Knowing when to speak

This is going to be the last post in the eight weeks series, I have a lot more to say about conversation and a few more things about tones and reading/writing etc.but hay-fever has kicked, in, time runs out and a want to learn languages rather than write about what is happening. This post is a follow-on from my post: Doubting to speak Thai.

There has been quite a lot of controversy online recently about when to first speak the language you are learning, some say straight a-way, right at the beginning. There is a legitimate concern that some people are never ready to speak, never get over the nerves and insecurity of speaking a new language and never feel they have absorbed enough grammar, vocabulary etc. However going from this concern to "speak straight away" is a big leap and a rather lazy fix. In many fields of learning there is a possible "short sharp shock" approach to get over barriers of nerves etc. but usually they are discredited, you have to be careful sometimes it works, sometimes a phased approach to build confidence is better.

So how to work out when to speak, how to deal with the amorphous "when you are ready". Well for my case I have worked it out. Firstly I don't have as big a barrier to overcome as the first time, I know I can speak Chinese with people. In trying to speak Thai right from the start I found what made me uncomfortable what made it unpleasant and at what stage all that when away.

Firstly vocabulary, I don't expect to be able to say very much at all at first, but I do want to a basic set of common phrases that I "just know", that can come to mind without really thinking and that sound reasonably native in my head (so hopefully my pronunciation won't be too horrendous). I do not want to be suddenly forgetting how to say "sawat dee krap" etc. I do not want to have a little collection of phrases and words swimming around in my short term memory that I have recently "crammed there", that is uncomfortable.

I want to know that those phrases I know, I have a reasonable chance of understanding when I hear them, that I can recognise them in a radio broacast or TV program, if I can't do that how will I know that I can learn anything new. I should only be thinking hard to pick up or say new things.

I want to have a feel for variations and breakdown of the things I know, the person I am about to talk to has not "read the script".

For me with Thai, that took about six weeks, not a huge amount of time, if this was my first language then maybe 2 months, 3 months, but a finite goal still. But what if you HAVE to speak because of X or Y, then simple just speak after all you HAVE to. Maybe my criteria are not quite refined for the general population but it should be possible to come up with a better defined set.

If an individual chooses to not speak until later, if that is a choice not made by fear or indecision but a conscious choice because of belief that it will harm their learning, then that is fine of course.

There will be more on conversation, much more.

Does Chinese help me learn Thai?

Firstly it is clear that as other people have pointed out any new language learning after the first one is likely to be quicker. Your language learning abilities improve with practice it seems. I thought I was going to spend most of my time listening to uncompromisable Thai and getting used to the sounds of the language but that process kicked of much faster than I expected.

I have not noticed much in the way of conjugates, I have a small experience of Cantonese and it feels like there are more similarities between Thai and Cantonese than Thai and Mandarin. I am sure they are there but really even if a word sounds similar in Thai it will almost certainly have a different tone I guess and even a small difference in pronunciation means you may as well learn it from scratch particularly as it is likely to be a single syllable.

Sentences are usually constructed in a different order, I don't really focus on grammar though so lets leave it at that.

Thai feels like it has more sounds, also more multi-syllable loan words (I have read about Sanskrit words and found lots of English ones), that should make it slightly easier to target and absorb new words I hear. This combined with t he fact that I feel the range of Thai is a little smaller, what is called speaking in Mandarin with a "strong accent" can blur into speaking "a dialect" of Mandarin.

Having already got used to a tonal language is a big help, I know it will just take time, also I can usually remember the tone of words I hear. My brain has already cottoned onto the fact that tone is important.

Other elements like using word particles for questions, to soften meaning, to focus parts of a sentence etc. are also familiar already even if the details are different. I don't waste time getting used to this idea.

At this stage Thai people are easier to talk to in general and easier to learn from, this is probably offset by the fact that there are so many more Mandarin speakers in the world to track down and harass (I mean practice with).

The Thai writing system is simpler (looking forward to that :))

In summary Thai shares some characteristics with Mandarin which make for a smoother start. Nowhere near as close as Mandarin-Cantonese, English-German etc. though.

dootv.tv

A great resource, dootv.tv I came across this via Bakunin and decided to give it a go, I am glad I did. This website acts like a big cache of Thai TV/film and video feeds. You have to pay a fee to join and access the feeds but at £15 for ninety days, I think it is very good value so far.
The site has a lot of Thai video and films in many different categories a big choice for all ages and tastes it seems.

Technically the site works well there usually seems to be a choice of switching between US and UK servers and so far the performance has been good. Most of the videos I have watched have come in through a Flash player but a few have come via Windows codecs. This can be hiccough on Linux but in my case Firefox and the VLC mozzilla plugin step in as a substitute for Windows Media player. The site is mostly in Thai but there is just enough English in the categories etc. for even a beginner to find his way around. There may well be an English menus link but I don't mind, I like getting used to written Thai slowly.

