Xylanic's story of how he has learned Thai...or, a beginner's course work and tools for self learning-How you can learn too

[Xylanic]

Hi Guys.

 

So I'm often asked in person and in trip reports how I have learned the Thai language, especially when fellow board members and mongers see me carrying on conversations with the bar girls in Thai. For that matter, all the girls seem to think I have or had a Thai girlfriend who I learned from-I don't. I'm at a conversational level after about a year now and continue practice and daily work in my quest for eventual fluency in a few years. I have not gone to school nor do I have a regular teacher. I have spoken quite a bit to fluent speakers and I'll get to that in a few minutes. I wanted to post a topic with all the tools I have used, my personal review on those tools and provide a roadmap for those who also want to learn Thai. My purpose is to help those of you who want a roadmap to self learning and what worked for me.

 

As a note, what worked for me may not work for you. Additionally, I average an hour a day and often three hours studying which is how I managed to become conversational in a year. Thai, especially for English speakers, is not an easy language to learn due to it's simplicity in grammar rules, tones and classifiers. I strongly believe you can learn Thai yourself without paying for a school or expensive teacher but you must have a variety of resources to choose from. Of course, the easiest way is constant immersion in Thailand but I live in the states and only go to Thailand four times a year . To Learn Thai and truly be even somewhat conversational, you will have to devote a significant amount of time to it. It's not something you can just once in a great while memorize some words and be good to go. I'd say it took around 300 hours or so of studying and practice to become comfortable with a lot of the basics and somewhat conversational. Doesn't sound like you have the time for that? I'd suggest not attempting to learn. Everyone learns differently and some people learn faster but in speaking to others, 300 hours to begin to understand quite a bit is about the norm, add a hundred or so hours here and there.

 

Last April of 2011, I returned from my fourth trip to Thailand and for some reason was fed up with only knowing how to say Mai Ow Krap (No thanks.) Literally, after four prior trips of two weeks average and a year of constant presence on this forum those were the only words I knew. I also had no idea what the words meant alone, I had just been instructed to say it to vendors and it worked beautifully. Haha. I was determined to learn Thai and be able to understand what the girls were saying and have deeper conversations with Thai people. I was tired of not being able to communicate with a Som Tam vendor or ask what certain products were. I was tired of being overcharged in gogos and thought (which turned out right) that talking in Thai would improve my chances of not being ripped off. I was tired of not being able to actually talk to the girls and thought that learning Thai would allow me to build deeper friendships(Turned out half right). I thought that learning Thai would improve my chances of haggling correctly in Thai establishments and being able to use Thai places where all the staff spoke only Thai (Was correct.)

 

I will grade every tool on a scale of 1-10, 1 being horrible overall, 10 being incredible.

 

The first thing I did was get a copy of Rosetta Stone for Thai as they have a great marketing campaign and I had used it for Spanish in the past and enjoyed it.

 

Rosetta Stone is horrible for beginners for Thai. In fact, they have mostly stopped selling it as it seemed they finally agreed. It teaches no grammar and no tones and has no explanations. This works for something like Spanish or German, a non tonal language, but not for Thai. It also has mostly only Thai script and with no trans literations which for a newbie is needed IMO. I tried to use it for a while but gave up as I had no idea what was happening. For a newbie, the tool is about a 2, completely useless. However, I returned to it six months later after using other tools to see how much I knew and learned some from it and completed the whole course. I believe that Rosetta Stone is a good complimentary tool for someone who is out of the true newbie phase and wants to hear sentences and speeches. The speakers on Rosetta Stone are VERY Fast as well, true fluency, and speak so fast in fact that you can rarely understand them, especially the male speaker. This is ok when you have learned a decent amount of the language and want to hear yourself catching words and meanings at a true Thai speed, but for newbies, it's useless. It also doesn't teach anything that's very useful or interesting for regular speech.

 

Rosetta Stone for Newbies: 2 out of 10. For a beginner with a base knowledge learning more: 5 out of 10.

