Thread: Workshop - Learn to Read Thai, the Rapid Way

Now now Gary, there's no need to show your mental superiority by using big wordz.

I ain't in a "who can piss further match" with you.

Sheesh, you're more full of yourself than I am full of myself, and FWIW, I hold myself in pretty high esteem!

Take deep breath and realize we are after all talkin' about thai; a "one trick pony" language spoken by less than a single percent of the world's inhabitants. BTW, a language none of us foreigners would have to learn if these people had even a rudimentary grasp of engrish.

Originally Posted by toddaniels

there's no need... to use big wordz.

I'm taking the piss, didn't you realize that?

Originally Posted by rapidll

Originally Posted by toddaniels

there's no need... to use big wordz.

I'm taking the piss, didn't you realize that?

Yes endless spam
Can I come to your seminars and advertise skin whitening
When learning a foreign language,learning from a native is the sina qua non

This is not spam give the guy a break

Originally Posted by david44

When learning a foreign language,learning from a native is the sina qua non

Not so sure about this. At least not according to our friends Brett and Rapid, who are both experts at language.

Originally Posted by 9999

I bought Brett's thing clicking through from the TV forum

Never mind. Sign up for the free trial and try out the Rapid Method for yourself anyway. You'll still learn some useful ideas to supplement what you learnt with LTFWG. I cover the top 30 letters and some important nuances that aren't clear from his course.

If you subsequently decide to bite the bullet and buy the full course then I can explain to you how to easily "convert" from the conventional terminology to the Rapid Method.

For instance, girls are high class creatures, ladyboys are low class riff-raff, while boys are lost farts somewhere in the middle.

You should also be aware that there are no "G" or "J" sounds in Thai. I use the analogy of an airplane taking off from a runway to explain how to produce the ก ต ป sounds. Start with making an "S" sound and then say "K" T" "P" respectively. The "S" is your runway for reaching take-off speed. Once you've developed a muscle memory for these sounds then you can gradually remove the "S" runway.

After going over your site Rapid, I notice you do the tones differently to Brett, I like the approach and how it relates to english, and losing the confusion between classes and tones, which did confuse the shit out of me on the few fleeting attempts at learning to read.

Haven't had time to get stuck into the course yet only bought it a few weeks ago.

I didn't really give a toss about how shitty my Thai was, still don't, but I want to understand more. My 3yo daughter speaks better Thai than me now, as well as two other dialects and english. If I dont do something about this, my children will be able to cuss at me and I won't understand cant have that can we.

Also, I'm tired of needing to call in the Mrs to help do my bidding on man stuff like getting a new car stereo installed.

david44

When learning a foreign language,learning from a native is the sina qua non

BTW; white people spell it as "sine qua non"! If you're gonna use fancy-smancy words to impress us, at least spell 'em right..

You most definitely DON'T need to learn the language from a native speaker. Very few thai nationals possess a sufficient command of engrish to explain questions most foreigners ask early on about the inz-n-outz in this language. Often times foreigners who are adept at thai can provide the reason why something is the way it is, compared to most thai teachers saying, "That's just how thai is, accept it." <- which is a lame knee-jerk thai answer usually provided because the thai doesn't know the answer themselves..

9999

our friends Brett and Rapid, who are both experts at language.

Now I wouldn't go so far as to say either of those illustrious and entrepreneurial foreigners are "experts".

They both seem to have come up with viable methods to teach thai to foreigners where the information "clicks" better with a foreign mindset. Both appear to possess the ability to speak/understand read/write thai just fine as well. But again, dunno that that makez either of them experts in the field of teachin' thai to foreignerz..

Still, what ever method best works for you is the one you need to stick with. If the way either of them present the material makes sense for you, lets you wrap your head around it easier, good for you!

Originally Posted by toddaniels

They both seem to have come up with viable methods to teach thai to foreigners where the information "clicks" better with a foreign mindset. Both appear to possess the ability to speak/understand read/write thai just fine as well. But again, dunno that that makez either of them experts in the field of teachin' thai to foreignerz..

They both also have higher education in linguistics. They have developed systems that effectively teach foreigners to learn the language. How are they not experts?

you can teach yourself how to read thai in under a year using a few books costing no more than 1000 baht in total

You can teach yourself the alphabet in a fortnight with a minimum of work and without any difficulty whatsoever and learn the tone rules in another week. After that it's just practice. If people need someone to teach them this then I guess it's nice have someone around who is happy to take their money but it's extraordinarily easy to do it yourself.