As Bakunin has pointed out some childrens videos, travel, cookery videos etc. can serve as great ALG type sources. I agree and will certainly use them as such. Having said that I still feel they will be significantly less potent than the ALG lessons themselves. So far however in the short time I have been on dootv.tv I have mostly been looking around. I have also discovered the large amount of anime and cartoons some of which I already know so watching them in Thai is great, particularly as I know the names of the characters which helps to demark the Thai speech. As an observation I am pretty sure that some of the anime whilst unmistakably in Thai is deliberately dubbed in Thai with a Japanese accent (they sometimes do this in English also). I will look out a second opinion to make sure my Thai radar is developing properly.

Dootv.tv seems to be aimed at Thais, I wonder if they may get some mileage from targeting language learners also?

First Eight Weeks Learning Thai Summary

Summary

Well eight weeks and a bit, as usual this post is a little later than hoped and unlike before, technically a couple of things mentioned would be at eight weeks and a bit. A jump as the last progress report was at four weeks, but I have severely underestimated the resource required to try to analyse my progress in this way. Going to summarize some findings here in this post, run a few more posts through the mill and then make the blog public. I have to say I am enjoying learning Thai and intend to continue for sure. The landscape for learning Thai for me is quite different to learning Chinese, and the language is quite different, but there are some distinct similarities to Chinese learning.

Learning Thai has robbed time from my Chinese learning but also allowed me to analyse my Chinese learning to-date. I can easily see now where I am with my Chinese and formulate a plan for taking my Chinese to the next level.

I have been greatly surprised by how much faster things have happened than I expected, I expected to spend a lot longer listening to Thai to feel that I had got used to the language.

Method

In as much as there is a method, it can probably be summarized very simply. I listen to and watch (although I have more time for listening) a lot of Thai, radio, tv, podcasts, anything. A large amount of this listening is in the background whilst I am doing something else and a huge chunk of that so far, I haven't been paying a lot of conscious attention

When I do pay attention I am looking for characteristics of the language, common sounds, words etc. This is increasingly moving into word usage, meanings and phrases.

Alongside the pure Thai I have listened too a lot of lessons on Youtube or podcasts, I don't try hard to learn the words of phrases but over time they sink in and start to connect with the real Thai. Sometimes I use subtitles on video (in English or Chinese)

I try not to assign concrete meaning to words, some people may say that I am harming my learning by using vocab lessons, subtitles etc. (they may be correct). I am hoping that keeping things loose will offset damage, I need some vocab. particularly as I am doing so much listening (very hard to get context with no vocab to work on).

I have starting talking, talking with Thai people as with my Chinese is the thing that makes it easy to keep going. I have started talking Thai considerably earlier than I would have done with my first language, more importantly for me at least I know when I am ready to speak a language I am learning. Again talking early may cause damage, I keep it loose, just becasue someone understands what I say I don't assume the story is over at that point. I don't spend much time saying things out aloud or practicing pronounciation.

I am not learning words, no vocab lists, no testing, words are aquired, another benefit from listening to lots of lessons is that if makes it easier to aquire words that can be used in initial talking practice with Thai people.

I have not started reading or writing Thai, I strongly feel that it is crazy to start learning to read and write a language you cannot yet 'hear', although I have started to acquire some knowledge of written Thai.

Timings

I am freezing the timings now, they are a pain to monitor and hard to define (how do you define thinking about Thai at random times), after the first week I was averaging well over three hours a day, over the the eight weeks this dropped about an hour a day, very quickly the non-attentive and semi-attentive listening is dropping off (I am sure that some part of me was attentive but I don't seem to need this anymore). Acquiring a feel for the Thai language was much quicker than with Chinese.

Resources

I have found a number of resources to help, recently, a recent blog I have looked at that has interesting posts being Women learning Thai A recent post on there being about the Learn Thai podcast that I have listened to a lot of the free lessons from.

Help with Thai (more observations)

Summary

I can both understand and sympathize with the principles of the ALG method I have problems though. I am not going to be able to devote a large amount of time to video, but I can find time to listen, I am not in Thailand, I do not have Thai relatives so my opportunities for experience are limited. I have aggressive plans for learning languages and a scary big number on my last birthday card. I need help.

Observations

A women has been kidnapped in a Thai drama series, in the car that is carrying her away she cries out choi doi, choi doi. Whilst watching one of the excellent ALG videos, the teachers are discussing swimming wai nam, and the female teacher can only swim a little nid noi, she mimes swimming badly whilst shouting choi doi, choi doi.

Right then I don't know if choi doi means "help me" or "save me" actually it just means whatever choi doi means in the situations it is used. Later I hear a phrase float out the mostly meaningless Thai of something I am listening to kun choi pom dai mai? it seem to me that this means something like "can you help me". Maybe I have misheard, I check a dictionary and a phrasebook (Ipod phrase book with English search). The phrase book has choi doi for help. Forget the transliterations I am only approximating the sounds I don't want to get too good at transliterations. So now I know that choi doi has been translated to "help" in English and is seem that choi is detachable. I don't assume that it has the same characteristics as help in English and I don't make a strong connection to the English word.

Next I come accross Choi being used for "please" it seem this word does range beyond the English meanings for sure.

