Women Learning Thai… and some men too ;-)

You are browsing the archives of 2009 June.

“Mai pen rai” means “no problem” or “no worries”… All languages are pointers to understanding the culture of a country or nation, and the Thai language is an excellent example of this. However, it is important to understand that an awareness of the culture, is also essential in understanding how to interpret the language. The [...]

Google goes virtual with Thai keyboards… If you look under my resources nav at the top of WLT, you’ll find a new page: Thai Keyboard Input. The Thai keyboard is all thanks to the coders at Google, with their AJAX Language API. As you can see, they have all sorts of programming bits on offer: [...]

Expat Guide on twitter, tweets… Today, Sharon Gilor (expatsguide), tweeted Glen’s Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Expats. I have noticed in strangers, friends, and yes, even myself, seven habits that I think make you a very ineffective expat. My rookie year in China is nearing a close, so I plan on making a New Year’s [...]

As you can see from the graphic above, you have have the guts of the crossword at the top, then the Across and Down, and below that are solutions in English. But the solutions are only hints, not answers. To get the answers you need to go to the back of the book, where they [...]

Here we go with quick and dirty… Don’t you just love free? But before I get to the free Quick & Dirty Thai Vocabulary download, I want to clarify a few things. Mainly, what quick and dirty actually means. Wiki: The phrase is frequently used in describing any document or tutorial that gives a brief [...]

Learning new languages… When we learn new languages we develop new language centres in the brain. Some years ago this was graphically demonstrated in research by Karl Kim and colleagues at Cornell using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). They showed that second languages acquired in adulthood had a spatial separation (in the frontal lobe) of [...]

Baby bird watching and the Streak-eared Bulbul… Following on from my previous post: Baby Bird Watching in Bangkok… I don’t know my birds – Thai birds or otherwise – so I asked on the local Thai forum. Rather quickly, someone in the know responded that it was a Streak-eared Bulbul. As there isn’t much information [...]

Birds come and birds go… The Wednesday before last, my housekeeper came running into the living room all excited (I know it was a Wednesday because it is the only day I have someone in to clean). ‘นก มา! นก มา!’ Translation: Bird come! Bird come! Waving her arms for me to follow, we went [...]

The power of learning languages… Before I start the interview, I’d like to share a quote Myke has in the prefaces of The Quick and Dirty Guide to Learning Languages Fast. “He who learns another language earns another soul” When I first read the quote, my heart glowed. And then I grinned. Wow. Now, just [...]

While I am waiting for the Myke Hawke’s Quick and Dirty Guide to Learning Languages Fast files to be checked over, I thought that I would share a hilarious Tylenol ad that touches on tones. The importance of tones… Some of us (most of us?) who are learning Thai are afraid of saying the wrong [...]