I used to think that learning from a non-native speaker, regardless of where you are and what language you're learning, was a futile exercise. But I have long ago changed my mind. Its a well known fact that many Westerners/foreigners have enormous difficulty when coming to Asia and trying to get their head around a tonal language and an alphabet that is completely different to anything they've grown up using. The only way to start getting a grip on such a weird and counter-intuitive language is to find a local Thai teacher and lay down a few thousands of baht and start learning - right? Whilst this approach is fine in principle, and a perfect way for beginners to start on the rudimentary aspects of the language, once you start developing vocab, confidence and proficiency you are soon going to develop questions such as 'well why is it like this, and why do Thais say it this way and not that way.' Start delving a little deeper into lexical structures, the history of Thai language and so forth and you'll so find that most qualified Thai teachers will start to draw a blank:
ฉัน/ผม/ไม่รู้คะ/ครับ - chan/pom mai roo ka/khrab
There are other ways to learn Thai......
Whilst I'm not dissing Thai teachers in any way, many do a fantastic job and let's be honest it's not easy teaching foreigners, I'm simply pointing out that consider other perhaps supplementary ways of progressing. One such way is to get on the ol' tinternet and seek out that strange breed of people, ฝรั่งสอนภาษาไทย
And it seems you don't have to go very far in cyberspace for all these largely male western guys (and a few western women if you search hard enough) bustin' out the Thai. And for people like me, who have been out of the country for a couple of years now, its a great way to keep up practice and I don't know there's something nice about hearing a non-native speaker speak with a near perfect Thai accent and has actually taken the time to seriously crack Thai. Puts me to shame really.
Okay enough chitter chatter, here's some people I rate highly for learning Thai of:
The first is a recent stumble: an American guy that runs a TV show called: 'Farang Pok Pok'. Well recommended. Here's the first episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aS9ykGe7rU
Polyglot, Stu-Jay Raj is probably one of the better known ลูกครึ่ง (mixed race) famous faces, following several TV programmes on Thai TV. And most recently his travel series programmes: เหนือชั้น 1000แปล looks at him going to some very exotic places and documenting on the weird, wonderful and supernatural. This guy astounds me, not just in Thai but in so many other languages. But his Thai is also flawless.
In terms of blogs and reading resources, hopefully you can pick up a few tid-bits from this one, but there's so many more (and much better ones, no false modesty intended) out there. Here's some that I frequent:
http://www.richardbarrow.com/ - Not so much of a Thai language blog, but contains everything you need to know about Thailand and Thai culture.
http://rikker.blogspot.com/ - Regular on Thaivisa.com a great Thai language blog. Suited to more advanced readers of Thai.
http://womenlearnthai.com/ - A great blog, with a well-needed women's perspective on learning Thai
http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/forum/43-Thai-language/ - An essential forum to visit for posting questions and getting answers on Thai.
There are of course a lot more, but these are just a few of my picks. Ill post more later on perhaps. This post seems to have gone on for long enough, so Ill end it here. Let me know if this was useful in any way.
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