 

Next I signed up for Its4thai.com, which is very cheap and easy to use. It has a great tracking tool that tracks your stats and how many words you have learned and how often you log in. If you are gone for a while, it tells you words you have not seen in thirty days to test your memory. It has great sentence learning drills and word drills and was a great base source for my early learning. I spent from May to September mostly on its4thai, completing the course overall which will take many, many hours for most people. In September, I had a good base vocabulary for my trip that month but still had some issues.

 

Its4thai will improve your basic vocabulary a ton and improve your vocabulary but the grammar it teaches is basic and the teachers speak slow, not a natural pace. You may learn the words but it will be difficult to hear those words from a normal Thai speaker. Most of the words it teaches, however, are very useful and common words you will hear often. There are some words it teaches that are formal words that it presents as the normal use of a word, such as Poo^ak kow for they, which is rarely used compared to Kow which can confuse beginners. This being said, Its4thai was a great base source and when I returned to Rosetta Stone, helped me understand most of what was being said. However, I was still pretty clueless in speaking anything deep on my September trip. However, I purchased quite a few books in September to further my training.

 

Its4thai-7 out of 10. A great start for a newbie building vocab.

 

When I returned in October, I had finished Its4thai, purchased quite a few books and started serious training and multi use of tools. Here's a run down of tools I used from October to my next trip this January:

 

-Speak Thai Volume 1 and 2 books by Richard Charles, orderable at Learnspeakthai.com Comes with CD's with hours of content and spoken content that compliment the books. These are excellent and there is also a Speak Issan Thai book that helps you with basic Issan and differences. The books are well written and truly helped me a ton. 7 out of 10. The videos have some great pictures that go with the words and sentences. The speakers still tend to speak a bit slow. They also have a ton of great cultural facts. The Issan books are especially valuable.

 

-Thai Language Hostess for Android-Hot chicks speaking Thai words. No grammar lessons but natural speakers in hot outfits speaking words. Great vocab practice. I run through this on lunch breaks on my smart phone to ensure I still know and recognize the words. 5 out of 10, strictly a vocab trainer. It's also free!

 

-Learn Thai Pro for Android-Cost me about five bucks, theres also a free version which is decent. Contains mostly phrases and useful common words. This is also a lunch break tool and a way to see how much you know. Very valuable for phrase training and understanding. 6 out of 10. Most of the material in this is very useful.

 

-Complete Thai-David Smyth-Probably the most useful book I've had. A massive tome and very textbookish but laid out very well from a professional teacher. This is the single most useful tome for learning to read Thai I've had. I learned to read in about two weeks of steady practice. Great for teaching the basics to an intermediate level. The biggest value here is learning to read. 8 out 10.

 

-Learn Thai Podcast-This is the big one, for me. For true beginners, it's confusing, due to the massive amount of material here. However, I had finished the books listed above and was using the android apps daily. I had recently refinished Rosetta Stone and aced Its4thai and was moving on. Learn Thai podcast is the biggest resource out there, especially once you start to learn how to really use the vocab trainer and how to structure the material to fit yourself. The grammar and explanations of why things are the way they are is the reason this is so valuable. I warn you...It's not for newbies despite the fact it says it is and is intimidating by the amount of material. However, with a strong base, it's invaluable and the intermediate and Advanced material is VERY valuable. 9 out of 10. My personal favorite tool. If you want to truly understand the grammar and classifiers, this is the best tool. Warning: It's expensive. About 200 bucks US. Worth the price IMO. Website: http://learn-thai-podcast.com/

 

I also improved my reading by reading the Manee books. These are books that have been around for a long, long time but it's how most current Thai adults learned to read Thai. This is a direct link to the stories. They are about as exciting as paint drying but laid out very well and teaches reading Thai well. Combined with Complete Thai it's a great tool. Here's a link to an interactive version of the books for free http://www.learningt...om/books/manee/

 

I had my trip in January and was speaking Thai to everyone. I made some errors but was understood 95% of the time. I found some women really disliked me knowing Thai. I found some loved it. The one thing that is a huge caution is that if you speak Thai, it's quite clear you are NOT a newbie. Some women love this, some don't. On the plus side, it doesn't make you an easy target and most of the girls know that you are unlikely to be a longterm boyfriend or sponsor if you speak Thai. I made a lot of friends who I speak to still, mainly due to being a falang who speaks Thai. I also found that 90% of what the girls talk about is NOT their customers or men walking by. Usually, it's shoes, celebrities, clothes, what they ate for lunch, Thai music and bills. The same as most 18-26 year old women world round. Believe it or not, they rarely talk about men or talk bad about customers unless the guy was actually an asshole. I was surprised at how much I understood and knew.