I need help

Some words and phrases come from listening, some from video, some from lessons (internet freebies) a few with the aid of a dictionary or sub-titles. Like a small child that watches TV with help from an adult to explain what is going on I am attempting to boost my impaired learning environment.

Books for learning Thai?

Not a language book lover

I am not a language book lover, but I have a lot of language books, I find them interesting but usually for the wrong reasons. For Chinese I have a bunch of books that have either been donated to me, or have been discovered in 2nd hand shops.

I came across a book called "Thai in a Week" a book from 1990s. I find the optimism of the title amusing, but there were other interesting elements. I quote "Don't let a fear of getting a tone wrong inhibit you from practicing Thai" actually there are a whole load of positive messages all around about learning languages but some people prefer to focus on the negative and then make a big fuss about being all positive about it.

Personally with Chinese I have found it is sometimes nice to read about things once I already have a fair idea about them. I am not alone in this Steve Kaufmann has often mentioned the same.

Phrasebooks

I have been surprised by how much I have learned from phrases in phrasebooks or phrasebook style lessons, especially once you can start to break them down and remix the language, but those have come from audio lessons. I don't see the immediate usefulness of phrase books for languages that are completely new to you, the "phonetic" transcriptions will be a poor way to learn words in the case of Thai this is touched upon by Stuart Ray Raj. A prime example is pinyin and Chinese. Pinyin romanisation of Chinese is highly phonetic (but not exactly like English) it is very common to see people consistently mis-pronouncing words even after hearing them many times because they remember the writing not the sound. Lao shi is pronounced wrongly as lao she (the English she) even shortly after hearing it again. The solution I feel for pinyin is to first get a feel for the sounds of Chinese and then to learn pinyin well prior to using it for memory. Phrase books for Thai for example are giving you a broken approximation of the sounds when they try to tell you how to say the phrase. Apparently the Thai written language is highly phonetic so it would seem to make more sense to wait for learning that for interacting with the language in writing.

At first the Thai book was of little interest but after a few weeks I found picking it up a few times quite useful, I knew the sounds of some of the word so could apply those to the phonetic system used in the book.

Ultimately I guess I will keep looking at language learning books optomisticall, I like books, they have not been a huge help for language learning to-date though, but can be very entertaining.

ALG and TV method

Summary

I have heard a lot about the ALG method in the past with regards to language learning and having read a lot about it and with it's basis originally in Thai I was keen to find out more.

The TV method is derived from ALG method principles although many people who have reported some success with it already have some knowledge of the language they are studying. There seems to be plenty of material available in Thai that would allow somebody to follow this approach.

I find it very easy to agree with the principles of ALG however I am not in a position to adopt all of them, I will certainly be watching a fair amount of video also but if the TV method doesn't include subtitles etc. them often I won't be following the TV method (this is a question of time).

How it relates to me

Great news, there are a bunch of videos of ALG classes on Youtube, I have embedded the first part of a level one class below.

The video lessons are amazing, to the extent that I have virtually stopped watching other Thai videos until I have got what I can out of these ALG videos. I am sure I would enjoy living in Thailand and learning from these lessons. Despite this there are some things I have to do differently. A major difference for example is simply that I will talk earlier than it seems ALG would recommend. I will need to talk Thai to get Thai experiences, Thai experiences will help me learn Thai. As a time poor family guy with no Thai connections, speaking Thai will be my best source Thai experience (there is a kind of catch 22 there). Whilst I can see the attraction of the ALG method, I personally don't have have classes I can walk into and follow the course, I don't currently wish to invest money in my new hobby and having had a family relatively young I am looking forward to the freedom of many years of potential travel coming up in the not too distant future (just not right now). So all things considered although I may borrow from ALG I cannot follow it.

The reason for not following a pure TV method is one of time. ALG suggests an important milestone occurs around 800 hours of lessons. Even the videos of their lessons are much more effective in teaching me Thai than normal video, if I say three times more effective then that means I would have to watch 2400 hours of regular video to hit that milestone. I would find it hard to find time to watch one hour of video per day, do the math. I am 40 something, my kids are growing up rapidly soon they will no longer need their parents on a day to day basis, I want to start travelling and using the languages I am learning well before I am 50.

Note 01/06/2010: As Bakunin has pointed out some types of Video can make good substitutes for ALG type input. dootv.tv is a good source.

First use of a Thai dictionary

Summary

Dictionaries are very useful, but they are also liars, they pretend that words have rigid meanings or that a word in one language maps directly to a word in another language. Despite the lies they can be very useful of course, for Chinese I used pinyin a lot to look up words I heard in radio shows etc.

I don't expect to have to use a dictionary very much to look up basic vocabulary, dictionaries come into their own for specialized language, but there are of course many varieties so if I am lucky I will find a dictionary of colloquial phrases.

The only reason to use a dictionary at all was because of the requirement applied from planning to and trying to practice speaking.

The Dictionary

And the dictionary of choice was the one at http://www.thai-language.com/dict/ I had already come across this site. I am likely to be practicing in restaurants and don't like the phrase book "can I have a table for X please?" type of phrases because I don't feel enough ownership of those sentences. At some point I have come across 'saam tee' as 'table for three', trouble was I couldn't remember where, it seems compact though. I wanted to look up tee so that I could confirm I wasn't completely mistaken.

