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TAC14 ภาษาไทย (Team Coconut) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| doubleUelle Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4033 days ago 67 posts - 95 votes  Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Thai | Message 1 of 7 09 January 2014 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hey everyone,
I'm the leader/founder of TAC14 Team Coconut for Southeast Asian languages. This is my personal TAC log for 2014 - I will be focusing overwhelmingly on Thai, but since I'm also working here and there on my Japanese, you may occasionally see something about that. I've been learning Thai for ~2 months now and am happy with the progress I've made in that time. I can understand/catch a lot of basic words when I watch movies and I can put together a lot of simple sentences/phrases. This year in May-June 2014, I will be going to Chiang Mai for a month. My goal is to be at a lower-intermediate level by that time, where I can have basic conversations (nothing too fancy) and where I will have gotten completely used to the sounds of Thai, so that I can easily pick up lots of new words. By the end of the year, I'd like to be at a higher-intermediate level and be able to express more complicated ideas in conversation. Wish me luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| doubleUelle Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4033 days ago 67 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Thai | Message 2 of 7 09 January 2014 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here are some of the resources/methods I'm using to learn Thai:
1. Teach Yourself Thai (used intermittently). 2. Lots of movies and TV shows, including some dubbed from English or Japanese, which I've seen in the original. 3. Mnemosyne + sentences. 4. Thai: A Reference Grammar by David Smythe. 5. Thai2English - I have the software downloaded on my laptop. (If you are learning Thai and haven't seen/used this before, drop everything you're doing and go check it out immediately. Trust me, it's worth it. The dictionary is very extensive, including many obscure terms, and there is info about grammar, writing, tones, and much more.) 6. I listen to the NHK Radio Thai Podcast each day - 15 minutes on weekdays and 10 minutes on weekends. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5128 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 3 of 7 09 January 2014 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi doubleUelle, good to see another active fellow Thai learner here on HTLAL! I'll be following your progress with interest and hope you stick around :) Thai is a beautiful and rich language, I'm sure you will enjoy the journey.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| doubleUelle Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4033 days ago 67 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Thai | Message 4 of 7 10 January 2014 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Most people probably already know this, but January 2014 is yet another round of
Tadoku: http://readmod.wordpress.com/category/how-to/ I'm registered as CurlyLovesLangs, and you can watch my reading progress here: http://readmod.com/users/885 I've signed up to read in French, Japanese and Thai. So far, I've read half a book in French ("Ainsi résonne l'écho infini des montagnes"), some of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" in Japanese, and one manga (in Japanese). A lot of the pages I read for this contest will be in French and Japanese, since those are obviously my stronger languages. But I would also like to get in some Thai. I will try to get in some song lyrics and pages from my reading exercises. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| doubleUelle Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4033 days ago 67 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Thai | Message 5 of 7 12 January 2014 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Alright, time for an actual Thai update.
I've been learning Thai for about 2 months now. I'm relatively pleased with the progress I've made in that time - I can recognize a lot of basic words (and some phrases / chunks of sentences) when I watch movies or TV shows. I've more or less made sense of the elaborate writing system. I'm starting to become really comfortable with the sounds. Speaking of the sounds - Thai is a tonal language, with 5 tones. Without meaning to brag or anything, I'm someone who has a pretty good ear - pronunciation is one of my stronger points in language learning. There have been two occasions so far where I've been able to practice speaking Thai in front of actual Thai people, and both times, I've been complimented (though they might've been doing it out of politeness / to encourage me - Thai people are notoriously kind and polite). My approach to the whole tone issue is kind of unusual - I'm not learning anything about the tones explicitly. I mean, I always pay attention to pitch when picking up new words from Thai media. But I don't know the names of the tones and when I learn a new word, I don't learn "[Word X] has a falling tone" or whatever. I just remember how it sounds, and I treat the pitch/tone as an inherent part of the word, if that makes any sense. There are a few reasons why I've decided to do it this way, but the major reason has to do with a conversation I had a few years ago with a Chinese-Vietnamese friend. She speaks English, Teochew (her native/home variety of Chinese), Cantonese and Vietnamese - so 3 tonal languages. Once, when I was going through a flirting-with-Cantonese-phase, I said to her, "Cantonese is tonal." She asked me what that meant. When I explained it, she said, "Oh, yeah!" But she also said that she hadn't ever thought about that before. It was a huge "a-ha!" moment for me, because (among other things) it indicated to me that native speakers do not see "ma" (or whatever) as 1 word with 5 (or however many) tones - they see it as 5 different words. The tone is just as inherent/significant in the pronunciation as a vowel or consonant sound, and changing the tone makes it a completely different word. So I am focusing on getting exposure to lots of spoken Thai, with the expectation that getting used to the tones will simply come with mastering the sounds of the language overall. Edited by doubleUelle on 12 January 2014 at 5:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| doubleUelle Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4033 days ago 67 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Thai | Message 6 of 7 12 January 2014 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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As far as reading/writing - I bought the complete "Teach Yourself Thai" course (with 2
CD's) a while back. From a linguistic and pedagogical POV, it's pretty good. Unfortunately, I only made it about half-way through because I got bored with it. I'm currently using this as reading practice: Thai Reader Project. There are reading exercises for beginner and intermediate learners, respectively. I'm working on Lesson 8 in the beginner series today, which talks about family/family members. I work through the lessons by looking up words I don't know in the Thai2English software program, which usually also has audio clips of how words/expressions are pronounced. Then I add sentences I like to Mnemosyne. Edited by doubleUelle on 12 January 2014 at 5:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5128 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 7 of 7 12 January 2014 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | ||
That makes a lot of sense. That's the way Thais learn their language, and they are quite successful with this approach :) It helps to listen a lot, even to stuff you don't understand, to get your brain used to the tones and rhythms of Thai. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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