 

I came back home sick in January but was determined to resume my studying. My reading sucked and still does so I focused heavily on this, retaking Its4thai but in Thai instead of the english trans literation to identify words. I also had some new materials. Here's a run down:

 

-Thai for Beginners by Benjawan Poomsan Becker-The most popular Thai book. I had finished everything above before reading this so it was pretty basic to me. Laid out well but I felt the material was a bit dated at points and Complete Thai was much better for learning to read Thai. Still, it's very useful to study and work through and written well. The intermediate book requires a solid ability to read Thai. 7 out of 10, very useful.

 

-Pimsluer-Picked up a free copy of Pimsluer and ran through the course in two days. At this point, was very easy and simple. Pimsluer does not teach much, about 300 words and is very simple. It teaches based on continuous learning but it doesn't truly give you a great base or base with the tones at all. It also doesn't teach anything that is used often. I felt this was similar to Rosetta Stone...heavily hyped but not a tool for serious learning. 5 out of 10. A good refresher course for an early intermediate learner.

 

Thai-Language.com-A great free resource but missing a lot and very, very basic. Good for those with no money and base learning. 6 out of 10.

 

Learning-Thai.com-Also a free resource, not as useful as Thai-Language. 5 out of 10.

 

Thai Language Wiki-http://thailanguagew...?title=Lesson_1 Incredible refresher and resource with tons of ways to learn and it's free. I wish I had discovered this one earlier. This is the course used by the United States Department of Defense for training people to learn basic Thai. Pretty complete but doesn't explain everything and in some areas helps to know basic Thai. Very valuable for sentence structure and grammar. 8 out of 10. For a free resource, it's great. (EDIT: Appears to be down since this original post. Shame. Will keep it here for now in case it comes back up)

 

I have also heavily continued to use Thai Podcast.

 

I returned this April and was speaking and understanding Thai daily with the material above. I was able to hold conversations. Most girls preferred to speak Thai to me at this point as they understood me and I made few mistakes. I no longer was being constantly corrected and have gained girls as good friends due to speaking Thai. Fellow board members were using me to translate daily. I knew a lot more than I thought I did.

 

Post April, last month, I have used the following tools:

 

I continue to use Thai podcast daily. I also refresh with the books and Android Programs.

 

I downloaded this http://www.l-lingo.c...thai/index.html for my Android. Lingo is basically a Rosetta Stone copy, but done much better. It explains grammar and uses more relevant terms and conversations. It's also 15 bucks. It's been a great refresher and speaks both at normal pace and slow pace for learners. It also allows you to see trans literations vs. just Thai script. Skip Rosetta Stone, get this. It is picture oriented and fun and will help you remember and learn. I use this on my phone in down time. 8 out of 10.

 

Lonely Planet Thai Phrasebook-As a compliment to improve your skills and put words together, the LP Phrasebook is very useful. I read it daily. 7 out of 10.

 

English-Thai from Bangkokbooks-Mostly Phrase based, but very useful. 6 out of 10.

 

Memolicious Thai-An android App. If you have not downloaded, you are missing out. This finally put together all the missing pieces for reading. It's a memory game with increasing speed, like Tetris, that teaches you through repitition and high scores the letters, vowels and tones (high, mid, low) to read thai. This will not help speak at all, it's purely designed to read and has finally put me to speed. I would suggest this for a beginner to intermediate reader to get you up to speed. It's awesome and will help you recognize words through a fun format. 9 out of 10.

 

Mods Youtube Videos: Popular and shes also a popular teacher. Easy to find with a simple search but they are also fairly simple. She does a good job at explanations and it's good to hear another natural speaker but it's stuff that is covered in the material above. She does a goodjob at showing modern Thai speech vs. formal and this is a value. She also goes over some slang which is VERY useful. 7 out of 10

 

I've recently caught up with Women Learning Thai and David Smyth's complete grammar, two other major resources, but am too early in them to make a final decision on their worth. I continue to use Thai podcast daily, my android programs and various books.