First problem I don't know the official romanisation so started with tee and finally got to thee, which gives me ที่ with potential meanings including seat, location etc. that must be it. It seemed to work in the wild even when I was not prepared, but I had to replace 3 with 1 of course.

Second problem, intellectually I knew this was not Chinese, but with the vowel rammed on top there, I panicked for second and thought this "character" has too many meanings ;). After I calmed down it was obvious however that like Chinese many composite words are formed in part from singles meanings of this syllable. English is often like this also but it is much harder to spot as we don't know the original Latin or Greek parts. What the dictionary page was showing me was bunch of meanings that contain this particular sound which looks scary for a second when you associate 'foreign' writing with characters that have meaning rather than sounds.

You may have noticed I haven't mentioned Thai script yet much at all, there is a reason for that.

An accidental conversation in Thai

Summary

Conversation practice is about the only cause of stress and effort in learning Thai (apart from blogging) at the moment. So why bother?

Accidental conversation

Well conversation is pushing it somewhat, last Thursday I was wandering around at lunchtime I thought I would try one of the Thai restuarants I have targeted for potential conversation use in the future (they have lunchtime specials). The intention was simply to get the lay of the land, check they were actually Thai staff etc.

Problem was they greet everybody with sa-wat dee, on hearing that I kind of brain froze and the only response I could come it with was sa-wat dee krap. That went down ok I asked for a table (well seat) for one in Thai and the person I was talking with looked confused, and spluttered back a half English half Thai sentance that I had no chance of understanding, assuming I had been completely mis-understood I reverted to English and apologised, they apologised in English.
Apparently I had been understood fine, this place always greets everyone in Thai and they are used to some people learning how to greet back, so my continuing in Thai wasn't immediately registered.

Ok so no long real conversation but I had a few minor exchanges commented on the food, complimented a waitress on her English in Thai, said that Thai was fun and I like learning Thai in Thai. I was not set up for recording though (dang).

How am I going to make a more flowing conversation occur? Apart from just waiting to have another Thai naturally available to me.

Why make the effort?

That sounds rather defeatist, why make the effort? However only two things about learning Thai so far are an effort. The main effort is blogging about learning Thai, the next main effort is trying to work out how to have conversations and what I am going to be able to say. I could guess possible conversations and cram words for them, but right now I am not learning words, just aquiring the ones that come easily. I could do some research, find a better source of potential Thai conversation, but right now I don't feel comfortable having nothing to say. I could cram my short term memory with phrases prior to a conversation but that is hard and stressfull, the conversations I have enjoyed in Chinese are the ones where I just relax and clear my mind beforehand, relying on words and phrases that are deeply embedded.

Some people would say I was being negative, negative about finding good conversation. Looking at poor conversations with a "glass half full" mindset. The problem with this is that it is my language learning, if I order a pint of Guiness and I am given a half glass of orange juice then yes I am going to be quite negative about it actually.

Besides I am confident in my approach, I know it is not fear that is holding me back, I have had plenty of conversation in Chinese, and I know that the "positivity message" is far too blunt a tool to be applied in complicated circumstances, after all I can sit and listen to real Thai and enjoy getting tiny handholds into the language and understanding the occaisional word and phrase, this is more like "WOW I am so happy, there is a detectable trace of moisture on the bottom of the glass" ;)

I am going to pursue conversation, and attempt to get a better audio, for two reasons.

Firstly, I am experimenting with myself somewhat, putting my own personal language learning under the microscope I am intersted in seeing what will happen. If I have some audio I can refer back to it at a later date.Secondly, there may come a time when I will spend some time in a country with short notice if I wanted to get some ability in the language, could I start learning the same way? could I then use that as a springboard into speaking earlier than I normally would?

I don't know krab about Thai

There is a lot of talk about knowing words, learning words from vocab lists or flash cards. It seems that knowing something is black and white, on/off. Very little information and learning is like that at all, it makes people feel better though, it makes testing easier (though less accurate).

First of all apologies, I am not sure of the official romanisation of the word krap / krup / krub but basically I am talking about the polite word that males attach to the end of some sentances. I probably know more about this word than any other Thai word but I still don't know krap.

I know the word is high tone in Thai, I know what it is supposed to sound like after much exposure from many speakers (audio and video + 1 waiter). I know that despite what the lessons tell me, Thai male speakers don't put it on the end of every sentance but I need to get more a feel for that. In video they don't use it much when talking with friends or family, with themselves, to their dog, etc. On various forms of radio it almost seems as if it is thrown in every few sentances when the pressure of not enough krap exceeds a certain level. On one of my Tony Jaar movies when they interview the actors and actresses, they use Krab (and ka) a lot at the beginning and then stop using it as they answer later questions. I know you can roll the r, pronounce the r as an l, lose the r entirely, loose the k and end up with something like hup which isn't much at all to end up with as the p is usually unvoiced (I think the technical term is unvoiced anyway).

