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My Holy Grail: Learning Thai Language and Exercising

Posted by Stuart at 10:51 PM on July 07, 2005

On and off over the (almost) three years I have lived in Thailand, I have had a personal goal -- a Holy Grail you could say. All I have wanted to be able to do is to achieve a trumverate of daily activities: work, learn Thai, and exercise. I've been lucky enough to have had a good job all this time, but the learning Thai language and exercising comes and goes.

So now that my traveling stint is done for now, maybe I can focus on my Holy Grail again. Two weeks ago I sat down with my 400+ flash cards with Thai words on one side and the English translation on the other to see how many I knew. The answer was 137 words that I could read and write in Thai. Not bad, considering I hadn't really studied much over the past six months.

In the last two weeks, I have practiced about an hour on most days. I also have employed my friend Ekk to start spending an few hours with me a week to improve my speaking and listening skills. Tonight, I sat down with my 400+ cards again and found that I could read and write 279 of them -- an increase of 142 words.

So I wonder, how much can I possibly learn every week? And what is a "good" rate of learning? Based on the last two weeks, I can maybe learn 70 or so words per week. How many words does one have to know before they can hold a conversation, anyway? I wonder how big my English vocabulary is. Ten thousand words, perhaps?

As far as the exercise goes, well, maybe that's a post for another day. I did find a nearby pool that is big, clean, sparsely populated, open until 10 PM, and only costs 50 baht per swim (a little over US$1). Now, if I can just make myself go on a regular basis...