Women Learning Thai… and some men too ;-)

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Interviewing Successful Thai Language Learner: Aaron Le Boutillier… Name: Aaron Le Boutillier Nationality: British Age: 40 Sex: Male Location: Bangkok Profession: Security Consultant Website: Le Boutillier Group Products: Women’s Self Defense, Hijack Management, Disruptive Passenger Management and Law Enforcement Training What is your Thai level? Intermediate. Do you speak more street Thai, Issan Thai, or [...]

Is that a กัน /gan/ in your pocket?… One thing I like to do as a vocabulary building exercise is when I come across a word that I find is often used paired up with other words (making compounds) I like to see how many different combinations I can come up with. Of course it [...]

Thais Learning Thai… This is part 2 of 2 absolutely fabulous posts. If you landed here first, you might want to head over to Part 1: Thais Learning Thai: Kaewmala from Thai Talk. Part 2: Kaewmala from Thai Talk… As a native Thai speaker learning Thai, how do you go about it? Probably in a [...]

Here we go… the third Thai language draw… Apologies for this post going late. Yesterday I showed interest when asked if I wanted to take photos of the flooding in Thailand (where else?) Well, seems the main flooding was not in Bangkok. Surprised? Me too. So even though we departed at 9am sharp, after scrambling [...]

Interviewing Successful Thai Language Learners… Name: Ryan Zander Nationality: American Age range: 30-40 Sex: Male Location: Yokohama, Japan Profession: Teacher, podcast host, app developer Website/blog: thaipod101.com, Nagaraja Rivers Products: Thai language learning podcasts at thaipod101.com, Reading Thai and Read Thai Alphabet iPhone apps What is your Thai level? I’ll say “conversational”. My vocabulary is still [...]

Thai-English English-Thai Software Dictionary… In September Chris and Benjawan gifted readers at WLT with two of their new software dictionaries, so I announced them with a draw: Win a FREE Thai-English English-Thai Software Dictionary. Amy Praphantanathorn (Expat Women in Thailand) and Talen (Thailand Land of Smiles) did the honours (thanks you two!) The lucky winners [...]

Karn.TV: A FREE education resource for Thai kids… and me… Karn.TV is a fun educational site for Thai kids. It has lessons for English, maths, science, art, music, crafts, sports, pets, and Thai. In the art section you can paint and learn how to draw (funny sounds are included). In the science section you are [...]

British Ambassadors going out with a bang… Going around the Thai expat community this week are scans from Parting Shots, a collection of parting comments from British diplomats. Diplomatic opinions such as these were popular with expats when I lived on Borneo, and back even further, when I lived in France (only via snail mail, [...]

Interviewing Successful Thai Language Learners… Name: Joe Cummings Nationality: American Sex: Male Location: Bangkok and Chiang Mai Profession: Editor/writer/musician Website: www.joecummings.com What is your Thai level? On a 5-point oral proficiency scale, I’d rate 4.5 (near-native). I manage academic reading just fine, and write well enough for emails, notes, etc, but not at an academic [...]

Watching Educational Thai TV on YouTube… The many ways to learn Thai thrills me. On top of course books and online Thai lessons, there is YouTube, iTunes and all the iProducts (iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch, iPad, etc), recording devices, video software, and… what else? As I no longer have a teenager in the house my [...]

The Do-Be-Do-Be-Do system of learning Thai tones… (Apologies to Frank Sinatra) If language were like a song, then the vocabulary and grammar of the language would be the words. The vowels, consonants, syllable stress and sentence intonation in English, and the tones in Thai would be the music. You really have to sing both the [...]

Interviewing Successful Thai Language Learners… Name: Hamish Chalmers Nationality: British Age range: 30-40 Sex: Male  Location: Bangkok Profession: EAL Faculty Head Website/blog: Tweet Yourself Thai Twitter: @AjarnPasa What is your Thai level? In the language world we have two basic benchmarks between no language and full fluency. These are BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and CALPs [...]

A Sticky Problem… I was reading one of those Thai expat blogs recently when I came across someone discussing the Thai word for “stingy” (seems like his girlfriend uses this word with him often). To add a little humor to his blog he did a direct translation of the Thai word for “stingy”, ขี้เหนียว /kêe-nǐeow/. [...]

Google Translate, the challenge… Over a year ago, Google Translate launched, and the language sites started buzzing at the possibilities. My contributions were Thai Translation: Google Translation & Thai Dictionaries and Google Translates Documents and Email Too and Thai Google Translate: Will Crowdsourcing Work. During it all, Jeff Gray mentioned the below: …the sheer volume [...]