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issanking
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the grasshopers should be left in the bush, lovely noise for dozing off !!!
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Bangkok Women : Meet Sensual Bangkok Women
Posted on: 9:30 pm on Nov. 25, 2004
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Mr Dave
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I'm learning there is a huge difference between knowing how to say a few Thai phrases and understanding what is said to me in Thai.
Hotel desk clerks and office staff respond very nicely to my request, "please speak slowly".
Then I can understand some of what they say.
But when I've asked that of waitress in bar or girl in massage shop, I still could not understand anything. Why not?
Recently the answer became clear: When I asked massage shop girl to speak slowly, a different girl nearby looked at me and laughed, "She speak Isaan, not speak Thai!" Different dialect - to Western ears might as well be different language.
For learning Thai, I've taken two months of lessons at TLA School in Silom Road. Excellent classes, well-organized teachers, focused lessons, clean, comfortable classrooms.
All the courses at TLA are intensive. Each one-month course meets everyday, Monday-Friday, for 3-4 hours. Cost ranges from 5,000-6,000 baht: a good value for the money.
Location is near BTS Sala Daeng station, Subway Silom station, across from Patpong and Bangkok Christian Hospital.
I have been attending there for two months. For a first introduction to Thai, it has been excellent. I highly recommend TLA language school.
http://www.tlaschool.com/home.html
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Thai Girls : Meet Sexy Thai Girls
Posted on: 12:56 am on Nov. 28, 2004
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waxhead
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As a part Thai with frankly fairly crappy Thai skills, I would say, learn how to read and write if you are serious about learning Thai.
Without tones, you'll be stuck as soon as you progress beyond the "farang poot gaeng mahk" stage with your "bahk wahn gon brio" type jokes said about 3 times because the tones/vowel lengths are off.
I have only met maybe 2 farangs I can think of ever, who can speak Thai properly. (and plenty of part Thais like myself who butcher things up real good). But they were born here - the bits that throw us off (non Thai speakers) :
- vowel length (short and long)
- tone
- sounds not found in english (ngor, bpor, dtor) or other languages
Without the Thai writing system, it gets mighty hard to figure out these 3 things (actually even with it it is easy to get screwed up!).
It takes a month to learn the alphabet from scratch, and you can practise every time you see a Thai sign, menu etc etc. After that, you have a huge headstart on the "gaeng mahk" farangs hanging around learning Thai from their girlfriends, workmates, etc just by ear. At a certain point, there are too many words to remember (pariticularly if you start office work here) and without some other associations (such as how it is written) life gets mighty hard.
IMHO of course!
And the tones and vowel length take a lot of time - taping and listening to yourself, might help. If you can master the mah mah mah mah mah (flat, low, falling, high, rising) tones - ask a Thai to say 100 times, then at least you know what you are aiming for.
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Bangkok Girls : Meet Sexy Bangkok Girls
Posted on: 7:00 am on Dec. 21, 2004
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waxhead
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bkkz
YOu might like to try some other words as well for your tone practice exercise you are introducing, that the people around here will have an incentive to learn - words that they relate to so to speak.
For instance, Thai people know little about snow, so talking about snow is not that good. But they know a lot about say, hot weather, so talking about hot weather they can relate to.
Therefore I suggest the following words for tone practise:
1. Hee
2. Hoi
3. Jim
4. Ju
What do you think? I think it will work better than jaa or other words.
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Bangkok Women : Meet Beautiful Thai Girls
Posted on: 3:41 am on Jan. 11, 2005
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Whisper
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Excellent advice from brother Waxhead about learning to speak Thai.
Those wishing to learn to speak Thai should definitely learn to read the language first (and possibly write it while they are at it) as it will definitely help with producing the correct tones when speaking.
They should wean themselves from the romanised version of written Thai as soon as possible because
(1) there is no indication of the correct tone when this is done
(2) you will never see Thai written this way during your everyday life.
If we can picture the Thai word in our head written in Thai then this is much more efficient than picturing it in English and then f***ing up the pronunciation (or trying to guess what it is).
If you haven't discovered already, Thai people expect you to speak Thai 100% correctly and if you do not they will not try to guess what you are saying (as we do with them) but just say they don't understand you.
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Bangkok Girls : Meet Attractive Thai Girls
Posted on: 2:40 am on Jan. 12, 2005
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sorapong
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Quote: from waxhead on 3:35 pm on Jan. 11
Therefore I suggest the following words for tone practise:
1. Hee
2. Hoi
3. Jim
4. Ju
i'm fascinated. can you give us, say, three examples, hopefully ones that might exemplify various tones, for each of the "words", or syllables, you suggest?
i'm not being sarcastic (yet), but would really like to see how you think these particular words/syllables/particles would be useful.
thanks
s
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Thai Girls : Meet Active Thai Girls
Posted on: 5:02 am on Jan. 12, 2005
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waxhead
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Dear Khun Sorapong
Clearly, these are just for laughs. The key in the joke is to explain something like
I just learned tones of Thai.
The person says really?
And then you can reply... yes
mah mah mah mah mah
jah jah jah jah jah
and then onto some of these combos
hee hee hee hee... you get the idea (without saying the last rude one).
Hilarious stuff. My family laugh every time I tell this joke - they never get sick of it. Ever. Really.
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Thai Women : Meet Matured Thai Women
Posted on: 7:28 am on Jan. 12, 2005
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