Thread: I just can’t understand

Originally Posted by david44

For the linky-illiterate

While these notes were supposed to be top secret, at least one almost made it back to the host country. In his final dispatch, Sir Anthony Rumbold, who was based in Bangkok from 1965 to 1967, wrote:

"I have very much enjoyed living for a while in Thailand. One would have to be very insensitive or puritanical to take the view that the Thais had nothing to offer. It is true they have no literature, no painting, and only a very odd kind of music — that their sculpture, their ceramics and their dancing are borrowed from others — and that their architecture is monotonous and their interior decorations hideous. Nobody can deny that gambling and golf are the chief pleasures of the rich — and that licentiousness is the main pleasure of them all. But, it does a faded European good to spend some time among such a jolly, extrovert and anti-intellectual people!"

This is in fact a concluding paragraph to what was a long but very interesting and insightful summation of his thoughts on Thailand after two years. Well worth reading in its entirety.

Let’s hope my next posting comes through soon and is still within the temporal compass.

I think fully getting conversational Thai will be tricky when your not living here using it every day. I have been doing private online classes twice a week for about 9 months and have learned more than I ever did in my previous 16 years of visiting. I do live in a rural area with almost no English speakers so it's well worth the effort.

Good luck with it.

Thanks I am checkig him now!

An excellent resource - http://www.expatden.com/wlt/download...yThaiVocA4.pdf

Originally Posted by Bob Mason

My attempts at speaking Thai result in my wife criticising the tone of every other word I utter and this is demoralising.

I tend to get the same Bob which drove me away from really attempting to immerse myself in becoming a fluent Thai speaker. Its funny though in that when my wife and I lived in the US I was extremely patient and coached her without telling her she was saying it all wrong and laughing at her. Here not the same.

Honestly I shelved the entire "Learning Thai" thing because I live and work here and virtually everyone I interact with speaks a descent level of English. Even up here in Lampang most that I speak with know enough English and not knowing Thai has not impacted me at all. I know just enough to get by and that's all I really need. To some degree as SA mentioned, there are not a lot of Thai folk I would want to sit and have a conversation with in Thai.

Originally Posted by Stumpy

I tend to get the same Bob which drove me away from really attempting to immerse myself in becoming a fluent Thai speaker. Its funny though in that when my wife and I lived in the US I was extremely patient and coached her without telling her she was saying it all wrong and laughing at her. Here not the same.

Honestly I shelved the entire "Learning Thai" thing because I live and work here and virtually everyone I interact with speaks a descent level of English. Even up here in Lampang most that I speak with know enough English and not knowing Thai has not impacted me at all. I know just enough to get by and that's all I really need. To some degree as SA mentioned, there are not a lot of Thai folk I would want to sit and have a conversation with in Thai.

We tried having 1 day a week where we only spoke Thai at home because while fluent in Thai, daughter prefers English a whole lot more.

Wife and daughter was rabbiting on at each other in English well before I caved. (I quite liked the silence)