I will have weekly lessons instructing basic Thai every week. For those of you whom are already in the intermediate stages of Thai, these lessons might be too easy for you. For those of you whom want to increase your odds at GFE sessions, speaking Thai will help you.

Starting tomorrow, I will have weekly Thai lessons along with a few naughty expressions you might find interesting. For those of you whom want to study independantly, I recommend you buy many of the book/tape series available at Bookazine and DK books in BKK and Pattaya. The products are cheaper in Thailand and there is more variety. You can also order "Beginning Thai" and "Thai for Lovers" at Amazon.com. I also recommend lonely planet's Phrase guide which is small and covers the basics.

Blazers and/or others,

I was hunting around for information about learning a little Thai and I stumbled upon this thread from way back when. I am guessing for whatever reasons that it did not get going. I am making a first LOS trip in a few weeks and had started trying to pick up enough Thai that I could at least show the locals that I was willing to make an effort.

I had bought the two books that are mentioned here and am going through "Thai for Beginners". I speak fair Spanish and a little Portuguese. I have been through the learning a new language effort before. After a few days of reading Thai for beginners and listening to the first tape in the car, I am intimidated.

The problem that I had with Spanish that I eventually got past with a lot of hard work is that I basically do not have a good ear. It is just not a natural strength of mine. This is making it tough to get going with a tonal language. When the author does the five flavors of maa on the tape, they sound pretty much the same to me.

Any suggestions from anyone who has fought this battle ? I am unlikely to become a serious student of Thai, but was looking for a few tips to better enjoy my trip there.

tia,
G

Why I gave up learning Thai.

On my first trip to Thailand I picked up the only phrase book I could find. To say this book was bad would be an understatement (example phrase: "Someone has stolen my shoes"), but I figured I could pick up a few words.

On my second trip I would be meeting up with a pal who married a Thai girl, so I decided to practice one phrase and do it well. The one I selected was "Good night." I chose it because it was really easy to remember. Rot tree sawat. I just had to picture a rotting tree and add sawat at the end. I was very pleased with myself.

At the end of the evening, I thanked my host and hostess adding "Rot tree sawat!" She looked at me perplexed. I repeated the phrase. She crinkled her nose and looked at me again. "Rot," I said carefully, "tree," and "sawat." She looked at her husband for support while I dug out the phrase book. I looked up the phase and showed her the book.

"Oh," she giggled, "you mean 'rot TREE sawat'!" I didn't emphasize the 'tree' so she had no idea what I was saying.

After that, I went back to pantomime. While I might not make myself clear, I can at least amuse the locals.

That's funny, kind of like what happened to Xen and I in our joint Thailand report when we were telling girls we were going to Pattaya. We were saying PA-ta-ya (emphasis on first syllable as it appears phoenetically to us) We thought they were clueless when they couldn't understand what we were saying.

It was probably a full couple minutes that passed of us repeating and trying to describe the place before they said "Oh! pa-ta-YA (emphasis on last syllable) We couldn't believe it.

Wombat88 That is exactly what I have experienced. Now I do not say anything until I have a native speaker sign off on my pronunciation. The difference between "ride in a bus" and "shit in a bus" is only the tone with which you say it. I know for myself I could not possibly learn the language without a native speaker to correct me. I have taken wav. files of words and practiced again and again a word until I thought I had it perfect only to get that perplexed look. Then once they figure out what I was trying to say they repeat back to me something that sounds to me exactly the same as what I just said but they inform me that is the correct way. Eventually with many attempts I hit it close enough. It is a difficult language for me. To make it worse, allot of Thai (or in my case Lao) are very polite. I say something and mangle it. Once they figure out what I was trying to say they sometimes learn "my way" of saying it rather than correct me and have me learn the proper way. They just (without saying so) will accept a pronunciation that no normal Lao would understand and think to themselves, "well, that's just how he says that, I know what he meant". Phrase books and language tapes may be useful but there is no substitute for having a native speaker to monitor your progress.

Thai's are very pompous about their language. When Thais speak their horrid English laced with multiple grammatical erros, I just shrug it off and deal with it...they don't. It's been a bitch of mine for a while. I was lucky in that I learned Thai from Isaan monks and they speak a dialect similar to the bargirls so my pronunciation is pretty much spot on. I would suggest getting a long-haired dictionary for your trip and have her help you out. The only dark side to learning Thai is that you find out how racist and ethnocentric Thais really are and what they really think of falang. One time a Thai guy was sitting on a motorbike and started spouting out shit about how the girls only marry falang because of money and their big dicks. I immediately replied(in Thai) that Thai men were the ugliest men on the planet and were damn lucky to have so many women stay with them despite this deformity..I then went on to say that a fat, old falang is still better looking than a young Thai man...this put all of the motorbike dudes in shock and they started howling in laughter after that...I thought they might kill me after the true venom I was spouting at them. Don't worry about the tones dude...only living in Thailand for years will get your tones down.

The Lao girls never give me any trouble when I butcher there language. But then even the Lao claim Thai's are very pompous so maybe Thai's are different. I don't think I will ever learn Thai or Lao even if I try. I figure because of my work environment that here in good ol' USA probably 60% of all the spoken words I hear in an average week is in Lao yet even after a few years of this I understand little of what they say. One thing I can say in Lao that I got allot of mileage out of is "I understand you". Whenever I think they are talking about me I tell them, in Lao, that I understand what they said. At first I got some really priceless reactions but very quickly they figured out I was bluffing.

Blazers, that's funny stuff lol.

