Anyone remember this game show?

This past weekend Su and I had some friends over to hang out. The wife is originally from Thailand and the husband is a farang with excellent Thai language skills. I always enjoy spending time with them, certainly because they are cool people but also because I know I am going to walk away with some good Thai language learning advice and skills.

Our friends introduced us to a game designed to help me with vocabulary and basic sentence structure/grammar. We all thought it was a lot of fun and I thought it would be good to share with you as well.

I should tell you up front that the game is going to require at least two people, although having three or four people makes it much more interesting. I can understand that being difficult for some as it seems that most of us language learners do so alone. But if you have a few friends also learning Thai or, better yet, have some Thai language speakers that like games, you’ll dig this.

The game is quite similar to the old game show called The $10,000 Pyramid or the Taboo board game. If you have ever seen this show you have a pretty good idea of how the game is played.

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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!

I finally finished compiling the last two volumes in the Manee series, so now all volumes from Grades 1-6 are now up on the Downloads page and available for you to use.

Thanks to everyone for your patience while I figured out exactly what was missing.

Now back to our regularly-scheduled program…

The kind folks at Lanna Innovation sent me their latest product – Thai Consonant Flashcards to take a look at and comment on. In the Thai language-learning community there is plenty of room for new product growth. The problem is that the major players have such a firm grasp on the market in terms of what books you must have to learn, it can be difficult to break through with a new product and set yourself apart from the pack. (I have some product ideas in development as well, so I know this problem all too well.)

So the question is, can a company with a new product break through and make a mark in the learning community? More to the point, does the Learn Thai consonants flash cards set have what it takes to get added to the list? Let’s find out…
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A friend was gracious enough to send me the Grade 4 volumes in the Manee series. Honestly, I didn’t even know there was a Grade 4 – I thought they only went up to Grade 3. Anyway, they are available on the downloads page if you would like to grab them.

Photo by tourismhuahin.com

“Excuse, please. Where see go Liberty Bell?”

Working in Olde City Philadelphia, three blocks from the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and Ben Franklin’s grave, you hear this kind of question a lot. Needless to say, not a day goes by (especially in the summer) that I don’t see at least a handful of people walking around with maps in hand, trying to figure out which historical landmark to see next. This area gets a lot of foreign tourists, and quite often I am asked things like “Excuse, please. Where see go Liberty Bell?”

I know exactly what they are trying to ask me, and I am always more than happy to show them where they need to go. But one thing I do not do is correct their English. It would almost seem rude, wouldn’t it? I don’t know these people, and all they want is some help with directions. So why then is it so important for us Thai language learners to learn the tones? I mean, in all likelihood we’re not going to be corrected by a complete stranger, are we? And even if we are, who cares if they understood what we were asking and helped us?

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My Thai language Cheat Sheets, which can be found on the Downloads page, has been updated with a lot of new information. Some of the changes and inclusions are: Description of live and dead endings for vowels, as discussed in my previous post. Thai definitions for the tones and consonant classes. Updated design and layout. Expanded numbers section. We’re not talking a massive, 300-page update, but they are updates that I felt were very important and pressing enough to get a new version up on the site.

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When I was studying Japanese, I bought a set of kanji flashcards. They were very helpful in that I could carry a handful with me when I was on the train to work, which allowed me to practice. What I did not like about them, however, was that they got worn and torn pretty easily, and one slip of the hand caused them to fall all over the place. To be honest, it was a huge pain in the butt.

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