 

It's been a hell of a journey but I look forward to my increased knowledge in August.

 

As a warning, you will reach a point where it seems like you cannot learn any more and everything is the same. Everyone seems to reach this point of frustration. Truck on through it.

 

Good luck, hope this helps you!

[kiff]

Thanks for the advice mate

[discoman]

Thank you. I have been researching to find a better way to communicate with the TGF.

[JohnnyBravoNL]

Great post, I agree on Rosetta stone, seems to be pretty useless to learn Thai. Did you ever try utalk thai for android? Seems to be a bit basic but decent.

 

I never got to compliment you on your trip reports, very well written and even though I would never party like you do(for instance I don't drink) I find your trip reports very interesting to read. Your evolution from shy first timer to party animal extraordinaire should be mandatory for all board members.

[Bakwan]

WOW!, Xylanic... Great write-up! I've been working on Paasaa Thai for about 2 or 3 years, now. But I haven't had the will-power to keep at it like you have. So I'm nowhere near as far along as you. Also, I've been concentrating more on reading and writing. I keep saying that I'll devote more time to it, and get to at least a minimal conversational level. I find it fascinating and really do enjoy studying Thai. I always take a few one-on-one lessons during each trip to Pattaya (normally four one-month long trips each year). One resource that I find extremely useful is the Thai-English talking dictionary from Paiboon Publishing (www.paiboonpublishing.com).

 

I'd like to meet you (and the Singha is on me). Any chance you'll be in Pattaya in late July or early August? My next trip is planned for 16 July to 14 August) - staying on Soi Buakhao.

 

Bakwan

[Hermes]

Khob khun krap!

[Luv2Phuket]

Great detailed review -- really appreciate the advice!

[Xylanic]

WOW!, Xylanic... Great write-up! I've been working on Paasaa Thai for about 2 or 3 years, now. But I haven't had the will-power to keep at it like you have. So I'm nowhere near as far along as you. Also, I've been concentrating more on reading and writing. I keep saying that I'll devote more time to it, and get to at least a minimal conversational level. I find it fascinating and really do enjoy studying Thai. I always take a few one-on-one lessons during each trip to Pattaya (normally four one-month long trips each year). One resource that I find extremely useful is the Thai-English talking dictionary from Paiboon Publishing (www.paiboonpublishing.com).

 

I'd like to meet you (and the Singha is on me). Any chance you'll be in Pattaya in late July or early August? My next trip is planned for 16 July to 14 August) - staying on Soi Buakhao.

 

Bakwan

 

Still Solidifying dates. August is my next trip, not sure when yet, possibly when you are there. Free Singha is always a plus!

[pattayavirgin]

Thanks for your reviews of the various tools available, very useful

 

PV

[mainframe]

Hi AJ,

 

I was one of those guys who has asked how you have gotten to the level of thai that you were in April. I have to admit i didn't remembered the tips you gave me on that crawl. So I took the expensive route and bought about 35 thai lessons from a chang mai teacher and studied with her 2 times a week. My big problem was improving my vocabolary. I kept forgetten the words i didn't use on a regular basis.

Soon i'll start my lessons with Mod over skype. And i'm sure with this extra information you posted here, i will be a step closer to my goal. Like you, i want to be able to understand what people are talking about and connect on a deeper level. I have tasted a bit of being able to speak basic thai to people and loved it.

 

Thanks very much for the information you posted here and specially for the motivation to continue studying.

 

Cheers,

 

Bas

[fostraswift]

thats a pinned topic if there ever was one..!!

well done

[Lucky Misfit]

Great post, thanks for the summary of resources. I think I might need to invest in Learn Thai Podcast. Sounds like the tool to have as an intermediate learner.

 

I take the same view as you that there is no need for a teacher when learning a language at foundation level. Most of the work you just need to go through yourself. It can be useful however for a teacher to review your progress on in a while.

