Women Learning Thai… and some men too ;-)

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Karn.TV Cartoons: Flooding in Thailand… During the past few weeks, Thailand’s 50 Million Blue Whales Flooding Bangkok were a big YouTube hit for Thais and students of the Thai language. Today I found Karn.TV’s cartoon offer… There are three more flood videos (just follow along on YouTube). Note: To keep up with the flood news [...]

So you have a Thai maid. Yeah! Now what?… Thailand, like the majority of SE Asia, has a deeply embedded culture of employing house help. Housekeepers, cooks, gardeners, nannies and drivers are a normal part of the daily fabric of life out here. My cherished Filipina amah in Borneo even had a maid back home. [...]

Kinship terms for Thai housekeepers, nannies, drivers, and more… In the last post, What Do You Call Your Thai Housekeeper?, we learned about alternative names for maids in Thailand. During the research, Sarawan (The Parent Vine, Thailand) and I engaged in a discussion about the different terms used for not only housekeepers but drivers, cooks, [...]

What do you call your maid?… When I lived in Japan I was just a short bit of stuff. It was too long ago to remember what our maid was called so I asked someone who would know: Tony Joh from thai-faq.com. Tony informed me that maid in Japanese is either ote or kaseifu. Nice [...]

Miscommunicating with your Thai housekeeper… Have you been to your High Commission or Embassy lately? I have. I won’t say it was a treat, but it was certainly an eyebrow raiser. Did you happen to notice their counter windows? You know, the ones similar to those found in banks? The windows work the same but [...]

Word Brain & ClickThai Vocabulary Trainer… I just can’t get enough of free stuff. There’s a lot out there but not all free stuff is good stuff (if you know what I mean). I also have an addiction for the ‘how to learn languages’ type of stuff. Sure, sure, as far as advice goes, there [...]

Review: L-Lingo Burmese & Thai Language Learning Software… Please note that this is an updated version reflecting minor changes. Specifically, the Android version is not released as previously noted and at this time grammar notes are available for the Thai version only. I have been studying the Burmese (Myanmar) language for over a year, however [...]

This Thai learning Thai… Learning Spanish seemed counterintuitive to retaining any Thai that I had acquired but that is exactly what I did. When I moved to Ecuador I thought I could keep up with my Thai and learn Spanish too but I couldn’t. There wasn’t enough room in me brain for both languages. Acclimating [...]

This Thai learning Thai… Unfortunately there was no mystical transference or osmosis of language from mother to womb. So I am an American born woman who is ironically half Thai and half Chinese. Ironically because my ethnic makeup is very Thai, something I learned when I moved here as an adult. There are many Thai-Chinese [...]

Surprise! Thailand has turkeys too… Unbelievable. There we were, my long suffering Thai teacher and me, arriving at Wát Chà-lĕrm Prágìat (วัด เฉลิม พระเกียรติ์). And there they were. White turkeys. Two. At first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I mean, turkeys in Thailand? But I do know what turkeys are supposed to look [...]

The guts of a phrase book… Before embarking on this review, I held preconceived notions of what to expect from phrase books: handy phrases, brief dictionary, small in size, an easy to skim layout and design. After the books started arriving (thanks Danny!) a serious rethink came into play. I now know that most Thai [...]

There be Pirates in Thailand… When you think of Thailand, you don’t generally think pirates. Or do you? I do. Weeks back I ran into a Generous Pirate at Chatuchak market in Bangkok. And this week I’m introducing a The Thai Pirate giving lessons on speaking the Thai language. OK, everyone moans that Thai is [...]

FREE Thai language learning resources… For months I’ve been promising to clean up Women Learning Thai’s messy Learning Thai resources. After mulling it over, I’ve gone whole hog with FREE. Note: The updated resources are here: Learn Thai for FREE Free online Thai courses… FSI Thai Basic Course Thai language course developed by the Foreign [...]

Monday morning Thai lessons… Today, along with my giddy attempt at Thai typing, I sidetracked my Thai teacher with a hilarious commercial all in Thai. My Thai teacher, now resigned to my habit of derailing her well laid lesson plans, quite enjoyed this morning’s detour into not quite cultured Thai humour. I know because she [...]