Pimsleur Thai - what do Thai people think of it ?

[gazman100]

Hi all,

I've started on the Pimsleur thai lessons and I must say that I'm quite impressed in the structure of the lessons.

My question to you all is have anyone ever run these lessons by a Thai person and got their feed back on whether the structure is correct or whether this is really how Thai people speak.

Also I'm also searching for a link of some type to help me with the word "darling" I know it is Teelak or simular but I really need to hear it.

Cheers

[Dr.Winston]

Hi all,

I've started on the Pimsleur thai lessons and I must say that I'm quite impressed in the structure of the lessons.

My question to you all is have anyone ever run these lessons by a Thai person and got their feed back on whether the structure is correct or whether this is really how Thai people speak.

Also I'm also searching for a link of some type to help me with the word "darling" I know it is Teelak or simular but I really need to hear it.

Cheers

I Just listened to some of the Pimsleur Thai course and the Thai seemed to be really good Thai. When I was learning through a different course I would get a Thai person to run through my work with me at the end of each week, and the girl who helped me said that she thaught the standard of Thai taught was great.

 

Darling in Thai is Theerak ที่รัก which means 'the one that I love'.

 

I would concentrate on learning the type of educated central Thai that the good courses teach. In all honesty most Thai people don't usually speak that formally to each other. However, Thai people will judge you on the type of Thai that you speak so I would go for correct Thai as opposed to any kind of informal Thai. Once you Thai gets good you will just pick up the informal stuff anyway.

[Mike Asia]

Teelak is usually said by women to a man. Never heard it the other way around(unless from a LB)

[herds]

I think it's good, the content maybe quite formal but the main thing it teaches is structure and sentence forming.

[Ducar]

So far I only know and have used three phrases = No thank you. Thank you very much. Lets take shower together.

Now this will just not do. I do have a variety of words though not much use unless you can put them in a sentence.

 

I bought the Pimsleur Thai course a couple weeks ago off eBay and I am going to start on it when it arrives.

I will give a report on it after I give it a go.

 

I bought the hand held translator computer a rather upscale one too but I have trouble getting the enunciation correct listening to the tiny built in speakers. I am going to try to get it to work with bigger external speakers.

 

Next step take out an add in the local paper or something to find a girl from Thailand that will help me along.

 

The fantasy is to get good enough that I can listen to the girls talk and know a bit of what they are saying to each other. Like being a fly on the wall and they would have no idea that I know what they just said.

After wondering around Pattaya with a fella that can do that and then some, I know this is the way to go.

The look on the girls faces when he cut into their conversation and scolded them in perfect Thai Busted just priceless. They thought we were a couple of real first timers. Compaired to him I was anyway.

 

Also that I plan on retiring in Thailand, having a good command of the language would be a necessity.

[bocelli27]

For those interested - and as mentioned in earlier topics on Pimsleur - I have devised a spreadsheet of the 30 Pimsleur lessons. Anybody wanting a copy can contact me with their email address and I will forward it as an email attachment.

[smerc]

Would like to take you up on that if you don't mind. I have the audio course, but I am one of those people who likes to write down most common phrases he may use.

 

Plus I am terrible on spelling things the way they are pronounced.

[CoByau]

Also that I plan on retiring in Thailand, having a good command of the language would be a necessity.

 

Unfortunately a view not shared by many an ex-pat ... in fact .. most ex-pats .

 

The pimsleur's are well structured and the majority of my thai friends in Australia (most speak English quite well) all say that the Thai is for hte most part correct.

 

I would recommend using that and the following resources.

www.thai-language.com

www.learningthai.com

www.thai2english.com

 

buy the Benjawan Poomsan Becker books .. "Thai for Beginners" and when you're ready "Thai for Intermediate learners"

 

 

I have been studying for about 7 months now and can speak, read and write Thai to about 50% fluency .. quite funny.. everybody thinks I am half thai hahahaha

[Grumpy]

"Old Fashioned" is the feedback I have gotten from some, but very proper and quite functional.

 

 

Example, for "How are you?"

 

Khun sabai dee-ruu khrap.