Having heard the word in many guises, I can say it to a point, I suspect that in a few months time I will hear me saying it now and thing farang! In my head it sounds Thai (having just watched Britian has got Talent on the TV whilst typing this, some people "think" they can sing because they can in their head).

I know the word is not used (or to a much less extent) in the Lao language

Ultimately I still don't know the word in any full sense, I feel I "Know" very few Chinese words, and there a lot of words I don't know even in my mother tongue. I don't expect to know any Thai words yet.

I still don't know so much about this word but that is not a problem all I expect that as with all the words I will keep learning more about it.

Brimming with Thai

A quick post about something that has started happening recently, I am listening to a fair amount of Thai in the background, sometimes lessons, sometimes radio or Thai podcasts. Like those songs that stick in your head phrases sometimes keep circulating, sometimes I know what the whole phrase means, sometimes just a word or two.

The phrase right now is wang-wa je-di po gan yi -> Hope/wish **** see/meet together again. I feel I should know that jedi means, feels like I have heard it quite a lot, I will know it soon for sure.

Interesting that I have filled my head with so much Thai that it is starting flow back out. And that mostly listening in dead time whilst not paying full attention.

On a related note, the word lao-gore or similar what does that mean? I keep hearing it, I will know soon for sure.

Note (added 24/05/10)

Lao gore means something like "and" or "besides", many words seem to start of as sounds I notice and then wait for meanings to arrive (usually needs video), or I am listening to a lesson without paying attention and pick-up a meaning (approximate of course) to apply to the sound.

That gore sound is going to be interesting seems to be a filler and much more. The next sound was senme, senme = always (or maybe often) that one hasn't quite gelled obviously.

Fourth Week Learning Thai

Summary

A bit dry this post, it doesn't feel right trying to analyse the learning process but on the other hand it is very instructive, I could never have thought back to this point, because all I would have remembered was that I was making progress. The purpose of this post is really to describe to my future self and to anyone who may actually know how to speak Thai what is happening. Just because listening input doesn't make for exciting videos doesn't mean that nothing is happening.

I am going to summarise my fourth week learning Thai and then skip a week of summary (so I will summarise the fifth and sixth week together. I am writing a few notes as I go along but falling behind on all the things I want to post. For the fourth week I was mostly listening to lessons, a bunch from Youtube and mp3's from Itunes, mostly just letting them wash over me and listening whilst doing something else (I usually listen to the Youtube videos rather than watch them) . I am not making any effort to learn words but occasionally picking up some, and occasionally paying special attention to something. Towards the end of the week I started getting enthusiastic about listening again, after the realisation that Thai is Thai (important milestone) I dropped of listening for a few days but picking up a few words from the lessons I suddenly wanted to listen again.

I am now paying much more attention to sentences than before, also noting that I am acquiring words, which is not the same as learning them (I have deliberately learned one word) only. Most of the words I now know (although only in a limited way so far), I have managed to identify in in films and or radio and or mp3s of real Thai people talking real Thai, this gives me a great deal of confidence going forward, also as am note "learning" words, I don't have any stress forgetting them, if I can't recall a word, I just haven't learned it yet.

Observations

Most of the words I know are being identified in real Thai now and chains form. I hear aroi aroi in a story and next time I pick up the a-han (food) so now have food delicious. I hear a phrase that seems to mean "can you understand?" rather than the easier "do you understand?", but I struggle somewhat to recreate it now kun kao-jai dai mai? perhaps. If I have started picking up some related words then they start adding words around them, when a close word washes by in a lesson I suddenly pay attention tee-nee (remember I heard this sound right at the beginning of my Thai journey) here -> tee-nai where -> tee-non there.

Little words are coming through that I pick up when listening to lessons, I am not really concious of knowing them but when I hear them in real Thai I know what they mean and the process of hearing them fixes them. Chok-dee (good luck), a while ago I recognised the dee was the same dee as in sabai-dee, sawat-dee etc. dee maak? The best one was drong-bai straight ahead, for some unaccountable reason I hate lessons about directions I skip them, but I listened to one once and though nothing had sunk in, then watching a video where it was pretty obvious that someone was giving directions I heard drong-bai, knew what it meant and won't forget it.

Starting to desconstruct and reconstruct, once knew that tam-nan was to work, tam-ahan make food, then realized that ahan was food nan could be used separately as could tam. Know enough words now to hold some phrase like rau jeur gan mau-rai dee? when shall we meet? Listening to a lesson where they are going to tell me how to say "feels very good" my mind automatically fills in roo-suk dee maak part of me is thinking can roo-suk be used that way or is just for feeling something like pom roo-suk blur) turns out it can be used that way.

Heard sa-nook dee, guessing this means good fun (it seems right in context), heard sa-nook a few times now wonder if you can say sa-nook dee maak? I like playing like this sa-nook na.

lots of choob and mai choob like, don't like. pom choob rian pasa thai!

