Happy 100!

It took a little bit more than a year to do it, but I’m very happy to be able to write this post, my 100th, today. I started Learning Thai (My Story) on July 1st, 2009, primarily as an experiment. I knew that I wanted to start writing a blog about something, but I wasn’t quite sure what that something was going to be. Guitar seemed like an obvious choice, and I eventually moved forward with that project to create my Fretterverse guitar blog; but, I needed a blog project to get my feet wet first and see if I had the time, energy, and chutzpah to make it work.

Thai language and culture seemed like the next natural choice. I knew that if done right it would give me the ability to meet other Thai language learners and create the relationships I would need to help me with my education. So I dove in with both feet, not really sure what to expect, and not really sure how long it would last. I’m so glad I made it this far.

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Currently on ARGH! level 6

I just wrote a post for my other blog, where I express my frustration with a lack of progress in both my guitar practicing and Thai language studies. It’s been a struggle recently, as you will see when you (hopefully) read what’s going on.

Since I highly value the opinions of my blog readers here – as I do with my other blog – I figured I would seek out some advice here as well. I know there is a solution out there, and hopefully some of you can hip me to it.

Please have a look at what I wrote and give me some suggestions. I need to get unstuck from my current rut and keep moving forward.

I’ve made some slight changes to the blog sidebar in hopes of keeping it more active and encouraging you (and me) to be here more often.

First, you will see that the “Learn Thai Words” is back. A glitch in some code update made this go away temporarily, but now it’s back. I’ll be adding more words to this slowly but surely.

Second, a “Thailand News” RSS feed has been added. This grabs the latest posts from Google related to Thailand and makes them easily available for you to read.

Third, a “Community Links” widget has been added. I’m most excited about this, as it allows everyone to submit links to their favorite news stories and blog posts from anywhere on the web. I’m sure this is going to get spammed, but the good news is that the section is moderated so nothing will be posted without me seeing it first.

I strongly encourage everyone to submit links. Your favorite Thai blog articles, news items etc. The only thing I ask is that you not post overly-political items that lean too far to one side or another. Those items won’t be posted. But anything else is welcome and I hope it’s a way for us to grow the Thai blogger community.

Lastly, I’ve put up a “Buy Me a Snapple” donation widget. I held off on doing this for a long time, but since the Learning Thai (My Story) blog is now over one year old (Happy Anniversary to me!) I figured it was a good time. The purpose of the donation widget is hopefully to make enough scratch to cover my blog expenses. This would be things like hosting charges, products I want to review but have to buy with my own money, and getting royalty-free (but paid) images to enhance my posts.

It would be wonderful if I could also have it help pay for my trips to Thailand, but I’m not going to press my luck. If you like the site, if something I have written has helped you, taught you, or entertained you, and you feel compelled to donate, anything would help. If not, that’s fine too!

Thanks, everyone. I hope you like the new updates.

I was recently asked to write a guest post on the Thai language for another blog, and so I did.

You can read Learning to speak Thai: the ins and outs of Tackling the Thai language on the Expat Arrivals website. Please take a few minutes and visit their site to show your support.

Thanks!

Well, they announced the results of the Top 100 Language Blogs of 2010. Drum roll?

We came in at #31!

I am incredibly (and I mean incredibly) surprised at this. I was not expecting this at all; I wasn’t even thinking we were going to make it into the top 100, let alone the to 50. Thank you everyone who voted, and especially thanks to everyone who takes the time to visit and read my blog. Without you I would just be talking to myself and that’s only fun some of the time.

Okay, so today we’ll continue with Part 2 of our Thai Tones review. Before we go further down the rabbit hole, here are the answers to yesterday’s “quiz”:


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The voting has begun. You can help support my blog by voting for me as one of the Top 100 language blogs of 2010. All you have to do is click the graphic to go to the voting page. Once there, select “Learning Thai” and submit the form.

It’s that simple, and I would really appreciate the help!

One of the unique features of the Thai language is the use of particles. In essence, particles as they pertain to the Thai language are words that don’t really translate to a comparable word in another language; they are used to express a range of grammatical quirks – from emotion to politeness level to changing a word’s function.

Because Thai is a tonal language, they somewhat lose out on the ability to use vocal inflection as a means for making a sentence a statement or a question. Here is an English example:

I’m not going.

I’m not going?

Obviously, the way we – in English- make distinctions between these two sentences is the inflection of our voice. The statement will be somewhat more monotone, and the question will rise on the word “going.” We can’t do this with Thai because of the tones. To get around this, several particles are used. Today I’m giving you a few of the more commonly-used particles. You will see these a lot, so you should learn them and practice how to use them.

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Glenn Slayden (of thai-language.com) and I collaborated on an online typing tutor program/game that is designed to help assist you in learning the keyboard mapping of Thai characters on an English keyboard. I originally designed this game to not only help me learn to type Thai, but I also wanted a fun project to work on that involved only HTML and the jQuery javascript library. (Work programming can be boring when you have to do it; I wanted to program something that interested me and will help others, too.)

If you remember the old Space Invaders video game from 1978 then you have a pretty good idea of how the tutor works. Consonants and vowels drop from the top of the screen, and you have until the bottom of the screen to correctly type the answer. Your score is marked on the right, as well as some filters Glenn put in to help you concentrate on specific things. You can start, pause, and restart the game as you like.

You can play the game on thai-language.com, and sometime in 2010 I will be releasing another online Thai learning game (again on TLC or perhaps here on this blog).

Good luck!