 

Where most Thais would say

 

"Sabai dee mai khrap"

 

Khun (You) is dropped because it is understood, and the "ruu" qualifier is asking for them to specify their degree of wellness. The popular way is basically saying "(You) are good?" I also prefer the simpler methodology of speech, as that limits the amount of Thai the natives assume I speak, which is enough to eat, travel, and argue...but is not strong enough to express abstract ideals or have truly out of context conversations.

 

Also if you make it into the country with more than ten thai phrases mastered, everyone will think you are lying when you tell them it is your first time to the LOS. Happened to me.

[jasd]

I've also just started the Pimsleur Thai on lesson 4 currently and for me its the easiest way to learn. Usally do a lesson in the car or on the way to work. Also did Pimsleur Japananse and found it useful when I was last in tokyo.

[Sexy Baldman]

Yeah, Pimsleurs has many strengths:gets you straight into phrases and not just, ,individual words, builds fluency

etc.

 

Some limitations:even after the 30 lessons, vocabulary is limited - for example numbers from memory are only about 1-20. I got the lonely planet phrase book and it covers 1-1000 quite quickly and is organized thematically - which is useful and in a way the two sources together are quite complementary.

[Ajay75]

I started with this and its ok but its only useful for certain things which limits you. Some of the vocab is pretty dated, not used or elongated as well.

 

But I'm still glad I used it as a starting block as to how to form sentences, ask things etc.

 

But Thai's dont really speak like this at all in Thailand (especially in Patts) as too much slang, swearing or whatever gets used.

[McFly]

I started using this last week. So far so good! Not that I expect to become fluent from Pimsleur but I'm trying to use what I learn on a few people I know. I think it's a good start to help with sentence structure.

[Mr.Dude]

It's been great so far( completed lesson 10). Spend on average 20 minutes per day during my morning walk. I usually repeat lessons once before proceeding to the next lesson. I'm more confident now speaking and Thais are understanding my simple utterances. My guess is that that it will provide a simple base that I can expand on over the next few years. I'm in no hurry and am cool with the slow approach.

[Adam Clayton]

For those interested - and as mentioned in earlier topics on Pimsleur - I have devised a spreadsheet of the 30 Pimsleur lessons. Anybody wanting a copy can contact me with their email address and I will forward it as an email attachment.

 

hello, I recently joined this forum and saw your offer of the spreadsheet. If it's not too much trouble could you email it to me? Thank you. Adam

[email protected]

[cuteincords1]

I have done the Pimsleur course and can recite more or less word for word .. yes it does give you a good insight into the sentence structure and the phonetics but the use of pronouns in the course especially the pronoun De - Chan ดิฉัน said by women speakers ,,nearly all thai women and espescially those from issan never ever use this when speaking in colloquel thai

[Langchai]

I've used it to good effect. It was a great start. Once you've gone over it a couple of times, you can look to other sources for vocabulary.

 

Its a shame Pimsleur doesn't have Level 2 and 3 Thai.

 

The pronunciation is accurate. Most Thais (non P4P) are most impressed when I speak it to them.

[kaostheery]

I have been using Pimsleur Thai for about a month now and am impressed by it. I like the structure and the natural progression that the courses take. Cant wait to finish it!

[drawp]

I like pimsleur a lot, I've used it for both Mandarin and Cantonese and recently started using it for Thai. As others have said, there are a lot of things that I've learned (from the Chinese versions) that while proper, are never used by native speakers or they are, just not in the situations described in the lessons, this will be true for any language that you learn.

 

From the six languages that I learned, I've felt that using Pimsleur made it the easiest and quickest to learn (even on something specifically tonal like Cantonese, granted for most of my other languages I learned them while in HS and Univ.).

 

Honestly, I know from Pimsleur (or any other language program) that I'm not going to learn the entire language and I don't expect to. What I do want to learn is a baseline, something that I can build off of, a few widely used phrases, and some basic vocab that will at least get me by in some basic situations while I can then take the time and learn from other sources.

 

A big help is always having a translation tool handy, for example the iPhone application ThaiDict, while I know it doesn't have a lot of the phrases that other programs do, it does cover a lot of the basics that aren't covered in pimsleur, so if I run into a situation where I need it I can easily access it on my phone, or if necessary I can have the person trying to speak with me type it in and have it translated.