Heard apple, one of the lesson hosts somewhere is called apple the mp3s start off sawat dee ka, chan chu apun. So whem I hear a couple of guys talking about ipods and iphones then hear apun I can be pretty sure they are talking about Apple. So the fruit starts, but I don't want to go too far down that route. ;)

Brain dump over

The vast majority of what I listen to still means nothing to me, the brain dump above is just to demonstrate that stuff is happening because as I keep saying watching a video of a guy with head phones on would be pretty boring. the phonetics I am using are non-standard, possibly borrowing a little from what I have seen in places, the brain dump of observations is far from everything but hopefully enough for demonstration purposes of the methodology for now.

Lao is Thai-ish

To be fair I should also say Thai is a bit Lao-ish. Having got to the point where Thai doesn't sound foreign I want to start extending my ear for Thai. I will start looking for examples of dialects, accents etc. I read somewhere that Lao language is closely related to Thai which seemed a good starting point. I have done similar whilst learning Chinese the idea I had is simply that that listening around the boundaries of the language help me to understand the sounds of the language even better. Of course eventually this listening may actually help if I get into a conversation with someone who has that regional accent, dialect etc. Watch the video above to demonstrate my point (classical Spanish indeed :)).

So now for the analysis bit, the bit that hurts but at least provides the slightest chance that anyone will believe I actually get anything out of this madness. I listened to some Lao language (radio) without finding out much at all about it before hand. It sounds very like Thai (not rocket science), they use sa-bai-dee instead of sa-wat-dee for greeting (or at least they can... I have never heard this in Thai unless it is a question about how someone is sa-bai-dee mai?. Lao language doesn't seem to have the Krap and Ka polite words (or a least at a much less lower frequency than Thai). The numbers seems superficially the same (may be tone differences in a one or two).

Then I listened to some lessons on Youtube, which was interesting, the pronouns (wow I know a grammar word) are different. Significantly two people teaching Lao seemed to have poor accents, judging from their English I would say they are second generation Lao brought up in American, a European guy actually sounded more authentic. Of course I am basing this entirely on having listened to a lot of Thai so I may be talking rubbish.

That is probably enough Lao for now.

Thai is Thai and I am Thai

Introduction

I listen to a lot of the language I am learning, apparently this does not translate very well to the web: "hey guys here is a video of me listening to Thai, can you see the headphones?, and here is another video of me listening whilst watering the vegetables in their raised beds". Followed by the incredibly exciting "here is the full two hours video of me listening whilst working, it looks a lot like a guy programming for two hours but spot the headphones!". Now here is the exciting bit I actually don't understand hardly anything yet! I was really enthusiastic at the prospect of releasing these videos, I thought they would go down a storm on Youtube, friends and family members advised me against this though...

So although I know that analyzing the process doesn't help me, it is the only way to capture what is happening. First real milestone is that Thai is Thai.

Resistance is useless, I cannot speak Thai in English, I cannot think Thai in English, I may use English or Chinese as a scaffolding or a fuzzy definition but I should be aiming to lose that. So when studying Thai I am Thai, how can I possibly resist my own language.

Thai is Thai

The first step for me, Thai no longer sounds a little Welsh or a little Cantonese in places, it sounds like Thai. I wanted this to happen as early a possible so that I am not studying a foreign language. Of course Thai is not Thai to me in the same way as it is to a Thai person (for a start they actually understand it) and a Thai person has a wider filter for dialects, regional variations, age variations, styles of speaking etc. etc. But it is no longer foreign.

As most English people I can easily say that German is German, French is French, not being able to say that Thai is Thai was one of my biggest initial hurdles. A hurdle that I think is vastly underestimated. When I meet someone who studied Japanese for three years at school and then later for two years at night classes and they tell me that they can't understand real world Japanese because "they talk too fast" I know that for them Japanese is not Japanese yet, which after five years is a shame don't you think? If Japanese was Japanese to them they they could just apply all that vocab they had learned and understand fairly easily, but because Japanese is not Japanese they can't understand even the words they think they know when they study them in pristine isolation and slow motion.

I am Thai

When studying or thinking about Thai, I am Thai, in my head I am Thai. I explain away the obvious problems with this statement by imagining that I have had some sort of brain trauma that has left me with little or no memory of my own language or culture, but has left me with the English and some Chinese that I learned previously (so at least I can think Phewww), I bet the brain freaks would like to get a hold of the imaginary me. As for the physical side, well I just would just have to mumble about recessive genes, complicated family history and try to change the subject as fast as possible coff.

Being Thai, I am obviously somewhat upset that I have to re-learn my mother tongue, but there is no real resistance to the language, no unfavorable comparisons, no moaning about it (unless I am having a bad day, I always reserve the right to have bad days). Significantly there is no embarrassment about trying to sound Thai (after all that is what I am). There is considerable embarrassment though about sounding English (damn that hurts), let's hope I don't have to undergo that forever.

Third Week Learning Thai

Still continuing with much the same activities, however again seems to to have dropped off a little. Partly because the background listening and to some extent the attentive listening didn't seem so important. I expect this to change soon. I had have already passed one big hurdle (more on this in a separate post). I have discovered Lao language (why? you may ask) which also requires another post to explain.