They both also have higher education in linguistics.

Have they?

Pretty sure Brett does, and Rapid kind of implies he does. Do they not?

Don't know about White Guy but my impression of Mr Rapid is that he doesn't have any formal training in linguistics - he does seem to be someone who has learnt Thai and has used that to think up something to sell. There's not necessarily anything wrong in that and I'm sure if you go to his meeting (packed as it will be with ultra-high achieving artists, logicians and entrepreneurs) or buy his book you would learn something. But then most methods work in the end. I'm a bit less sure whether it works any better than any other method; I suspect it's no better and no worse than anything else. The advantage it may have is that you commit money and a fixed block of time and that acts as a motivator to action rather better than do some free youtube videos, a couple of 50 baht children's books and your wife's stifled yawn as she corrects you yet again.

Originally Posted by 9999

After going over your site Rapid, I notice you do the tones differently to Brett, I like the approach and how it relates to english, and losing the confusion between classes and tones, which did confuse the shit out of me on the few fleeting attempts at learning to read.

Haven't had time to get stuck into the course yet only bought it a few weeks ago.

I didn't really give a toss about how shitty my Thai was, still don't, but I want to understand more. My 3yo daughter speaks better Thai than me now, as well as two other dialects and english. If I dont do something about this, my children will be able to cuss at me and I won't understand cant have that can we.

Also, I'm tired of needing to call in the Mrs to help do my bidding on man stuff like getting a new car stereo installed.

Same for me. I get really frustrated waiting for my wife to make calls for me. My 2yr old also speaks more Thai than me. I feel really bad when I don't understand what she said. She speaks English with me, but nevertheless.

You've got 44 consonants, 32 vowels, 4 tone markers, 10 digits, a few punctuation marks and a few oddities (-รร-, ทร-, inherent vowels, etc.) to learn. That comes to round about 100 facts, nearly all of the sort 'this sign represents this sound' (ท -> /tʰ/, ต -> /t/, etc.). If you reverse them all and consider all the sound-to-sign mappings separately, that's roughly equivalent to learning the flags of the world. That's a pretty boring way to spend your weekend but it's hardly a task of Herculean dimensions.

Just in case it matters to anyone...
No, I do not have a degree in linguistics, nor have I studied linguistics extensively.

The reason is that linguistics does not address the issue that is most relevant to me:
"What is the most effective way (for an adult) to learn another language?"

The other reason is that most research papers are so arcane and densely written that they're impossible to understand. There are a few exceptions (e.g. Stephen Krashen).

For those of you who'd like to learn Thai, be thankful that I did not study linguistics. The "linguistics" approach is how most languages are taught and it's unnecessarily complicated. I worked really hard to learn German at school and got nowhere (there were too many words, too many declination tables, too many irregular verbs, each with their own conjugation tables, etc.) But if you learn German using the Rapid Method, it's actually a very easy language.

In order to learn a language you need to do the following:

1. Train your mouth muscles to produce the sounds automatically (like a golf or tennis swing) - I call this Developing Muscle Memory. The way to do this, in a nutshell, is to take a word or phrase or sentence and practice saying it clearly in an exaggerated way over and over again until you can do so quickly and accurately.
   
   
2. Learn to read so that you can absorb the language from your environment.
   
   This is a real challenge for languages like Chinese or Japanese. As an interim measure, you will need to learn the phonetic alphabet in parallel: pinyin (or preferably zhuyin) for Chinese, or hiragana & katakana for Japanese, because many readers for native speakers will provide these to help you decipher the more difficult or uncommon characters.
   
   I considered learning the IPA in order to study Chinese, but I found that nearly all the learning material (and children's books) and even the way you create the characters on the keyboard is done in pinyin. Every Japanese who uses a computer or smartphone (i.e. everybody) types in "romanji", so you can probably get by for a long time without knowing how to read in Japan. Nevertheless, there is nothing more frustrating and demoralizing than to wander about a Chinese or Japanese town and have no clue what the street signs & notices mean, not to be able to understand a single menu and never be able to progress your language ability by dipping into a novel or magazine article.
   
