learn thai

I definitely learn better with face-to-face practice. I have some basic phrases down thanks to traveling and language lessons on CD (“Where is the bathroom?”, “I don’t understand Thai”, “How much is this?”, etc). However, I still can’t have a conversation with my family. There are so many things I’d love to know that I wouldn’t be able to do without learning Thai myself. Today, I hunted around online for a Thai language class in my area in the hopes of gaining some human interaction to correct my pronunciation and practice conversations with. I found a temple about 30 miles away, whose website is outdated and e-mail address doesn’t work. Next. Then, I found something called Thai Language Center in my city, but their website did not work and no one answered the phone number. Either way, I left a message so hopefully someone gets back to me with good news about an adult Thai language class (that fits in my schedule and isn’t overly expensive). Wish me luck!

I know it seems like I have given up on learning Thai. I mean, what else could you think of a person who hasn’t listened to her Thai language CD’s in well over a year. Anyway, I have decided to start all over again beginning with Lesson One. I am now only driving my car twice a week, but it’s a long enough drive for me to just finish a lesson. Thus far, I am on Lesson Four and am moving through the lessons slowly and repeating them as necessary. I’m actually finding that I really understand the speakers during the conversations at the beginning.

PS-The subject says “I understand Thai a little, but not so very well”.

Soooo, a while back I picked up the Pimsleur Thai language cd’s so that I could start learning. My major problem was that I didn’t really commute for a consecutive half hour so that I could complete an entire lesson in one sitting. Anyway, I’ve started listening to the cd’s on my twenty minute commute to see how it works out and I think it’s going pretty great so far. I’m on lesson two. Granted, I’ve been listening to lessons one and two over and over again, but that’s because I want to have it down before I move on to the next lesson. I don’t know if I have the phonetic spelling my subject right, but it means (for a woman) “I understand the Thai language a little bit” :)

I’m half Thai and went to Thailand for the first time in my life about a year ago (not including the time I was out there at the age of four). Little did I know that I have a half brother (and a ton of other family members) that I’ve never met before….all of whom speak very very little to no English. I spent two weeks playing charades and trying to learn the little things about these people: how old they were, did they have kids, etc. I’d like to learn Thai so that I can actually go back again some day and communicate without pointing at every page in my translation book. I’d like to learn Thai, so I can learn more about myself.