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.

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.

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.

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.

First Week Learning Thai

Heisenbergs blogging principle?

Blogging like this is hard, it takes time and I am sure that the observation changes the process, probably in an adverse way. Having said that it is a lot easier to observe what and why I am learning as I apply what I learned about languages in Chinese to a new language.

The observation of others in this initial eight week period would change things even more, which is why this blog is closed to the outside world for now.
I have to speed type and brain dump from my notes and memories, apologies for spelling/grammar issues as ever.

Brain overload

I managed to trigger a brain overload event at the end of the first week, learning Thai, Mandarin and learning a lot of new tech stuff to apply at work resulted in a very heavy sleep on Friday night with a groggy Saturday and a head full of vivid dreams from the night before (I put this down to a lot of re-wiring of neurons and laying down memories).
On Thursday evening I had over an hours conversation in Mandarin that went very well, but bizarrely blanked a couple of simple words, by Friday I was even blanking a couple of English words. Fortunately by Sunday my mind was much fresher.

First contact

Thursday I spoke my first Thai to a Thai, both highly significant and an anti-climax, more on this in a later post I will lump this together with sound recordings with my second contact (occurred the following week).

Reward

On the first Saturday I rewarded my-self with my first Thai film, more on this and two more films in a later post. The first steps towards effortless learning.

Time on job

Mostly listening and finding a bunch more lessons on Youtube and the like. Very happy to find some Thai with the Mandarin subs, I think this series (see below) will feature a lot in my study in the following weeks, it is also available with English subs. but I can use it to practice Mandarin reading at the same time. One way to maintain my Mandarin effort whilst learning Thai.

During the last few days of this period, approximately 2.5 hours attentive listening to real Thai, 3 hours listening to various lessons, 3 hours non-attentive listening and 3 hours video (with either English or Chinese subs), 15s conversation.

Observations

Going to put more observations in a post to follow regarding a cow and a shopping basket (bet that got your attention).

• Having picked up ti ni, have now got ti nai (where). Not sure how exclusive these sounds are but they seem to be fairly at least.
• One meaning for that roi sound I heard and liked is a hundred (wonder if there are more).
• More attuned to ka and krab/b particularly paying attention to where they are not used (obviously Thai people don't ram them on the end of every sentance) also interested to see ka use for yes as in "yes I am coming" (Chinese laile).

The Next Three Days Learning Thai

How to record progress

I have to be careful, I want to leave a reasonable record and reflection of what I did and what happened but I have to strike some kind of balance. Blogging takes time, family takes time, work takes time, and learning Chinese takes time this means that learning Thai is very much a part-time hobby. Alongside this I am reading an huge amount of language learning blog posts. By necessity my posts will be off-the-cuff and speed typed with many smelling and mistakes grammar (elegant writing is not so important as recording information and impressions).

Time on Job

The next three days learning Thai I am working, I have some chance to listen to Thai whilst at work. And some free time. For this period I am going to log 10 hours inattentive listening, 2 hours attentive listening, and 4 hours listening to various pod casts and lessons on Youtube or Itunes. Mostly I am letting the lessons wash over me but picking up a few things. All the various timings will be summarized at some point. Conversation 0mins. I can't log speaking in my head or thinking about Thai (that will happen a lot). Speaking to myself means out aloud, I don't do this much there is little point (imho) worrying about or practicing to pronounce a language I don't know the sound of yet (would I expect to be able to play blues guitar from a book and listening to a few riffs If I hadn't listened to and appreciated blues music?).
Most of the free lesson stuff won't help much in the long run, it will load me with some vocab. though, generally there is far too much English, the following youtube lessons from Bon suffer from far too much English however they are better than most and Bon's English ability shows that she at least understands about language learning from a personal perspective.

The web is littered with sites that say they have methods and courses to teach you perfect Mandarin etc. in the shortest possible time and yet have sound clips and articles from their teachers in poor English (why not use the same methods themselves). Go for it Bon...

