Why do many expats not bother to learn to read?

[Big Boy]

I started at 5, until I was 16. The first time I used the language in France, it was like a scene from Little Britain - they didn't even try to understand me. 11 years of wasted education, because I've never tried since.

Back to Thai please.

[handdrummer]

I've had friends who've raised their children bi and tri-lingual and an American friend who moved to Majorca with her 2 elementary aged children who learned Spanish by being immersed in it. In the U.S. Army school of languages you're in class 8 hrs. a day, 5 days a week only hearing and speaking the language your learning. Immersion with native speakers is the key and the younger you are the quicker you learn the language. The people that I know here who have mixed Thai/Western children speak to them in both languages and the children are fluent in both languages. The most extreme example I know is an American, Spanish speaking friend, married to a Japanese woman and their daughter, when very young would speak all three languages in one sentence.

[LePepe]

We're considering a move to Thailand in a few years for retirement. My wife can speak 3 or 4 languages (English, Indonesian, Portuguese and a bit of Dutch). I am literate in English, Dutch and French, and learning spoken Thai, but while she's younger and handles the different languages well, I tend to move things into "English" and "Not English" buckets. Go to France, read in French but when I speak, only Dutch spills out. With 5+ years of French class in school, I read and write fine, but parallel-processing the results into the local language within my noggin doesn't work - it only outputs the most-recent, non-native language I've learned. It's infuriating but at least I can read or write, so I'm not kept out entirely (I could possibly fake being mute and hand out notes all day, hmm....)

I get what others have said, that learning a language is too hard in your declining years - but I don't buy it. Dutch is a ridiculous language that is all exceptions and no rules, where you need to know almost every word to know if it's masculine or feminine, where they compound individual words to illogical lengths just to make a new word, or co-opt an English word and then twist its meaning on you, and where - for such a small country - there are so many provincial exceptions that we don't often know what the southerners/northerners are saying.

Yet if I can learn it, starting at an age over 50, I bet I can learn anything. I may not be great at Thai, or I may only be able to read it well and speak it poorly, but that's normal for someone on the end of their lives. I don't buy for a second that you can't learn it at all - only that you can't be arsed to learn it.

[handdrummer]

LePepe, tonal languages require a musical ear with no hearing difficulties. Many people, as they age, lose the ability to discern pitch clearly due to hearing loss and there's a type of hearing loss where you can't distinguish pitch at all so please don't put everyone in the same boat. As far as reading Thia, if English were written as Thai thesentencewoldlooklikethis whenthesubjectwasfinishedanewsentencewouldbegin
Thai has no upper and lower case, no punctuation and no tenses. I'm sure that you'll do fine.

[MDMK]

Dutch is a walk in the park for a native English speaker when compared to Thai. The male/female in Dutch is quite irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you say de trein of het trein, the meaning is unchanged and everyone will understand you 100%. Everyone knows what I mean when I say (or write) in English could of/would of/should of, even though it's grammatically horrible. In Dutch a lot of people will struggle with the G sound at the beginning of a word, or possibly the SCH, but again a minor struggle compared to the tones in Thai.

[Nereus]

LePepe, tonal languages require a musical ear with no hearing difficulties. Many people, as they age, lose the ability to discern pitch clearly due to hearing loss and there's a type of hearing loss where you can't distinguish pitch at all so please don't put everyone in the same boat. As far as reading Thia, if English were written as Thai thesentencewoldlooklikethis whenthesubjectwasfinishedanewsentencewouldbegin
Thai has no upper and lower case, no punctuation and no tenses. I'm sure that you'll do fine.

Absolutely! But he probably plays classical violin while singing an opera. And in his spare time translates African dialects. Utter BS!

[dtaai-maai]

We had this argument a couple of years ago on page 1 of this thread, and probably on a few pages since then!

I sincerely don't believe there is such a thing as "language ability", there is only trying and giving up.

I sincerely think you are quite wrong. You obviously still have to put in a lot of effort, but languages are like any other skill (music, sport, carpentry, etc.) - some people are born with them, and others can work as hard as they like, but they'll never master it.

