Manee

And… we’re back. Back to translating more of the Manee book, of course! We will continue right where we left off and keep moving along slowly but surely.

Remember, this is a marathon and not a sprint. Picking up pieces little by little in this (blogging) environment is much better than trying to ram 10,000 details and definitions down your throat. Don’t try to get everything in one sitting. Take away what you can and internalize it; then, go back and pick up what you didn’t get the first time. Constant review and reinforcement is the best way to learn a language.

When we last left Manee, she was accompanying her mom to the market. Let’s see what happens next. Here is the text for the next paragraph:

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Manee

As I promised in my 100th post, I want to start digging a little deeper into actual translation of Thai text. Grammar and vocabulary are obviously very important things to learn, study, and review, but putting it all together is really what it’s all about. I can’t just sit and try to memorize vocabulary lists, and studying grammar books is about as much fun as watching my wife paint her toenails (much as I love her).

Since I’m no Thai language expert I thought it would be best to work through the Manee books. Always up for a challenge, I decided to start with the Grade 2, Volume 1 book. (Not really a challenge, per se, but the Grade 1 books have very fragmented sentences and doesn’t work well for translating.)

So, I’m starting with Manee Grade 2 and working very slowly. Time is a bit of a factor, as is my current Thai education level. But let’s work together and see how well we can do, shall we? My hope is that we can work together and discuss each “lesson” so we can get better as a group.

Time to dig in!

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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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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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I think y’all know by now that I’m a big fan of Paiboon Publishing, especially their transliteration system. I find theirs to be the best and most accurate system for romanization. Their dictionaries are great, their software dictionary is very nice, and they have a lot of products for all levels of Thai language learners. In a nutshell, it seems like just about everything Paiboon releases is of great value and high quality.

Their “Speak Like a Thai” series is something I have been keeping my eye on for a while but had not purchased until recently. I guess I figured that I already owned a ton of learning materials, so it was probably good to pace myself. But, curiosity always eventually gets the better of me and I broke down and purchased the first two audio CDs in the Speak Like a Thai series. The first volume – Contemporary Thai Expressions – is a collection of 500 miscellaneous (but common) phrases that you will hear when speaking with Thai people.

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Bangkok Day by Day

Trying to keep up with all of the Thailand travel guides can be tricky. It seems like a new one pops up every week. Thailand keeps getting more and more popular every year for foreign tourists, so it’s only fitting that new guides are coming out more frequently. Despite the political tensions, I see tourism in Thailand continuing to grow stronger and stronger for many years to come.

As the number of farang visiting The Land of Smiles increases, the need for accurate and reliable travel books becomes more important. The more travel books I read for this blog, the more I cherish what makes each book unique just as much as what “required” information each one contains.

I stumbled across Frommer’s Bangkok Day by Day while perusing the travel section of my local book store. It’s a relatively unassuming book considering it’s size (it’s small compared to most), but don’t let the size fool you. It literally gives meaning to the phrase “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

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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.

ตัว, คน, or ดอก?

I’ve admittedly been putting this subject off for a long time now. It’s not necessarily an overly-complex subject, but it’s one that gets somewhat overlooked by many beginning Thai language students.

I feel that knowledge of classifiers – what they are and how they work – seem to fall somewhere in the “intermediate” language learning area for Thai. They aren’t something beginners necessarily need to worry about, but they should definitely have been figured out (the concept, at least) well before one considers themselves fluent. (I’m not one of those people, btw…)

So without further adieu, I give you Thai Classifiers…

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I see you...

In this installment of Grammar Wars, I want to take a look at two Thai words that mean “to see.” These words are:

เจอ /jəə/

and

เห็น /hěn/

Shall we dig in?

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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.