While its nothing special, I’ve made my first video. I’m not quite sure yet how I want to set these up, but I know that there is a lack of quality material so I’m hoping to put up a few things you may find of use. First few videos will probably be either me being interviewed or interviewing some native speakers about pretty basic stuff.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgzXuHmO_HY]
Hey folks. Sorry its been a while. I was hanging out in Korea and Japan for a bit so I haven’t had much time to post.
I have exams this week, but I need a quick break in my studying so I’ll give a bit of fairly useful stuff in this post.
I haven’t said any of this stuff since I’ve been back, but while I was in Japan I came to a number of realizations of problems I had with Thai when I was at the level where I pretty much knew how to say everything I thought I knew, but I couldn’t put it all together. Now I find myself at a similar place in a couple of other languages and when I have some time I hope to make a few good posts on how to make that transition from short sentences and lots of frustration in to fluid speech.
Anwyays, today I wanna briefly talk about how to ‘see’ stuff in Thai.
Stuff like the following:
Pretty much any phrase similar to the above makes use of the word มอง which if is usually defined as ‘to stare.’ While this is correct in some instances, when combinded with its partner word ‘เห็็น’ it can mean something much more useful.
The easisest phrase and the one that popped into my head as possibly being common enough to make it into my 100-sentence project to get outta this is มองไม่เห็น .
So if we start with the base form of that…
มองเห็น
we can pull up a few easy and useful phrases….
Start with those. It may not seem like much, but at the very least, put มองไม่เห็น into your SRS. Its one of those things you find yourself saying a couple times a week and thats frequent enough to throw into your deck.
When and why do things stick in our minds? When they have something to stick to of course!
Making associations helps. The easiest way to assure that new information will stay is by connecting it to old information. Old information is already grounded, you just need to hook the new info to it.
Faithful readers – you are probably most familiar with this word กัน in sentences such as ไปด้วยกัน or เจอกัน. Useful as they may be, they are not related to the กัน of which I’d like to talk about today.
If you’ve ever rented a room, a house, a bike, or just about anything in Thailand, you may have come across the word ‘ประกัน.’ It can mean a few things, but in the cases I just mentioned, lets call it a ‘deposit.’ So you better know the following sentence anytime you are planning to rent anything.
At some point after years of words popping up with related meanings, a connection formed in my head. Well, the words were most likely connected long before they entered my head, but things that are connected in your head are easier to remember.
I associate กัน with a meaning similar to defend or protect. Here are some words that have led me to that thought:
See what I mean?
How do you say life insurance or health insurance in Thai?
Don’t know? Well ask someone. You remember things you look for yourself better than lists of words.
**Useful Homework –
Safe has 2 parts. ปลอด + ภัย – Look them up seperately. After you have found the individual meanings, look for examples of other words containing that suf/af-fix. No need to memorize anything. I’m just trying to make you aware that while you are learning these pairs/phrases/sentences as a whole, it doesn’t hurt to be aware of the pieces as they will eventually be a great help to you. Don’t break down every word. When you start seeing the same thing over and over again – look for a connection. Don’t always expect native speakers to know the answer – they rarely do.
What do these words have in common?
telephone
television
teleport
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