I don't know about you guys, but sometimes Thai girls' voice and sweet talk kills me. That's why I hardly call them because when I do, and they start with the 'come back to Thailand tomorrow',' or 'I wait for you', I want to book my flight the next day. That very gentle way they talk, sometimes with or without a slightly raspy voice, sometimes a bit childlike, just reminds me of the good times I had in LOS.

-DJ

Sancho, your work place does seem to be very lively. 60% of words you hear is in Lao lol. In Thailand, the Thais do seem look down slightly on the Laotians. Some hi end club girl partying at my apartment kept cracking up saying my face looks like I'm from Laos. And I thought the Thai girls like my looks. I can't tell the difference between a Laotian and a Thai though.

One time I went to a Thai restaurant with 3 of the Lao ladies her for lunch. after the waitress took our orders and left the Lao ladies told me, "She is Thai, You can tell by the way she talks because real Thai speak very beautifully and polite." Then the Lao girl then grinned and said "Not loud and rude like Lao" and they laughed. The Lao think the Thai's are stuck up but they do appreciate Thai culture and agree that Thais speak with a very beautiful voice. They have made that comment a few times. All Lao understand Thai and most can speak it but most Thai can neither speak nor understand Lao.

As for my work place. I often work almost 70 hours a week lately and much of my time off I spend in Mexico. I am totally surrounded by these Lao ladies. There is one in my office and about 8 of them outside my door plus some Lao guys out in the machine shop. The ladies gossip in Lao all day long so that is most of what I hear. There is also a Mexican guy in the office. His buddies come in and all speak Spanish. I figure in an average week probably 15% of all words I hear are in English, 25% Spanish, 60% Lao. When I went to Thailand it often felt more like America to me than America does. I should try harder to learn Lao. I know the ladies are gossiping and often are talking very nasty "girl talk". It drives me crazy when I know they are talking dirty and I can't understand them.

Talking about voice, you guys should hear Thai girls sing. My first Thai GF(aka Kelly Hu) was a singer and when she sang I almost cried. She sounded identical to some Thai pop stars. Maybe I shoulda married her

-DJ

Anyone used the Pimsleur Language Program? I picked up the first lesson to see if I can manage it. It's taken me three days to get half way through the ~20min session. The problem is that I forget the words/sounds seconds after practicing them. It would really help if I had a learning aid with the words and their translation.

Regarding my August 18th post, correct me if I'm wrong, but someone told me the word 'Lao' in Thai means handsome.

-DJ

Not Lao...Loh. I would put the characters in Thai but cannot do so with this keyboard...tough to write exactly how it's pronounced but make sure the O is carried out a bit

Thanks Blazers. I'm sure they said loh because when I said Lao they cracked up big time. Model girl was saying to cutie girl(my temp GF) in Thai I look loh and I caught her saying that. I'm going on some trips soon(secret).

(Damn Blazers' been doing multiple trips)

BTW The word "Loh" means the same in Lao as it does in Thai. I don't know if the pronunciation is exactly the same but it is more or less the same word.

I was screwing around on torrentspy the other day and ran across a torrent for 30 Pimsleur Thai lessons. So I thought, what the hell, I will probably go to Thailand one day so I might as well download them. I did. They are in MP3 format and work perfectly. Now I just have to get the gumption to actually start listening to them. Would planning a trip to Thailand give me a reason?

For legal reasons (remember the RIAA targets illegal downloaders), I will not post the website link to the torrent to keep Hombre safe. Suffice it to say that with the information I gave you above and Google, you should be able to find this for yourself.

EA

For those of you in Thailand looking for another option, You can get the complete set of all 30 or so languages available by the Rosetta Stone in some of the IT malls in Bangkok (I got mine in a shop at Fortune Plaza on Ratchada), typically spread out over 2 DVD's for less than $10. Given that they sell for $200 for each language course, it's not a bad deal. Of course, it's bootleg software, and the books aren't included. but beats downloading from the internet for hours.

I've seen lots of Rosetta Stone packages. They make some bold claims about how easy it is to learn, but has anyone tried it? I'd be interested in finding out what you thought about it.

The Pimsleur is good for learning a couple expressions for tourists. Rosetta Stone is good if you want to learn for the long hall as far as pronunciation is concerned. The problem with these CD's is that they jump right into the language without having you understand grammar and pronunciation.

The best book for learning Thai is James Higbie's "Essential Thai". All languages are based in verbs and once you learn 15-20 major verbs and the basic pronouns, you can start memorizing vocabulary and how to ask and answer questions. For pronunciation there is a CD called "Improving your Thai Pronunciation" by Benjawan Becker. You can buy it in most book stores in Thailand for about 300 baht.

I had a Rosetta Stone Spanish course. Great for things - as they do the picture/word association. However I thought it sucked for verbs and more abstract concepts - oft times I couldn't figure out what they were talking about. Maybe it's gotten better since then?

Pimsleur works for me. 30 minute lessons, and I have a 30 minute commute. I can do a lesson twice in a day. I'm finding Thai quite a challenge - with pronunciations/sounds that simply don't exist in English, and words that have absolutely nothing in common with western languages. So far I'm up to lesson 19. Problem with Pimsleur is that 30 lessons won't take you too far - only to a *very* basic level - maybe 300 words or so (but lots of useful words at least). It's a shame Becker doesn't get together with Simon and Schuster to do some Pimsleur Thai courses. That would be awesome.

As for learning Thai from a book - I just don't see it happening. Great for vocabulary maybe - *if* you can read and pronounce Thai script. Otherwise you'll never get the pronunciation from a book.

Rosetta Stone was helpful for me, but I am in Thailand half the time, and when I'm not there, I often have my Thai gf traveling with me, so it's not my sole source of "thai language assistance". "Essential Thai" just wasn't as easy for me to get into, but that could be a purely personal preference.