ฝรั่งสอนภาษาไทย (farang sorn pasa thai)

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.

Back To Basics - Polite Articles & Phrases

So I realized there's probably not much in this blog for people just starting with Thai as yet, so in this post Ill look at some of the more fundamentals aspects of Thai in the form of polite articles and requests.Polite articles in Thai are fairly easy to grasp once you're acquainted with them and start listening out for in everyday conversation.


Most people when starting to learn thai will have picked up the different polite particle endings depending on whether you're a guy or girl -


ครับ - kráp (think less in terms of how we say 'crap' in English but more  hybrid between the b and p --> Krabp with a soft p)
ค่ะ - kâ (i often associate this word with the ford Ka advertising if you're from the UK you know the adverts im talking about - said with high then falling tone on the vowel)




Then, comes the most useful polite request phrase: kŏr-tôot (ขอโทษ) - use this when approaching someone you don't know or apologizing:


For males: ขอโทษครับ ---- kŏr-tôot kráp
For females: ขอโทษค่ะ ---- kŏr-tôo kâ


To put this into action a typical polite request would be:
ขอโทษครับอันนี้เท่าไหร่นะครับ - kŏr-tôot kráp an née thâu-rai kráp
Excuse me, how much is this one please?


Not the addition of another particle นะ to soften the sentence a lot. This is used a lot in spoken Thai together with other 'softner' particles such as:  จ้ะ - já, ละ or ล่ะ - la or สิ - si


Or for a girl/woman would be:
ขอโทษค่ะอันนี้เท่าไหร่นะค่ะ  kŏr-tôot kâ an née thâu-rai kâ


Of course there are a variety of ways to frame the same question, and beginners may be tempted to over use the polite particles, but as long as you finish the sentence with a ครับ or ค่ะ most Thais will be appreciative of this!

สวัสดีปีใหม่

Happy New Year to all Readers!

(And also a very late สุขสันต์วันคริสต์มาส) 

Back Once Again With The Renegade Thai Language Lessons and Round Up News

So the last time I posted, I was preparing to go back to Thailand for a short vacation. I went back expecting lots of eventful drama, as it was still the time of protest of the Red Shirts. I thought my friend was pretty foolhardy wanting to get right up and close to the barricade near MBK, although he had long changed careers his journalistic tendencies were still shinning through. But, luckily for us we went at a time that not much was going on, it was a Saturday and people were even venturing into MBK for some food and shopping. I noticed some tourists didn't seem to deterred either, had we gone a week latter when one of the Red Shirt Leaders was shot it would have been a different story perhaps. My flight out of Bangkok on the Sunday and the journey to the airport was perhaps more reminiscent of the kind of chaos I had expected, with rising smoke from various points in the city it resembled the kind of apocalyptic Bangkok I had seen on the news. The whole holiday was a bit surreal from the start, as down South one could be forgiven for thinking that there was not any kind of turmoil happening in Thailand, and there seemed to be plenty of tourists enjoying Thailand's famed beaches.


Anyway, it's been a while since I've checked up on some of the more interesting Thai blogs and news items.
In my stumblings today, I found a number of interesting highlights I'd like to share. The first one being from Richard Barrow's blog (whom you should all follow on Twitter if you don't already: @RichardBarrow) - it's good to see the boys in brown up to their usual tricks with their http://www.thai-blogs.com/index.php/2010/09/12/the-litter-scam-in-bangkok?blog=5


Also I revisted Thaivisa language forum for the first time in months, and once again we can rely on David Houston to post an interesting news snippet: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/400993-%26-3605;%26-3636;%26-3604;%26-3652;%26-3617;%26-3657;%26-3605;%26-3636;%26-3604;%26-3617;%26-3639;%26-3629;%26-3652;%26-3611;%26-3613;%26-3634;%26-3585;/"ติดมือไปฝาก


and just for fun, a subject that's been done to death already, but just for good measure the topic of Thai-farang sponsorship: http://thaiwomantalks.com/2010/05/10/thai-women-and-the-question-of%C2%A0money/


Till next time.


Dom

Thai Blog Latest

So it's been some while ive written on this blog, been meaning to post something about the current situation in bangkok with those pesky red shirts, but seeing as ill be back in bangkok this coming weekend ill be able to gain a more accurate view of what's actually happening. When I was living in Thailand, I remember the events of 2008, when the yellows managed to close the airport down for a good few days, and the protests and clashes that ensued in 2009 during songkran. I never at any point felt in danger though, but now returning to thailand in the present state it's in feels a little dicier. And am having second thoughts about my trip. Anyone that's currently in bangkok, please send me a message or email and let me know what it's actually like - presumambly people are still going to work, going about their daily business and somehow getting around the red shirts camps and clashes between the police. It just seems like total madness:


http://www.thairath.co.th/content/pol/80424

ตำนานสมเด็จพระนเรศวรมหารา(The Legend of King Naresuan The Great)

Was happy to see this Thai movie showing on the start of Chinese New Year over the weekend. Its always interesting to learn more about Thailand's history, and one of the Thailand's great leaders: King Naresuan. The film features some fantastic performances from Wanchana Sawatdee, Jirayu La-Ongmanee as the guiding monk. I remember when I used to live in Ayutthaya, there was always a great yearly re-enactment of the battle between the Burmese and the Thai soldiers of the then Siamese kingdom of Ayutthaya. This film is an epic, and it sets of the triology quite nicely, amidst the long serious scenes there's also some humour in there as well. 
Definitely worth a watch.

Thai Twitter

I was over at Rikker's Thai 101 blog today, http://rikker.blogspot.com/, which I find a great resource for learning Thai especially when it comes to Thai Cinema, this guy knows his shizzle...(not just about films and stuff...innit) 

Okay enough of me pretending im down with the kids. 

Anyway reading his blog there was a mention of วันเด็ก or Children's day on Twitter. Now, my job requires a certain level of web savvyness and use of web 2.0 technologies for internet marketing, so of course i was already familiar with tweeting in english as most of us are. But, before today it never would have occurred to me to tap into this resource for learning and improving my writing and reading. (something i desperately need to do, given my position outside of thailand now). 

So, if you havent already why not start following some Thai celebrities, find your Thai friends on Twitter and start reading what they're tweeting. It can be a great way to find some good abbreviations, and get some valuable pointers when you come to start tweeting in Thai!