I'm ten days in to my new-found motivation for learning Thai language and I think I have made a lot of progress. It's amazing how much one can learn if they actually study.
I've made my way through my initial set of 125 one-syllable non-tone-marked words and can read and write with about 95% success. Now I have a new set of 45 one-syllable words with tone marks and 95 more no-tone-mark words. So, the goal is to have a reading/writing vocabulary of over 250 by the end of the month.
After that we move on to grammar and actually trying to say something useful...
Gud job!! Pha Ya Yam Khao Na Krab!
way too go! grammatically, thai is an easy language to learn. it`s all the tones that get me. i love writing thai - its a beautiful language. good luck!
Thanks for the encouragement, y'all :)
I agree with you Christina, from what I can tell the hardest part of learning Thai is the beginning -- learning the letters and the tones. The grammar seems to be not too difficult. That is the opposite of English, where the grammar is illogical and full of a million exceptions.
I also love writing the loppy Thai letters. My handwriting in Thai is much better than my handwriting in English because it's a lot more fun to make the letters.
It's about time! :)
That's great! You're a man with many talents.
Now that you know the Thai language, can you translate this? Chut ban nhieu may man!
Actually, it's Vietnamese. :)
It means Good luck!
Show us your thai handwriting sometimes! :) Your name, may be?
congratulations. **shamed by own lack of talent with thai language** btw. what happened to whatistheshape? have they moved?
Chris,
Hmm... That's an interesting idea. Maybe I can scan my handwriting. heh. But doing my name might not work, because I am not really sure how to spell it. I mean I know how my school spells it, which just happens to be the same way that the promotional posters for the movie "Stuart Little" spelled it, but I think it's wrong. The official spelling looks and sounds like Sa-Jart. No idea why there's a "jor jaan" in there.
Let me look into it further...
Hi David. For some reason, Vietnamese seems much harder than Thai. Lots of tones right? And of course learning a lot of new letters. Well, thanks for the "Chut ban nhieu may man" wishes. Or, in Thai, the "Chok Dee" :)
Stuart,
Yep, just like many East Asian languages, Vietnamese is "tonal". However, the written Vietnamese language is very different in that is is based on Latin. We use many accent/tone marks like the French. Since the keyboard that I used didn't have the Vietnamese keyboard built in, I had to omit all the accent marks (about 6 of them) in that one short phrase that I wrote you.
I can teach you Vietnamese some time if you're interested. :)
David, thank you for your kind offer, but only one language at a time, please! :)
wow... congrats! you're already far better than me at reading and writing.
got a ticket the other day. while i was sitting in the police station waiting to pick up my license i managed to read one of the fairly complicated signs- i amazed myself as i'm crap at reading. felt so proud until i tried to read the next one and was completely lost. ah well. =)
Jeremy, I know what you mean. I get all excited when I can have a three sentence conversation with someone and then the next minute I get completely depressed when I don't understand a single word of sentence number four. :)