learn thai

Im moving to thailand to teach English. Given I dont need to know thai to do this…but i think it’ll make my stay there much more meaningful if i knew the language before hand. I have 1 months! any suggestions???

The subject line show how many letters are in the Thai alphabet. Well, only the consonants count in the actual alphabet. I have this book called “Easy Thai: An Introduction to the Thai Language” and so far it’s been pretty helpful. I’ve just started learning the low-class consonants and some vowels. The book has started putting some words together using only the letters I should know.

I think I’m off to a great start by learning how to read Thai and eventually speak it.

รุ่งนภา

means sky of dawn

i try my best to speak thai to my mom but i know i have such a long way to go. I can only understand basic thai and when i try to reply i totally suck. :( anyway, its best to learn your mother tongue so you have an advantage.

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”.

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.