 

I completely agree with your comments about Rosetta Stone. I think the picture, figuring out format worked well for me for things like colours, numbers etc. I picked these up quickly and are now ingrained in my head. But for actual practical Thai this tool is pointless . Rosetta would be a very useful vocabulary builder for an intermediate learner, only that what it teaches is probably to basic for this audience.

 

I'm currently working through HighSpeedThai which is the best tool I found for the serious beginner/intermediate. The program teaches reading Thai script up front (No transliteration anywhere in the course), before building a vocabulary from 0 - 1,800 words in about 40 lesson. What I really like is the very structured approach with each lesson building on the last, and also the mix of audio (all lessons recorded both fast and slow), drill and reading lessons. It's probably not as fancy as some of the other programs around, but very practical in my opinion. (Xylanic - if your are looking to practice your reading this course contain 9-10 pages of readings at the end of each lesson which you my find useful revision tool. Full audio is provided at a fast pace)

[twistedmike]

Thanks for the structured in depth breakdown of your learning the Thai language.

I myself only became semi serious in wanting to expand my limited Thai over the course of the last year and a half, though not with the devotion you seem to have. Having had the benefit many years ago of living with a Thai girlfriend for five years I was exposed to the language regularly and couldn't help but pick up some of it. Perhaps more importantly is that I learned how a lot of it was supposed to sound. Even not comprehending very much of what was being said this surely served to help me with the proper tones when learning it years later.

 

Some of the Thais I met back then help me now with conversing and correcting me, as well as answering my questions. This has proven to be invaluable in increasing my Thai, and Laotian, language skills.

One thing I realized when traveling within the Kingdom is that my vocabulary is all over the map due to not having had a structured learning process. I know words that usually wouldn't be known by someone without advanced abilities but yet have some fundamental gaps at a more intermediate level. This helps me in some ways but also misleads other native speakers into thinking I know more than I do, which can be quite the double-edged sword indeed.

 

I also have the Pimsluer course and found it useful for a few basic words and some sentence structure which I wasn't clear on. But I felt rather foolish after having bought it only to later find it was available for free from several places. I too found thai-language.com to be a good free reference tool with many audible pronunciations and transliterations often being helpful, but certainly not as a primary learning site. I still utilize it frequently.

I'll definitely add some of the resources you've mentioned into the mix. Thanks again for both sharing them as well as rating them with your opinion of their effectiveness. It's helped me already and likely serves to do the same for others here.

 

On a side note I'd suggest meeting Baakwan given the opportunity. I had the pleasure of doing so last summer and found him to be a real class act and a great guy IMHO.

 

Peace,

TM

[Scott Kevin]

Nice post Xylanic! Here's a few extra things that helped me:

 

Practical Thai Conversation dvd's by Becker- They act out typical tourist scenes: taxi, bank, shopping, etc. The dialogues are a few minutes long and spoken at natural speed. The booklet has the dialogues in Thai and transliteration as well as the English translation and a vocabulary list. I'd start these after completeing Becker's Thai for beginners and Intermediate books.

 

Speak like a Thai volume 1- This booklet and cd has hundreds of very common useful phrases that you won't find elsewhere. Can use right away.

 

Thai Reference Grammar by Higbie and Thinsan. The best grammar book I've found. Good explanations in English and lots of sample Thai sentences. Good for beginners up through advanced.

 

Anki- free spaced repetition software. You create flashcards for vocabulary. If you get them right they review less often, get them wrong and they show up more frequently. Useful for all levels.

 

Websites for conversation practice- There are many available that are free or cost only a few dollars per month. The one I use is http://www.sharedtalk.com. You create a profile and find Thais who want to learn your language. Talk for a while in one language then switch. People can be a bit flaky and it took me several tries to find a good partner but it's worth the effort.

 

This is what I'm doing now to progress from intermediate towards advanced- I bought a bunch of Thai movies that have Thai subtitles then I used a program to extract the subs in a pdf file. I read through a few paragraphs and look up any unknown words then watch the scene in the movie. Knowing what they will say in advance makes it so much easier to listen and understand. When I watch a movie for the first time with no subtitles then I can understand large chunks of it, but when they are talking really fast it just sounds like one long stream of sound. This is the best method I've found for helping to fix that.