Chinese has eaten in the Thai study, but that was expected, having said that I can categorically state that I have made more progress in Thai in the first three weeks than I did in Chinese, which is encouraging. The reasons for the faster progress are probably down to knowing what I need to do (based on experience) and being a little better at it (most things get easier with practice).

Still slowly discovering things resources, moving from Bakunin learns Thai to the interestingly named sweet and coolbeans where Josh has started putting together a list of Thai TV shows for learners of Thai. A great list of resources that I am sure I will be using very much soon. The Youtube video above is from one of the cartoon series linked to, not the mobile phone one though (see below) :). before I open up this blog I will take trouble put a list of best resources in the sidebar.

Observations

I am not going to add much here because I know that there will be a bunch of observations in the week four post (I know that because I am a week behind ;)) More of a fairly typical event, muur-tuu was a sound that I had noticed before (the tones and vowels make it sound quite distinctive) I think it was in one of the podcast lessons I listened to also. One of the cartoons I randomly visited taught me that is a mobile phone (maybe other phone as well?). Another acquired word and after seeing a cartoon pig buy one for his friend quite hard to forget ;)

Addition: 20/04/2010 thought this was worth noting, after discovering a word via an interesting sound or experience I usually find it is easy to start adding related words around it so now muur-tuu is mobile phone and tora-sap is phone.

Do I need a teacher to study Thai

Waiting for a course

I have met a number of people, who claim that they wish to learn this language or that language, but they are waiting for a course. "I hear they are going to start a Mandarin course in September so I am waiting for that to start" for example. Why wait? We know that plenty of people around the world learn second or third languages without a course, and with the Internet you can find your own content so why wait? The typical answer would be something along the lines of "I don't want to do anything wrong", what can this mean? are they afraid that they are going to "break" Italian somehow, render is unusable to anybody. At the very least what harm could just listening to language do? Apparently some people are of the opinion that even this is risky without trained supervision. To be fair some languages can be a little tough, an innocent bystander just listening to an argument in Afrikaans could come away with bruises and minor flesh wounds.

Do I need a class?

I have attended one class in Mandarin (just the one evening) and in the pursuit of further knowledge I recently listened to a bunch of recorded lessons from one of the Confucius Institutes, I also remember studying how not to speak languages at school and an Italian course that was provided for me by my Employers many, many, many years ago. The most striking thing is that you spend a lot of time listening to other students being stupid or waiting for other students to catch up because they are being stupid. To be fair they have to wait when I am being stupid but the cumulative effect of all the stupidity is a huge waste of time. You need an excellent teacher and/or an excellent curriculum to even start counteracting the stupidity and if god forbid the teacher is a little stupid then everybody is DOOMED.

My next problem is the content, I want to choose it. I remember doing the Italian course having to learn a bunch of stuff about airports and meeting people from planes. I had no interest or use but had to learn it because the teacher rated our progress. I dropped out of the course.

So do I need a teacher?

That depends on how you define teacher, I have listened to lots of material on Youtube for example, every single one of those people was a teacher of sorts, every Thai person I may meet and talk with is potentially a teacher, everybody I may meet on Skype at sometime could be a teacher. A confidante, a trusted friend can be a powerful teacher. Recently I have had a Chinese teacher with whom I can pick a topic and talk to for an hour, that is a valuable experience. In the classic sense, in the classroom sense however I do not see the need for a teacher.

Doubting to speak Thai?

Will speaking too early damage my Thai?

There is some discussion over when you should first start to speak a foreign language. I am siding with the "when you feel ready" camp at the moment, I certainly don't feel that people should be forced to speak in classes etc. The flip side of course is that until you do speak and indeed use the language for communication then you haven't actually achieved speaking a language, you are standing on the edge of the precipice shuffling your feet and checking the knot on the bungee rope for the umpteenth time but you have not jumped. Just my opinion but I would even go so far as to say that written communication doesn't count, language starts with sound in my world. I would agree with Benny who strongly feels that a fear of speaking holds back a lot of language learners but I think this fear is just one of two great fears (more on the other one later). And I do feel that the solution is not necessarily to make people force themselves to speak.

I didn't attempt to speak to anyone for a little over three months when learning Chinese (and that was too early), and would probably do the same for Thai except that I wanted to experiment (more on my first Thai words at some point). Actually I find that I don't actually practice out aloud much at all, I like to get the sounds in my head first, even to the extent that when I tried some Pimsleur in Chinese I would just say the responses in my head I didn't feel like opening my mouth at all.

You can read more about some misconception and the ALG approach at the AUA Thai blog in a post entitled Forbidden to Speak! – (and comments about Steve and Benny). Interestingly I think that there is a suggestion that you are not even supposed to think about the language (impossible in my case or though I could certainly analyse it less than I have had to, to write these blog posts). In practicing to speak out aloud a little, I noticed one very significant fact though. Prior to attempting to practice the pronunciation of the few words that I knew in my head the words that I considered I knew were the sounds of the Thai speakers I heard. Focusing on speaking the words were replaced with my interpretation. Not good at all, this is only my experience but could this be what causes many to fall short of native sounding language if they speak too early?

