Women Learning Thai… and some men too ;-)

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Interviewing Successful Thai Language Learners… Name: Gareth Marshall Nationality: British Age range: 30-40 Sex: Male Location: Bangkok Profession: Magazine editor Website: www.director-thailand.com What is your Thai level? All a bit mixed up, really. Overall I’d say intermediate, although I practice writing rarely, if ever. Do you speak more street Thai, Issan Thai, or professional Thai? [...]

Thai Tone Twisters… A lot of Thai learners are familiar with a number of tongue twisters that illustrate how different tones and consonants can make for different meanings of Thai words. One of the most familiar is ใครขายไข่ไก่ /krai kǎai kài gài/ which means, “Who sells the chicken eggs?” Just the other day I was [...]

Interviewing Successful Thai Language Learners… Name: Martin Clutterbuck Nationality: British Age range: 40-50 Sex: Male Location: Bangkok Profession: PR Website/blog: Siamese Cats: Legends and Reality Book: The Legend of Siamese Cats What is your Thai level? Fluent, but shy of bilingual Do you speak more street Thai, Issan Thai, or professional Thai? Early on, I [...]

Old Snake Heads and Butterflies of the Night… The Thai language is as rich in metaphor as any language is. The kinds of metaphors that you will come into contact with will all depend on what level of society you hang out with. It is a good idea to keep the drinking buddies’ metaphors separate [...]

Stu’s impressive multilingual presentation… In case you’ve missed it, this week on WLT has been back-to-back Stu Jay Raj: Monday: Stuart (Stu) Jay Raj: Interview Part One Wednesday: Stuart (Stu) Jay Raj: Interview Part Two Friday: Successful Thai Language Learners: Stuart (Stu) Jay Raj And if you live in Thailand, then you’ll know that it’s [...]

Interviewing Successful Thai Language Learners… Name: Stuart (Stu) Jay Raj Nationality: Fijian Indian / Australian Age range: 30-40 Sex: Male Location: Anywhere and Everywhere Profession: TV Host / Cross Cultural Business Consultant   Web: Behind the Curtain stujaystujay’s YouTube Channel Note: As this is the final post of a three part interview, some of the [...]

Interview with polyglot Stu Jay Raj… Heads-up everyone: This post is a continuation of Stuart (Stu) Jay Raj: Interview Part One.   Stu, with Cracking Thai Fundamentals and now Mnidcraft, you’ve taught the Thai language to expats for some time. In your experience, which learning difficulties are the most common?   The writing system always [...]

Interview with polyglot Stu Jay Raj… When I moved to Bangkok I was fortunate to discover Stu Jay Raj’s Cracking Thai Fundamentals course located at that time on Suk Soi 1. Once a week for eight weeks I’d jump on the MRT to travel into the bowels of Bangkok for an hour of hilarious fun. [...]

Interviewing Successful Thai Language Learners… Name: Herb Purnell Nationality: American Age range: 70+ Sex: Male Location: Currently in Chiangrai March to mid-April 2010, then Bangkok to the end of August, then to the U.S. Profession: Retired from university teaching in applied linguistics but still active in field language projects in Thailand. Current projects include producing [...]

The new YouTube kid in town: Learn Thai with Bon… Noticing her new learning Thai videos on YouTube, I contacted Bon Ratta back in February, for a mid-March post. But… the Red Shirts happened – something is always happening in Thailand, yes? – so I’m coming in late. Again. Apologies Bon! In Learn Thai the [...]

Telling Tails – Thai Ending Particles… It is important to learn how to use Thai ending particles. The most common and well known are ครับ /kráp/ (for males) and คะ /ká/ (for females). They are used as a “politeness tag” at the end of sentences. Ending particles are also known as หางเสียง /hăang sĭang/ (tail [...]

Advanced Thai listening practice… Last week I posted Gaccha’s Thai Reading and Listening materials. And as mentioned, Gaccha’s aim is to encourage others to create more Thai learnings materials. To show what else is possible, here’s Gaccha’s Pulp Fiction YouTube video (below). Creating videos such as these can be extremely time-consuming, so thanks Gaccha! A [...]

Tip Number 1: Take your time, enjoy your studies… “Why does it have to be sooooooo hard?” “Why does it have to take sooooooo long?” Maybe we need a little attitude adjustment…? Maybe we need to listen more carefully…? Most of us do have nearly excellent hearing skills for normal conversational volume… BUT, most of [...]

Talking Thai on the telephone… It probably took me ten years before I could understand anything anyone said on the telephone here in Thailand. It’s not the language. My wife had the same problem in English when she got to America. It is just really hard dealing with a disembodied voice and not seeing the [...]