Learn Thai From A White Guy

First a couple of au pair stories.

I’m always complaining about lack of resources,  access to native speakers and other obstacles that I meet while studying all of these languages.  This is why I am making these videos.  I can’t wait around for somebody else to do it.

The other day at Burmese session, a person mentioned that they had told a friend about Language Space and they were planning on going until someone else told them something like “Don’t bother, you won’t understand anything because you are still a beginner.”    This is a huge problem for many people. People have a tendency to hear silliness like that and then internalize it.   Because these ideas have been internalized, these same people are likely to be defensive about it so I’ve learned that there isn’t any point in arguing with them, however I like to at least ask them to elaborate on where they got the idea, if they actually have any personal experience with it and generally just try and get them to think a bit more about it.  Its better if they discover the silliness on their own.

Why is it that people think that they need to study up to a certain level before they do things in a language?  The only way to be able to read a newspaper, watch movies or read books in another language is to read the newspapaer, watch movies and read books in that language!

The only way to get better at listening, is to listen.  Sure it helps loads of the material is at least partially comprehensible and I’d always recommend trying to find material that you are already interested in, but what it comes down to is that you need to hear thousands of hours of the language before you can begin to achieve a real level of competence so starting immediately isn’t a bad idea.  As you get better it will be easier to find material that is suitable (enjoyable!) for you.  Don’t just go study for 2 or 10 years and complain that you studied for x years and still suck – go and do something about it!  Stop measuring learning in terms of years.   The years you spend thinking about studying something are irrelavant.  What matters is the hours you put into it and how you spend that time.  Do a daily log for a month of all time spent studying/listening/reading and at the end of the month it will become very clear why you aren’t getting any better.

So I’m super busy right now as I’m moving and have a bunch of projects going on, but should still be able to get new vids up twice a week.  Wednesday’s Thai session turned out pretty awful so I’m posting a couple vids from July 18th that I had sitting around.

A few notes about the Julia Roberts vid -

Notice that she uses a lot of English words in this clip.  This is pretty normal in Thai.

เสียงดัง means a loud noise/sound

ออกเสียง can mean ‘to pronounce’ ‘to make a noise’ ‘to vote for/elect’

มีชื่อเสียง means to be famous or well-known (Mnemonic – A noisy name tends to be well known)

A person who is ดัง is also well-known or famous.

And here is another one.  I was looking through Stuff magazine (Thai version) and they were selling a hoverboard.

Last sessions stuff came out bad so I didn’t upload anything.  Yesterday’s session went great so here is a couple to start with.

The languaging continues.   I love listening to all these languages.

Chinese test run.  As usual the audio isn’t great, but its passable.

The group has been taking a different direction lately.  As the number of people coming fluctates considerably, we’ve been messing around with a few different things.

Not all of these vids are interesting,  but its material.  If anybody has a request for a topic, we can give it a try.

The next 2 are a bit different.  The questions are in Thai, but the answers are in Korean.  Fun stuff.

There are a few more at the links below or you can just check ‘em out on my channel.

I used the lowest quality settings on the camera this time so I could film more stuff.   There was a group of loud people nearby which killed the sound on most of the clips.   It might be time to start messing with microphones.  Can anybody recommend a decent one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHr2U26wS3A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvpjFRH3G-k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_X6Ohlp2qc

So here is a repost to that clip and a transcript of it.  I’ll check it tomorrow, but possible spelling errors/typos aside, it should be really close if not spot on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQoPhNA8uk

http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddpdbmh_98gx648stm