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.

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.

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.

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.