My Girlfriend Wants to Learn English?

[BaldPlumber]

Previous suggestion to learn the alphabet is good, but remember for Thais the alphabet consists of consonants only, unlike our Latin alphabet.

 

There are more vowels than consonants in thai and at least 10 consonants are used so infrequently, or are completely redundant, that you don't need to waste your time on them.

 

Learning the thai alphabet is not hard and can be done in a few days without the need for any special techniques, especially those involving ladyboys in various sexual positions, which are both contrived and ridiculous in equal measure. This might work for some, but for me, learning the nouns associated with the consonants was enough to make it stick in a relatively short time.

 

The vowels are more difficult in my limited experience and present the major challenge.

 

Try to drop the transliteration at the earliest possible stage. It doesn't and can't work properly. Thai does not transliterate to English but the Thai spelling describes all tones and vowel lengths.

 

If I was starting all over again, I would learn to read, write and speak at the same time. This way you would avoid making many errors right from the outset.

 

It sounds hard and to be honest it is hard at first, but it's worth it if you're serious.

[Scumbag]

The vowels are more difficult in my limited experience and present the major challenge.

 

They are just as easy as the consonants when you use 'contrived and ridiculous' ways of remembering them.

[BaldPlumber]

They are just as easy as the consonants when you use 'contrived and ridiculous' ways of remembering them.

As I clearly said, they may help some.

 

I'd be interested to know about any aide memoire that are used with reference to vowels. Your post implies that you are familiar with them.

 

For instance, a written word with 3 consonants and two missing vowels - what combination of ladyboys, sexual positions, or submarines is going to help here?

 

Maybe you've used a different system to the one I've seen, but I'd be interested to see some used for vowels.

[Petesie]

My teerak went to language school for 6 months and was doing really well which improved our relationship.

 

6 months in her mates salon and it's reverted to Issan...Teerak where your English?

 

She said...Engrit go holiday.

[BaldPlumber]

OP take a look at the thai-English-Thai talking dictionary app by paiboon publishing.

 

It's not free but it's easily the best one I've seen or used.

 

One of the best features of the app is that it gives a breakdown and explanation of every single thai word as to both it's pronunciation and spelling.

 

There is a vast reference section that covers all of the basics such as numbers, dates etc but also many situational subjects including a very funny sex talk section.

 

I'm using a beta version of the software so I'm not sure what features are or aren't in the current release level, but the version I'm using will be out pretty soon anyway.

 

Very highly recommended.

[Scumbag]

As I clearly said, they may help some.

 

I'd be interested to know about any aide memoire that are used with reference to vowels. Your post implies that you are familiar with them.

Take a simple example of มา. You start in the same place as when you learned to read English and should out each character. I know it is a bit difficult to describe but once you have learned it you can quickly see the pictures in the characters. The first character is a mediating ladyboy. The 'm' in the 'mediating' is the clue and the letter is an m sound. The second character is a vowel and I see a guy (I guess he is invisible...) having a piss forming the arc seen in the character. He has been hanging on for a while so he is making an 'arrr' sound. So the word is marrrr or more correctly maa meaning to come. The sex of the first character is important as with it as you it to work out the tone. This is important as the word หมา also sounds out the same but the ห character changes the sex of the following character from ladyboy to woman (or more correctly from a low class consonant to a high class one) which changes to tone and the meaning of the word to dog.

 

Like you say you have to be aware of hidden vowels and characters with dual purposes (such as ห) but the rules are pretty straight forward.

[ZRHuser]

Instead of teaching her english yourself, I would send her of to Fountain of live school in Naklua. It's free afaik, or at least not expensiv at all. 

[Ben Carter]

Instead of teaching her english yourself, I would send her of to Fountain of live school in Naklua. It's free afaik, or at least not expensiv at all. 

 

She went last week to look at that but I don't want her to do it. We will try a bit of home study first and then look at some classes later. 

