to speak, however, I am fully literate. Other foreigners who speak fluent or near-fluent Thai are quite astoundished to see that I’m able to read signs and menus and write texts on my own, but in fact I am more puzzled by the fact that some of them have lived in Thailand for decades, speak the language at an academic level and master 2-3 regional dialects, but still can’t read. It is the exact same thing as living in the USA or wherever and being illiterate.

A good thing you can do for learning and practice: the thai alphabet covers quite an extensive number of phonems and thus, English can be “thaïized” with the pronunciation not being too far (even though it doesn’t kill the accent). A lot of Thais, especially those working in the tourist industry and who haven’t been much educated (quintessential exemples: bar girls from poor Issan families who can converse and understand English confidently while you’d have to torture upper-middle-class University English majors to speak it outside of the classroom) learn English phrases with little phrasebooks where everything is written in the Thai script.
“How are you today” ฮอวาร์ยูทุเด
“Good morning” กุดมอร์นิง
“You handsome man. Boom boom 1000 baht” ยุแฮนสอมแมน บุมๆวนเตาแสนบาท

Then, you can get yourself one of these little guys (should be around 40 baht for a photocopied one) and incorporate it in your routine. At first you are going to read slowly “hao… hawawr… you too dé… OH! How are you today!” Then, when you are confident with your ability to read and reproduce sounds tone-less, you can ditch this and move on to actual Thai dialogues, because you don’t want to develop bad habits or get limited (this translitteration doesn’t consider the tones, and the vowels exclusive to Thai).

And about the tones, they are important for sure, but not super-crucial. Just like the French or German grammar, they are an integral part of the language and shouldn’t be overlooked, but learners focusing solely on it will never progress because they will get stuck on minor points instead of going out there and try. Every damn phrasebook bring those smartass examples of words having five different meanings depending on the tone and it is true for isolated words, but when it comes to sentences, the context will point it out 99% of the time. In thai, sao can mean girl, or twenty, or other things that are never used in every day situations. If you say your age using sao, no matter what tone you pronounce everybody will understand you mean twenty, unless they are dumbasses trying to play snobby smart. Every dialect changes the tones, and furthermore, when Thais (or the Chinese) sing, the tones go quickly and far out of the window and the context itself points out the meaning. Morale of the story, focus on the good consonant and vowel pronunciation before getting all crazy with the tones.

So yeah, here is my advice (don’t know if I’m qualified to give any, but hey) I get quite passionnate about languages as well and could write on for hours. Best of success with your challenge, it is ambitious but far from being impossible. I’ll follow your progress, as well as the rest of your site that I have just recently discovered.

Cheers!

- Félix

I have been in Thailand for less than 6 months (and I knew about 2 words when I came here last July) so I’m still quite a functional beginner when it comes to speak, however, I am fully literate. Other foreigners who speak fluent or near-fluent Thai are quite astoundished to see that I’m able to read signs and menus and write texts on my own, but in fact I am more puzzled by the fact that some of them have lived in Thailand for decades, speak the language at an academic level and master 2-3 regional dialects, but still can’t read. It is the exact same thing as living in the USA or wherever and being illiterate.

A good thing you can do for learning and practice: the thai alphabet covers quite an extensive number of phonems and thus, English can be “thaïized” with the pronunciation not being too far (even though it doesn’t kill the accent). A lot of Thais, especially those working in the tourist industry and who haven’t been much educated (quintessential exemples: bar girls from poor Issan families who can converse and understand English confidently while you’d have to torture upper-middle-class University English majors to speak it outside of the classroom) learn English phrases with little phrasebooks where everything is written in the Thai script.
“How are you today” ฮอวาร์ยูทุเด
“Good morning” กุดมอร์นิง
“You handsome man. Boom boom 1000 baht” ยุแฮนสอมแมน บุมๆวนเตาแสนบาท

Then, you can get yourself one of these little guys (should be around 40 baht for a photocopied one) and incorporate it in your routine. At first you are going to read slowly “hao… hawawr… you too dé… OH! How are you today!” Then, when you are confident with your ability to read and reproduce sounds tone-less, you can ditch this and move on to actual Thai dialogues, because you don’t want to develop bad habits or get limited (this translitteration doesn’t consider the tones, and the vowels exclusive to Thai).

And about the tones, they are important for sure, but not super-crucial. Just like the French or German grammar, they are an integral part of the language and shouldn’t be overlooked, but learners focusing solely on it will never progress because they will get stuck on minor points instead of going out there and try. Every damn phrasebook bring those smartass examples of words having five different meanings depending on the tone and it is true for isolated words, but when it comes to sentences, the context will point it out 99% of the time. In thai, sao can mean girl, or twenty, or other things that are never used in every day situations. If you say your age using sao, no matter what tone you pronounce everybody will understand you mean twenty, unless they are dumbasses trying to play snobby smart. Every dialect changes the tones, and furthermore, when Thais (or the Chinese) sing, the tones go quickly and far out of the window and the context itself points out the meaning. Morale of the story, focus on the good consonant and vowel pronunciation before getting all crazy with the tones.

So yeah, here is my advice (don’t know if I’m qualified to give any, but hey) I get quite passionnate about languages as well and could write on for hours. Best of success with your challenge, it is ambitious but far from being impossible. I’ll follow your progress, as well as the rest of your site that I have just recently discovered.

Cheers!

- Félix

I am Buskorn and from Thailand and if you have any questions on Thai, please feel free to drop me a line. My husband is German and he now speaks Thai pretty good but especially the five tones that you mention are quite tough to learn (and even after 6 years he has difficulties with it -but maybe you have more talent .

We also share your passion for language learning and we are currently developing an online language learning platform for Asian languages. It is completely free to use and we have now 40 Thai lessons online.

http://www.l-lingo.com/en/learn-thai/index.html

If you like our site and would like to get more background information, e.g. about features currently under development (e.g. grammar notes, explanation of the Thai letters etc.) please feel free to drop me a line.

1. There are 44 initial consonants (2 obsolete) but the truth is that less that half of them are used 99% of the time. By paying attention to this right off the bat, it may speed up the process. Unfortunately, all 32 vowels are used pretty much all of the time.

2. When attempting to be understood by non-English speaking Thais, the length of the vowel in Thai words is as important as the tone. Too short or too long and they'll hear it as a different word.

3. When learning, avoid the temptation to associate the way a Thai consonant or vowel looks with the way an English one does. For example, the Thai ท does look like an English “n”, but is pronounced like a “t”. Trust me, you will eventually have to unlearn the inclination to pronounce it like the English “n”.

4. You'll have to do it at first, but stop writing and reading Thai words phonetically in English as soon as possible. Once you learn the language, you'll realize just how limited English is in getting the correct pronunciation across. BTW, the reverse is also true.

5. The hardest part in forming sentences is thinking like a Thai. Adjectives come after nouns. There are no articles. Nouns have numerical classifiers instead of just adding an “s” to make them plural, etc.

Good luck!

2.

ขอโทษผมลืมว่าคุณแบนนี่ต้องการเลิกคุยภาษาอังกฤษเลย เพราะฉะนั้น softwater ควรจะลงพิมพ์ภาษาไทยภาษาอย่างเดียว แล้วโชคดีอีกแล้วนะครับ

If the words before the brackets like this อย่างนี่ (yahng-nee – low + high tone = 'like this) come out as asci garble, you 'll need to download and install thai fonts on your computer. Worth doing, if you haven't done it already.

Good luck

(sorry, I posted this before but on the wrong page!)