   
3. Memorize the high-frequency words used in conversation. Focus on informal conversation in the beginning unless you are only going to spend your time with professionals in a polite business setting. You want to make friends and you want to talk to your friends. The politer, more formal ways of speaking can come later.
   
   There have been several analyses of language usage which show some misleading statistics, such as the top 100 words are used 50% of the time. You should obviously learn these 100 words, but you will anyway without any special effort because they are so frequent. It won't help you understand anything, however.
   
   The top 500 words make up 70% of language usage. Yes, you need to know these words. So your first step is to memorize them as quickly as possible.
   
   However, 70% is not nearly enough. You need a minimum of around 1200 words just to be able to get by in everyday interactions like ordering food, shopping, greeting people, traveling around, etc.
   
   It's still not enough to have a conversation with anyone. 1200 words is 80% and that means you can't understand every fifth word in a conversation and will struggle to express even the simplest ideas.
   
   You need another 1200 words or so to be hold a rudimentary conversation, but preferably a good 3000 words altogether (95%) to be able to start expressing and understanding conversations about everyday matters.
   
   
4. Don't study phrases. Study sentence and phrase patterns. You don't need to understand the grammatical reasons behind the various patterns, but you do need to know what are the patterns to use for each situation or idea you'd like to express.
   
   Once you've learnt and practiced all the relevant patterns, all you need to do is slot in the appropriate word(s).
   
   There will obviously be quite a lot of patterns to learn. What I like so much about the Everyday Thai for Beginners course is that Khun Wiworn has covered all the essential patterns, in a logical and fairly well-connected progression, that you need to know in order to get around in Thailand. There are a few hundred patterns to learn, so it won't take long. Better than trying to memorize a grammar book with perhaps over a thousand rules that are usually arranged by function linguistically rather than "what do I need to know and how do I express myself in this particular situation?".
   
   
5. It's important to select the right words and material to study and memorize. As a beginner, you want to focus on words used in everyday conversation, not books - and especially not school material.
   
   That's why, even though the Rapid Method focuses on reading, it's vitally important to read spoken material, not literary texts. Otherwise you'll be like my friend who could devour books by Voltaire and Hugo and Camus, but couldn't talk to a single French person other than the waiters in a restaurant.
   
   I had a similar problem as a consultant. I conducted regular meetings in French with European politicians about strategy and policy and implementation issues, but I couldn't understand a word of what my French colleagues and friends were saying in the pub or at a party.
   
   
6. Therefore, you need to study vocabulary that is relevant to how you will communicate in the language. For most expats, this means a functional vocabulary for getting around and buying things, plus a vocabulary for conversing with friends and lovers. If you are working or in business then you need a different vocabulary; and obviously there will be some overlap. If you intend to read (or write) formal documents or literary texts then you will need a completely different vocabulary set.
   
   Most people start by learning the vocabulary they need to communicate in class - which unfortunately isn't particularly useful out on the street or when talking to friends.
   
   In general, the most effective way to learn a language is to break it up into "zones". Learn - and master - the language of each respective zone. Choose just the zones that are relevant to you and ignore the rest. Don't bother with writing, for instance. It's a special, more formalized version of the language.
   
   For most people, the first zone to focus on is "getting about" (greeting people, asking for directions, thanking them, ordering food, buying things, etc.)
   
   Then you'll want a "social zone": to be able to make friends and will probably end up in a relationship with someone (or at least want to talk to people about their spouses/lovers/family/etc.).
   
   You might not care much about the "commercial" zone. There will be other zones that are relevant to you: "building & construction", "school and education", "news and media", "politics", "religion" and eventually "medical", "academic", "literary" and "science" zones, etc. Each of these zones have their own unique vocabulary set (with some overlap) and ways of expressing ideas. Even in one's own language, you need to learn the jargon if you want to talk about a particular topic. If I want my car fixed, not only should I know some of the terminology for things like spark plugs and carburetors, but also the idiomatic ways to describe problems ("the engine is not running smoothly", "there's a knocking sound", "the clutch sticks"...)
   
   Being selective in what you study is the secret to making good progress and learning efficiently.
   