If it is the case that the problem is simply one of replacing good sounds with imperfect then all I need to do is switch them back again, perhaps not a trivial task but more listening seems to fix it, and if this is the problem awareness is my best defense.

Note: 06/06/2010

When I start a new language I now know when to speak.

Second Week of Thai

The second week learning Thai included much of the same activities, I had a bit less time than the first week unfortunately, work started to bite into time ridiculously and I can't help continuing the Chinese ;). Lots more listening and watching both real Thai and various lessons etc. and as usual much of it fitting into otherwise dead time. During the second week I have started looking for things I am going to need later on in my studies, including blogs written by Thai learnings. For example Bakunin learns Thai. It was from Bakunin's blog I learned about the videos at fukduk.tv I think I will like the videos on channel 12, I have watched the one embedded above twice now (haven't go a clue what she is saying apart from the obvious visual cues), I suspect this aspect of my learning is still going to confuse many people.

Week 2 also included the second contact, a tiny tiny attempt to speak Thai to a Thai. Will write up a post on these soon promise. This is almost certainly the last speaking experiment for a while particularly as I think I now know why ALG approach recommends not speaking language you are learing in the early stages (another post on the way).

Observations

More stuff I shouldn't be doing (thinking too much about the process) regarding Thai language it no longer sounds like anything else, just Thai (this is very encouraging). In the video embedded above, as in many other sources now I can pick out a few words, not enough to be useful. Early on she says a number, five hundred and fifty three, the first time I watched it I heard fifty three, but then I found out a meaning for that roi sound I like so now I hear five hundred and fifty three. Of course she may be saying a bigger number I have not got that far yet, in fact I have not actually deliberately sat down to learn Thai numbers in any systematic way at all.

Timings

I am going to stop logging times in posts and record them in the sidebar of this blog, time to get a little more organized. The timings for the first week are copied below.
Listening: 8.5h
Background listen: 10.0h
Video: 3h
Lessons: 6h
Conversation: 15s

That is a shock, it means in the first week I spent over 25hrs learning Thai, how is that possible? I was shocked at first but thinking on it the background listening is easy to rack up hours, can listen to Thai whilst working (not in meetings of course), listen to Thai whilst writing these blog posts, whilst shopping etc. etc. Attentive listening is a little more focused but can be done whilst driving, walking, about to drop off to sleep and I was aided heavily in the first week by the fact that my family put up with Thai in the car whilst I was driving them places. Video, well I watched a film that accounts for some, technically some of my video gets logged to one or other form of listening, because there is a lot of content on Youtube and I may be playing that in the background whilst doing something else on the computer. Don't feel sorry for me I put a lot more EFFORT into writing blog posts than learning Thai.

Edit: 16/06/2010 I have added a book category to my timings, that will cover reading books about Thai etc. Eventually I guess I will need to add a further for actually reading Thai books etc.

Edit 01/06/2010: I hated trying to do timings, I don't think I even did a very goods job a few of the figures don't quite add up. In theory it should be simple, I am a computer programmer after all, however I like to be random and spontaneous. I think my timings are near enough to still be useful for the first eight weeks but am stopping any effort to maintain them. Going forward I may put forward some finger in the air estimates.

Three movies

Great action and stunts, the girl lead character has an annoying voice, though.

The Films

The first week I rewarded myself with a Thai film, Ong Bak the Beginning, a Tony Jaar movie.
The next week my wife was going out with some friends on Thursday evening leaving me to my own devices, my sons are big enough and ugly enough to look after themselves or in the case of the older two go out and come back past my bedtime ;) so I picked up two more Tony Jarr movies on special offer for £5. The movies were the original Ong Bak and Warrior King, note I could have picked them up even cheaper on Amazon.

I watched Ong Bak the Beginning twice the first time on my own the second time with my eldest son, he is into martial arts, street acrobatics and free running so loved the film and we could talk about the stunts etc. I am getting fit again with his help and can teach him a few martial art tricks. Now I am happy in this case to run the English subs, pure input exponents won't like this but I will address this in a later post, I was paying attention to the Thai language a lot, obviously I could not understand hardly anything but am getting used to the flow and sounds, a few tiny bits I could understand for example "I understand" he says, "good" the master replies.

That Thursday was fun I enjoyed both the other films, probably better material because they are in a contemporary setting, Warrior King has a couple of long sequences of Mandarin Chinese which was annoying, a slap in the face (look how much Chinese you can understand, it is going to switch back to to Thai in a minute and you will understand next to NOTHING) get thee behind me Satan, I dispelled the voices and returned to focusing on meaningless babble.

The Point

I will watch the other two films again soon and then watch them all again in a few weeks, my input methodology will shock some with the amount of hours effort that I seem to be putting in but for example these three films x 2 = about 9 hours attentive listening. No work no effort, I enjoyed them all and would have enjoyed them even if not learning Thai (my son had watched a few clips of Tony Jaa shared with his free running friends anyway and has been pestering me for a while to watch the movies). A lot of my other listening is in otherwise dead time.