 

Bakwan (or Xylanic, or whoever),

I live near Soi Buakow and would like to meet up when you're in town.

[sydney95b]

Great post AJ!

 

I started the Pimsleur course, but didn't finish it... You've motivated me to get my ass back in gear and get educated...

 

See you in August!

 

Cheers matey...

[el_jefe]

Very nice post and good work.

 

I think most people (esp americans with the american 'a' sound), benefit a lot from having a Thai teacher help you with the sounds.

 

Once you can read well and make the sounds reasonably well, reading aloud every day can be helpful as well to promote muscle memory. But, I admit, it's hard to do it regularly.

 

kikenyoy, what program did you use to extract the subtitles? I've been watching the tintin series lately, but they do use a lot of obscure words since tintin is always in weird places/situations, so something to extract the subtitles would be great.

[Scott Kevin]

http://www.imtoo.com/dvd-subtitle-ripper.html

[robert69]

thanks, i will try a few

[herds]

https://thepiratebay.se/user/ThiaDude/

 

Learn thai Podcast. There is an 18GB torrent, but the uploader has put a message "Do NOT download - creating smaller torrent files". And currently there are 2 Beginner ones.

 

Feel a little guilty grabbing these but hey ho that's the internet. Anyways we need some more people leeching/seeding so get invloved.

[GoforIT]

I was determined to learn Thai and be able to understand what the girls were saying and have deeper conversations with Thai people. I was tired of not being able to communicate with a Som Tam vendor or ask what certain products were. I was tired of being overcharged in gogos and thought (which turned out right) that talking in Thai would improve my chances of not being ripped off. I was tired of not being able to actually talk to the girls and thought that learning Thai would allow me to build deeper friendships(Turned out half right). I thought that learning Thai would improve my chances of haggling correctly in Thai establishments and being able to use Thai places where all the staff spoke only Thai (Was correct.)

 

Can you tell us something more about the good and bad experience you had thanks to knowing thai?

 

And to rosetta stone. I understand that many don't like it, but if found it quite helpfull even as a near beginner. The problem with rosetta stone is, that you run on walls first. You hear something in thai and you have no clue what it means. And often you even don't now it if you know what picture is right. But your brain sort it out after a few times and it is a cool feeling when it makes click. I really enjoyed it. But as you told. Not everything work for everyone.

[Hellbender]

WOW that's great. You have really got a patience and i know speaking Thai has got hell lot of advantage talking to a BG.

 

Translate this ฉันไม่รู้ to English if you can read Thai

[DonTheJeweler]

WOW that's great. You have really got a patience and i know speaking Thai has got hell lot of advantage talking to a BG.

 

Translate this ฉันไม่รู้ to English if you can read Thai

 

Sorry lady, but what is it you don't know? lol

[john2028]

Hi Zylanic

 

Very useful and well written OP.

 

The Wiki learning thai link no longer seems to work. Pity because I was on the third lesson.

 

I wonder if you have another link. I am now unable to trace it.

 

I have the Rosetta look alike course on my Android now, following you post, and I find it great to dip into at leisure.

 

My main source has been the old full Linguaphone course. I managed to pick this up on Ebay. It was on six tapes, but I bought some software to digitize it onto a SDHC card. It's a bit old fashioned but very comprehensive. The co-author is David Smyth, of your Complete Thai fame. The old Linguaphone course is very expensive if bought new. It is now on CD, as tapes are now a bit defunct.

 

Regards

[Raistx]

Thanks for that write-up Xylanic, awesome guide for us.

 

I've been using Pimsleur, i found out after i started that it's formal Thai, not street Thai. But i have found that because it is so repetitive, its getting me used to the sounds. As i'm going through it i seem to be picking it up quicker. I've also bought the David Smyth book but haven't started on it yet.

 

As far as the Thai podcasts, sign up for their newsletter, they seem to have 50% off sales every couple of months, $100 saving.

 

I think the main reason your learning so quickly is your drive and determination!! That's the thing i have to work on

[McFly]

Thanks for sharing your reviews and helpful info!