   
7. Use mnemonics and spaced-repetition to memorize words and patterns and rules.
   
   This is vital. You need to "do the time" in order to be able to communicate. But it's no good just understanding the mechanics of how to put sentences together, it all has to be internalized and immediately-accessible in your mind.
   
   Memory is an essential aspect of language learning. If you don't address this issue then you are doomed to waste hours revisiting material unnecessarily.
   
   
8. After reading and speaking, there is listening. (As I already said, forget about writing. Writing is a special and very advanced skill, even in your own language, that you cannot begin to contemplate until you've read extensively over several years.)
   
   This is hard. We don't actually hear what people say unless we already know what they are saying.
   
   WTF!?
   
   I'm still trying to understand the process, but so far it seems that we replay what we (think we) hear in our ears so that we can understand it in our heads.
   
   But it happens so fast that you have to train your "ear" to be able to process the sounds instantly. There's no going back (except in a one-to-one conversation where you can ask the speaker to repeat him/herself).
   
   The way to do this effectively is to read and master the text that you want to be able to understand aurally. And then listen to it over and over again, one sentence at a time, until you can hear - pick out and understand - each word clearly.
   
   That's why I've created audio-ebooks for each of the "fluency" courses so that you can listen and read simultaneously using a remarkable app called Listening Drill.
   
   I also recommend listening to original-language movies with subtitles on (in the same language, not in yours). This of course means being able to play the movie slowly enough so that you have time to read the subtitles! It's not easy - and I've devised a way to do this so that you can follow a movie at your own pace.
   
   When you can see what's being said then you can also hear it!
   
   In time, you will be able to hear similar patterns of speech without the support of the written text.
   
   This is a crucial component of the Rapid Method. Many courses do include listening material, but not in the form of "ear training". In the Rapid Method, you are expected to listen to each sentence repeatedly before moving on to the next one... not just listen to as much generic material as possible in the hope that you will eventually become "attuned" to the general sounds of the language. I think Glossika tries to do this, but I didn't find it useful for me - perhaps because it was too unstructured with no integration with the text and no learning path. And although Glossika is available in a "spaced repetition" version (a bit like Pimsleur), it's poorly implemented. One needs to be able to control this process yourself.
   
   I tried "massive listening" when I first came to Thailand. I watched a movie every day (with English subtitles) for a year. It was a spectacular failure: I learnt nothing. My mistake was to switch on the English subtitles. This meant that I tuned out the spoken dialog and just focused on the meaning. But even when I tried watching movies with no subtitles, I didn't hear - or understand, or learn - anything. In Stephen Krashen's research, he states that you need "comprehensible input" in order to make any progress in learning a language. I.e., you need to be able to understand what you are hearing, otherwise it is a total waste of time.
   
   What I did find useful, however, was attending the AUA classes in Bangkok (AUA elsewhere in Thailand don't follow the same method for some reason). Two teachers will talk and mime and draw in front of the class and all you need to do is pay attention and listen. You'll get the gist of what they're saying.
   
   The theory is that your mind will undergo mild stress and tension and will be forced to "stretch" into a state of understanding, exactly how children learn.
   
   I don't think this is efficient. It's more efficient to choose a level where there is no tension, where you understand mostly everything comfortably, and then just sit back and enjoy the show!
   
   

Originally Posted by Zooheekock

You've got 44 consonants, 32 vowels, 4 tone markers, 10 digits, a few punctuation marks and a few oddities (-รร-, ทร-, inherent vowels, etc.) to learn. That comes to round about 100 facts, nearly all of the sort 'this sign represents this sound' (ท -> /tʰ/, ต -> /t/, etc.)

Partially true there "Zooheekock", you're just parroting what all the books about learning thai tell foreigners.

What they don't tell us right out of the gate is while there are 44 consonants, two are obsolete and NEVER appear in writing (not even in the words associated with those consonants ฅอ-คน, ฃอ-ขวด), that leaves 42.

Factor in that there are only 21 consonant sounds because of the b/s duplication thai has; 6-T's 5-K's, 4-S's, etc. Of course don't forget while there are just four tone marks (ไม้เอก-่, ไม้โท-้, ไม้ตรี-๊, ไม้จัตวา-๋) there are FIVE tone sounds!

