Learning Thai

Sawatdee khrab สวัสดีครับ    Hello
Khun pood pasa Thai dai mai   คุณพูดภาษาไทยได้ไหม   Can you speak Thai?
Pom pood pasa Thai dai nit noi  ผมพูดภาษาไทยได้นิดหน่อย  I speak a little Thai

Learning a language for the first time has been slow progress. I met my wonderful wife in Sydney where she was on a student visa from her home in Chiangmai, Thailand. I had never been to Thailand prior to our visit to Chiangmai a year before our wedding. That's not entirely true. I had spent quite a few hours in the airport in Bangkok and on my way back from a cricket tour of England had been stopped over in the hotel across the road from what I believe was the old international airport. I even walked along the street for about an hour before the Jet-lag set in and I returned to my room to get some sleep. I also spent a few hours there a few years later on my way to Cambodia and on the return. Now, where were we? That's right, this is an article on Thai language learning.

I'm not really sure when I started properly learning the language. I can say with all honesty that I can't speak any language other than the one I am typing here. I have used youtube to try to learn some basic bits and pieces of the language and also books like Benjawan Poomsan Becker's book Thai for beginners. My favourite Thai teachers on youtube are Stuart Jay Raj and Kruu Wee of kruuweeteachthai.com . Stuart Jay Raj grew up in Australia and speaks 26 languages. He lives in Bangkok and is married to a Thai. He has made various appearances on Thai TV and his language learning is pretty awesome. Stuart runs Jcademy.com on which I have just commenced the Thai Fluency 1 - Glossika GSR and GMS course.
Stu comes at language learning from a different direction to most and that appeals to me. Stu looks at the root of the language and the history of the pronunciation to get to the heart of things. The Glossika course whilst hosted by his site is not actually his course but one of the other partners in the site Jcademy. Glossika drums sentences into you by repetitive learning which will over time increase your ability to communicate in the language. Kruu Wee (kruu means teacher in Thai) is from the same part of the world as my wife Runchana, i.e. Chiangmai. She has over 150 youtube clips teaching the basics of the Thai Language. She also runs skype lessons, face to face. It's like being in a one on one language class. As yet, I haven't tried the Skype classes but have seen a post she did of an actual class with a student. Looks pretty good.

My current cycle of learning is to learn reading and writing from a book called "reading and writing Thai" (imaginative name but effective) by Somsonge Burusphat. I am slowly chipping my way through it (30 minutes a session) and in the process slowly improving my Thai reading and writing skills. I can, at this stage, read a lot more words than I can understand. That is lesson 1.

Lesson 2 is to watch Kruu Wee's videos for 30 minutes. On average her videos take 4 to 5 minutes and can be very helpful with pronunciation http://kruuwee.blogspot.com.au/.

Lesson 3 is as I mentioned above Thai Fluency 1 - Glossika GSR and GMS course. GSR stands for Glossika Spaced Repetition and GMS Glossika Mass Sentences. Lessons take 15 minutes so I should be able to complete 2 per study session. Sentences start out basic at first and then progressively get more complex as you proceed through the course. First in English the Thai and Thai again. You go through the unit. The you listen to English and Thai. Thirdly Thai alone. In the centre of the screen the sentences are written in English, Thai, the Thai words separated, and in the International Phonetic script. For those of you not familiar with Thai language, there are no spaces between the words as in English, hence the need to separate the out for beginner understanding.

My 4th lesson is to read a comic book I picked up in Bangkok last time we were there. So with Thai - English dictionary in one hand and comic in the other I attempt to read and understand.

Each time I have gone to Thailand my language skills have been  a little better than the previous visit. Hopefully with some consistent effort, my next visit will have me fluent.

http://kruuwee.blogspot.com.au/.

Jcademy.com