[BaldPlumber]

Take a simple example of มา. You start in the same place as when you learned to read English and should out each character. I know it is a bit difficult to describe but once you have learned it you can quickly see the pictures in the characters. The first character is a mediating ladyboy. The 'm' in the 'mediating' is the clue and the letter is an m sound. The second character is a vowel and I see a guy (I guess he is invisible...) having a piss forming the arc seen in the character. He has been hanging on for a while so he is making an 'arrr' sound. So the word is marrrr or more correctly maa meaning to come. The sex of the first character is important as with it as you it to work out the tone. This is important as the word หมา also sounds out the same but the ห character changes the sex of the following character from ladyboy to woman (or more correctly from a low class consonant to a high class one) which changes to tone and the meaning of the word to dog.

 

Like you say you have to be aware of hidden vowels and characters with dual purposes (such as ห) but the rules are pretty straight forward.

When I was learning the alphabet I used a PC to write down all of the currently in use consonants, with their tone (via colour coding) and a little photo of the thai used noun to go with it, in this case mor maa. I then had it laminated for a few baht. I also used a free flash card app with multiple test features.

 

It genuinely only took a few days to learn the alphabet. I occasionally go through the tests, but to be honest it's a waste of time now. Once it's learnt, it's learnt. This is OK for consonants but it's less use for vowels, but definitely for consonants it's an extremely fast way of learning.

 

A far as the vowels went, I learnt the short and long pairs first and am still learning them in conjunction with an old มานี text that has been printed out on A4.

 

In your case the อะ / อา is the first in the sequence learnt by Thai kids, but this is a very simple example that actually makes sense to an English speaker, but how about this one เอีอย and how it's differentiated with เอือ - is that final consonant the end of a word or the start of a new one?

 

This is why I say that Thai Vowels are a totally different proposition with regard to learning when compared to the thai consonants.

 

Some more difficulties with vowels;

 

The vowel symbols can appear in front of, behind, above or below the consonant or, not appear at all. When a vowel is in front of a consonant, it does not mean the vowel is pronounced first - the consonant following the vowel is pronounced first. Using a simple English example the word spelt "at" would be read as the word "ta"

 

Vowels are comprised of their own symbols, plus they borrow a few from the thai alphabet, so, what you think is a consonant might actually be part of the vowel. The start of what you think is a word is not necessarily so, it might be the end of the previous words vowel form.

 

There are more thai vowels than there are consonants, but they don't have a simple form like the consonants do and very, very few of them consist of a single symbol.

 

My biggest problem with written Thai is that I have to actually read it, in English we just look at the word and instantly comprehend it. The actual act of reading, for me, is pitifully slow, but I have found that the thai year 2 scripts are pretty good at iterating the same vowels over and over again until introducing new ones. The มานี text is also helpful in as much as words are delimited by spaces.

 

Different techniques are going to be useful to different people to a greater or lesser extent. I've found that there is virtually no resemblance of thai nouns with their associated symbols, visual or otherwise but the association sticks simply due to repetition. Does this ล look like a monkey or this ป a fish? Not to my mind, so cluttering up the association further with a mental image of two ladyboys in a back to front 69 position or whatever doesn't help me at all, whereas lor ling and bpor bplaa have stuck and Thais will understand this if you have to explain the letter.

 

I've seen some videos online for vowel pronunciation for foreigners where they emphasise the correct lip / mouth arrangement for vowels, many of which are totally alien to English speakers. This seems like a good idea to me.

 

Whichever method you use YMMV but it seems to me that Thai is not learnt without a pretty huge effort.

[Ben Carter]

Moon - Carter English Training Update

We made a decision last week to step back a couple of paces. Although Miss Moon's English is very good I think starting at Beginner 2 Level might be better in the long run. We will work our way up to advanced level.

 

 

For me learning Thai I would love to have those laminated cards that I think BaldPlummer mentioned?

[BaldPlumber]

Very easy to do. Consonants on one side, vowels and tones on the other.