Learn Thai From A White Guy

Alright, well I thought I’d have finished by now, but its turning into more work than I had anticipated.  And its not as easy as I thought to pick out those everyday sentences.

Anyways, while I am still messing with the format to make it easier to view, you can view the progress on google docs here.  I’m probably going to get rid of the tones/notes column and put that info in as comments so when you mouse over the Thai words, it will pop up.  However, at the moment, you can’t change the font size of comments on Google docs, so its kinda hard to read.  Suggestions welcome.

Busy with final papers/exams, but I promise to get a lot of new stuff up in October! 

โทร มา ละ กัน – keep in touch 

**This is a great sentence and you will hear it a lot.  Its a friendly, informal way of ending a conversation…’lets talk again soon.’  It has no real expectation of calling.  It is NOT like saying “Call me tomorrow.”  Its much more casual and used as a ‘good-bye.’  Watch for it!

Probably used just as often is its counterpart โทรหาละกัน which means the same thing except you are saying you might be calling them sometime.  They are pretty much used interchangeably.  Listen for them.

ลงมา เปิดประตู ให้หน่อย come down(stairs) and open the door for me

The Sentence Project has a smaller version of this, but I was thinking more examples are needed as some people have trouble with this pattern.  

บอกเขาให้หน่อย  tell him/her for me 

Is this obvious?  Literally its like “give me the telling of him please,” so just forget about translating that nonsense.  Just memorize the sentence.  Did I mention how you should be learning these Sentence Project sentences?  Any way you can!  I’d suggest putting the English on the front side of your SRS flashcards and keep doing them daily until you can near-instananeously pull all 100ish sentences out of your ass.  If you have these sentences and you can pronounce most of them correctly, you will amaze your friends – locals and non alike.  All these sentences are colloquializations I’ve picked up from native speakers.  I don’t make this crap up.  Guessing is for people who want to speak a language like an idiot.  Copying isn’t good for tests and papers, but is the absolutely best way for learning languages.  Don’t say what they tell you to say, say what they say.  And don’t be discouraged if sometimes someone tells you one of these things is a bit strange.  Thats crap too.  Colloquialized language doesn’t always follow grammar textbook rules.  But thats ok too because we don’t like textbooks right?

• ทำ ให้ หน่อย                do [verb] for me please
• เขียน ที่ อยู่ ให้ หน่อย     write your address for me plz
• แปลให้หน่อย                translate this for me plz
• ถามเขาใ้ห้หน่อย            ask him/her for me plz 

ความจริงวิวรรณไม่ได้เรียกเขาว่า “อาเมศ” ตามที่เขาขอร้องหรอก เธอมักจะเรียกเขาว่า “คุณปรเมศ” หรือเลี่ยง  ไ ม่พยายามเ รียกชื่อเ ขาแต่คุณปรุงจิตมารดาเลี้ยงของเธออีกนั่นแหละที่เจ้ากี้เจ้าการให็วิวรรณเรียก

Actually, วิวรรณ never called him  ”อาเมศ”  as he had asked her to.  Usually, she referred to him as ”คุณปรเมศ” or avoided referring to him entirely except when คุณปรุงจิต, her bossy step-mother made her.

Names: 

• วิวรรณ      heroine
• อาเมศ or คุณปรเมศ  abusive step-father
• คุณปรุงจิต         step-mother

In case its not entirely obvious, tone marks are depicted by the first letter of the following: common, low, falling, high, rising.  You should be able to cut and paste it into a spreadsheet to mess around with it to make a SRS file.   If anyone can think of a sentence/phrase that you say everyday that I haven’t mentioned, do bring it up.    

Instead of wasting too much time studying vocab lists and boring grammatical stuff that you will just forget anyways, why not learn a bunch of super important short sentences?  When I say learn, I mean learn-absorb-remember.  How can we do that?  Well, its a bit much to memorize for some people so what we need to do is repeatedly test ourselves on it until it sticks.  This usually occurs when we have used or encounterd the phrase/setence in a real-life situation.  It tends to solidify the structure in our mind somehow.

There are plenty of programs out there.  As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I have been using Anki for sometime, but you can experiment with others if you like.  If you need help setting up cards or need some starter decks, I will help if I can.
Now on to sentences.  I’m not sure how long this will take me, but I’m working on a list of 100 super-necessary short sentences that you need to function at any level in a language.  I plan this to also be somewhat of an experiment for my current studies in Burmese.  More on this later.  On to the sentences.

As for setting up the cards, there are a few options.  I’d just recommend placing the English phrase on front side and the Thai with notes on the back.  If you get the hang of the software you can set it up so you have production and recognition so you are asked to come up with the Thai phrase from the English and vice versa with the notes appearing along with whichever side is the answer, but that’s up to you.  .

เจงกิสข่านบุกถึงโรมหรือไม่?

Did Ghengis Khan invade as far as Rome?

เจงกิส ข่าน Ghengis Khan

บุก attack; invade

ถึง reach

โรม Rome

หรือไม่ Or not?

แถบเอเชียกลางกี่ประเทศที่ถูกมองโกลยึดม

Within Central Asia, how many countries were conquered by the Mongols?

แถบ area; region

เอเชียกลาง Central Asia

ยึดม** I think this is a typo of one of a number of words beginning with ‘ยึด’ but I’m not sure which one.  Anyways, ยึด means – to seize; to capture

ถูก This word is important.  I’ll do a grammar lesson on it later.  Its one of 2 words used for the passive form.  The other word ‘โดน’ can be found below.

เอเชียใต้โดนด้วยหรือไม่ รัสเชียล่ะ

Was South Asia conquered?  Russia?

http://th.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AtdKiedtuRlOGnL_U0bNR25WTAx.;_ylv=3?qid=20080707054515AAKmGpB

ฝันว่ามีงูยั้วเยี้ยโผล่มาทำร้าย

I had a dream a swarm of snakes were trying to get me.

ฝันว่า I dreamed that..

มีงูยั้วเยี้ย there was a swarm of snakes

โผล่ squiggling; squirming

มาทำร้าย come to do harm