Those few oddities (-รร-, ทร-, inherent vowels, etc.) you mention are enough to trip up most people learning to read thai.. Don't forget, double function consonants, where a consonant ends one syllable then is voice again as a stand alone consonant, consonant clusters both อักษรควบแท้ true clusters and อักษรควบไม่แท้ false clusters, silent ห (หอ นำ), the 9 ways a syllable or word can end in thai and other quirky stuff.

If as you say a person can learn that in a fortnight or over a weekend, I can't remember which one you said you could do in what time frame, that person is indeed a quick study. . .

At least rapidll manned up and said they have no degree in linguistics..

Even if they bloviate as much as I do with their oh-so long replies.. Just kidding..

Originally Posted by Bettyboo

Basically, you misunderstand and misrepresent the word/area of 'linguistics'.

OK, I admit, I do study "linguistics". Nevertheless, the courses that I've developed are almost completely "non-linguistic" (I'm using poetic license liberally when it comes to what is "linguistics"). If I discover or invent a method that works, it doesn't really matter why it works. That's something for later "linguistic" study...

It's a fascinating subject, but most studies in this field are as dry as dust. I've scoured the Applied Linguistic and Language Learning journals and there's actually very little in the way of an integrated approach for learning a second language effectively. (The discussions about who is learning what are also quite arcane. My focus is on people who'd like to live in a country or visit it for long periods of time and converse with the locals.)

One of the main problems I've had is to access research papers. Most of the research has been done by people or institutions with public funding, yet the results of their work are usually buried in very expensive journals that the general public does not have access to. I've often had to write to the authors directly to get their papers.

Most of the studies I've come across seem to be on describing how we go about learning a second language - there doesn't seem to be any attempt to devise and test what is an effective way of doing so; and virtually no discussion about memory techniques and muscle & ear training. You have to go outside the field of linguistics (cognitive psychology, sports and music training respectively).

The problem with most of the research in Applied Linguistics that I've come across is that the paradigm is still concerned with linguistic terminology. Language learners are then expected to learn the terminology (perhaps indirectly) and think about the language they are learning in these terms (e.g. rising and falling of tones, "soft" and "hard" consonants, technical descriptions of vowels and their sounds, grammatical constructions and terminology, and so on). If you're not a linguist or language-enthusiast then these notions actually get in the way of learning a language. When foreigners try to produce a "rising tone" in Thai, for instance, it comes out sounding agonizingly forced (a bit like when Dory speaks "whale") and Thais can't really understand what you are saying.



I'm painting an overly-dismal picture perhaps. There are some remarkable researchers such as Stephen Krashen. His focus is on the theory of "second language acquisition", but not so much on the methodologies of teaching or learning a language. Other researchers and teachers have tried to address this by applying his theories in practice; but the focus still seems to be on "natural" ways that people (usually children) acquire a second language.

Some researchers have come up with what seems to be an effective way (for adults) to learn a second language, such as James Asher (with "Total Physical Response"), not to mention Marvin Brown with his "ALG" (Automatic Language Growth) method (as used by AUA for teaching Thai) and people like Paul Pimsleur (who implemented a "spaced-repetition" approach) and Michel Thomas (who used mnemonics quite extensively).

I've even scoured the polyglot forums and publications, but have been quite disappointed in finding that their approaches (some of which are very good!) tend to be that of spending many hours a day of intensive studying or practice of a lot of material.

One polyglot I came across (can't remember the name) focuses almost exclusively on writing out text repeatedly - in longhand - as an effective way of learning a language. I don't find that so useful (it's too hard and time-consuming). I think that reading the same text repeatedly, however, is much more effective, coupled with saying it out loud (repeatedly) and listening to it (repeatedly)... and of course "doing your Anki" continuously, a little bit every day.

There's a lot out there, so no doubt I've missed some linguists and researchers and am probably duplicating work independently that's already been explored more rigorously than I have the time and resources for. So if you do study linguistics then I'll be grateful for any referrals to researchers who are doing the same as me.

Originally Posted by rapidll

Here are some of the songs that we will be studying (reading) together towards the end of the week:

(reggae song, a Thai tongue-twister)

(“itchy ear”, sexy version) - this song is not about an "itchy ear"!

(“do you see the bear?”) - this song is obscene and has nothing to do with a bear (don't ask a Thai friend to explain)!

The second one - it's about an itchy 'pussy'
The last one = Does my cnut smell?