learn thai

Since I’m half Thai…I need to learn the language already! =P

Right now when you walk around my house there are post-it notes everywhere with Thai words written on them attached to the relevant items, so I can start filling my awareness on a regular basis.

Next I think I’ll expand them out a bit to include a phrase as well, and start adding one or two every day.

I am struggling getting into my Audio Lessons though, I think because the accent and some of the pronunciation is very different to what I have encountered before in Thailand. But maybe I wasn’t listening closely enough and no one corrected me when I was wrong. (I only used a couple of phrases after all)

And I haven’t even started to address the actual lettering (Which looks like this: กัวเตมาลา ), I can’t even figure out how to write the individual characters, let alone attach meaning to them, so I need to do a bit of research into methodologies for picking up new reading languages.

Didn’t learn as much thai as i’d have liked.. basically used “hello” and “thankyou” the most, and had a basic idea of some touristy things..
Everyone speaks such good english over there anyway!

Im living in thailand now, and I need to learn more thai! I am picking up phrases here and there, but it seems insurmountable with all the tones and new alphabet… necessity breeds improvement… it worked for my french..

This is also something in the works . . used to speak thai when i was itty bitty, but when my mom passed away, it was hard to get motivated (still is). But I want to honor the other half of me, so I will try again.

this picture was taken in Multimedia University on Songkran(water festival) Day 2008.

from left-right : jaswant, jerry, jason, kit, michelle(me!), chyi and faizul

finally i have finished my thai lessons with aajan(teacher) Benjamas. gosh, wasn’t easy squeezing a whole load of Thai language in me within 4 months. but during this period i have learnt alot from my Thai lecturer. she is so dedicated that she even brought Thai traditional costume to class for us to play dress up. and on the last day of class she cooked tom yam kung for all of us!!!! how cool!

Not only she taught me about spoken Thai, writing, intonations, traditions and culture, she really helped me out on my life. she is really kind and she is a friend that i don’t want to loose.

so much fun learning thai (although i did struggle to remember all 44 alphabets and all the vowels). now i can read write and speak!!! (not too fluent though)

will update again on this another. but for now, this goal is DONE!

I’m an intermediate Thai speaker now, after taking classes in Thailand part-time for a year or so. The problem is that I’m not staying there all the time so I lose the momentum. Looking forward to getting back to Bangkok next month (June 2008) to continue studies at AUA. My strategy right now is to concentrate on reading/writing while back in farangland and concentrate on listening/speaking while in the Kingdom.

i have now mastered half of the thai alphabet :D

After spending two weeks in Thailand as a tourist, and learning only 3 phrases for Hello, Thank You and Cool, when I go back for a serious amount of time at the end of the year, I really want to know a lot more of the language.

A lot of my travel buddies are thinking the same, so we will be able to practice with each other fairly easily, though speaking it shouldn’t be a problem, writing it might be more tricky since the characters are so different to anything I’m used to looking at.

Not sure if I’ll be able to get to a conversational level as I’ve never been good at languages, but I should be able to get to a practical level where I can go shopping and order food easily.