Observations

Most of what I get from listening to real Thai is going to be sub-conscious but still very tangible to me. I also strongly suspect that thinking about it too much is counter-productive. Remember that a lot of this listening is in dead time where I couldn't have studied in any other way.

• Still sounding a little Welsh or Norse (whatever that means). Mostly doesn't sound Cantonese at all now (so something has resolved in there).
• Based on a few words I know I can hear a little variation and funkiness with some sounds b/p endings ch/t beginnings to words, similar to how I sometimes hear a little p in the ta of Mandarin, specially with some speakers.
• I knew that sawatdee could be used for goodbye as well a hello and that krab/p or ka could be used for yes before anyone told me (the best way to find out).
• looking for more easy to spot words, still don't know what roi means but my timmi  (closer to tini) means here or similar. The first time I heard it was said a little like the cry of "Timmmy" from the South Park character. Basically I suspect that every language has a bunch of words that are distinct enough to be picked out easily (I found gongzuo, pengyou .... in Mandarin).
• Going out on a limb (and I know it is a perilous limb) I suspect that Thai speakers generally pronounce words relatively clearly (with a range of course) compared to other Asian languages I have heard. In a similar way that French speakers find it acceptable to slur their own language yet German is usually pronounced fairly clearly even when spoken fast. If true this is going to be a huge help :).

The First Two Days Learning Thai

In the light of potential comparison to the speak early, learn in the country approach, I will need to adjust my intended method somewhat, within an eight week period I would only expect to be listening with very little other learning. I have already blogged about how how important listening was to me when I started learning Mandarin. The problem with just listening for 8 weeks is that it is hard to analyze the advantage I get, even if I know it is there. Besides I think I known how to avoid damage from attempting to talk too early... or rather I hope I do.

Having said that the last Saturday and Sunday, the free time I had was devoted almost entirely to listening, I don't look for explanations or vocab. I am going to log 2 hours for each day of attentive listening to a variety of sources (variety is important here) but also have fixed on a small selection of spoken stories from spokenthai.com that I found as podcasts on my Ipod (these will be one of the sources I return to often).

How can I listen to hours of material I completely fail to understand? Because I am actively getting used to the sounds slowly the mush of sounds starts to resolve and unravel.

• listening for common sounds
• listening for word boundries
• listening for sentance boundries
• male sounds, female sounds, children, old people
• listening for conjugates and loan words
• listening for names, emotion, formal speech (news) etc. etc.

How can I explain, the language slows down the sounds become more distinct, and I notice things.

The rolled r (some speakers seem to drop this). The tones, at least one funky one there. The similarity to Cantonese (I speak very little Cantonese but I know the sound. The more formal spoken language sometimes sounds a little Welsh (bizarrely). Some females especially seem to put those Cantonese type noises on the end. I don't know the romanization but hearing some numbers sipgao sipsam (youtube had a video, Thai numbers for Cantonese speakers, had a quick first intro. already). A guy and a girl say sipgao she put a little Cantonese feel and stretches out the gaaaooo (but also just slightly Welsh ;)). What does roi mean (love the sound) what does tiimmii mean?

I have improved at this even after six hours or so it has all slowed down, almost to a point where if feels they are speaking too slowly (it will speed again when I start to understand a little unfortunately), even so I have the suspicion that the Thai radio presenters speak a little slower than Chinese ones, bit more laid back.

Writing this I am logging some less attentive listening, listening to Thai radio online.

I meet so many language learners who have been learning for years and yet moan that they still can't cope with understanding the language they are studying at full speed. Why not sort that out first, ironically I think it is easy to get used to it when there is no burden of attemped understanding.

A good start, game on Thai, I have no fear, I have no pressure, no stress, no danger.

There is so much more I could have written, I bet Thai has more sounds than Mandarin more than Cantonese, I hear some loan words (Nuclear, Europe etc. etc) the Thais seem to be armed with enough sounds to pronounce these types of words better than the Chinese and significantly better than the Japanese discovering these things for myself is far more important than reading about it.

I am concious of learning so much this way, imagine how much I may be absorbing unconciously.