[HHTel]

Dutch is a ridiculous language that is all exceptions and no rules,

I never realised the Dutch had a language...... I thought it was a throat disease!

[bsdk1960]

Dutch is a ridiculous language that is all exceptions and no rules,

I never realised the Dutch had a language...... I thought it was a throat disease!

[handdrummer]

LePepe, tonal languages require a musical ear with no hearing difficulties. Many people, as they age, lose the ability to discern pitch clearly due to hearing loss and there's a type of hearing loss where you can't distinguish pitch at all so please don't put everyone in the same boat. As far as reading Thia, if English were written as Thai thesentencewoldlooklikethis whenthesubjectwasfinishedanewsentencewouldbegin
Thai has no upper and lower case, no punctuation and no tenses. I'm sure that you'll do fine.

Absolutely! But he probably plays classical violin while singing an opera. And in his spare time translates African dialects. Utter BS!

Unless he's a dairy farmer, then it would be Udder BS.

[Takiap]

While we always go on about how difficult it is to learn Thai, we should also sometimes have sympathy for Thais who say the same thing about English, which is probably the most difficult language in the world to learn from scratch.
If you can get your head around the "tonal" side if the Thai language, I would imaging that it is a very easy language to learn because it is a very simple language.

A few examples:


It is really very hot today - lon maak
I have to go fetch my kids from school - lap luk
Damn, these bloody mossies keep biting me - Ooooiiii yung kat
I am eating my breakfast - kin khao
I am eating my lunch - kin khao
I am eating my dinner - kin khao


What does get to me sometimes, is when you ask for something in Thai and you do it flawlessly, and you are greeted with a blank stare. However, you can usually get the message across simply by singing the same question.

Ordering a packet Play Off (red) cigarettes at 7/11

Sawadee kap. Buri Play Off deang kap - The blank stare and a sheepish smile, so time to try again......
Ow, bulleeeeeeee Play Off deangggggggggg kap - Perfect, now I can go outside and have a cigarette.

[Scout]

Ordering a packet Play Off (red) cigarettes at 7/11

Sawadee kap. Buri Play Off deang kap - The blank stare and a sheepish smile, so time to try again......
Ow, bulleeeeeeee Play Off deangggggggggg kap - Perfect, now I can go outside and have a cigarette.

I hear you Takiap, I’m often frustrated when I think I’ve spoken perfect Thai but they don’t understand me. I think it’s often a case where they don’t expect it to be Thai coming from my mouth and I’ve slightly mispronounced either a tone or a vowel length, or making a slight grammatical error, leading to them being mildly confused, at least initially. You might be encountering the same thing. For instance, in your playoff cigarette example, the first sentence has no verb. You’re essentially saying “Hello, Playoff red cigarettes”. Also, depending on the vowel length of the “u” in Buri, it could be confused with “Hello, playoff red city or town”. I can understand why a Thai speaker might be momentarily confused and be thinking “is he asking if we have them, is he saying he wants to buy some, or is he asking for directions to a town that I don’t really understand the name of, etc, etc”. I imagine that if you repeated the exact same words, due to the context of standing at a counter in 7/11 that they would probably figure it out in short order, fetch a pack of the smokes and seek confirmation from you that this is indeed what you wanted.

Your 2nd example sentence is more complete, “ow” or “aow” is the verb, meaning want or desire. Since Thai is a pronoun dropping language this translates as “want cigarettes playoff red”. I think there is much less chance of generating confusion with your 2nd sentence, but they would still be unsure if you want a pack or a box and how many you want, they would most likely anticipate you want 1 pack and expect you to hold up more fingers if you wanted more than one. A Thai speaker might use your same 2nd sentence without specifying classifiers for box or pack or number wanted because in the context of standing at the 7/11 counter it’s most common for a person to buy one pack at a time. Thais cut words from their sentences much more than we do in English, this creates many cases where I am confused when I listen to them, but they are not because they rely on context much more than we do, consequently they are better at it.

[HHTel]

I think it’s often a case where they don’t expect it to be Thai coming from my mouth

This has happened to me a lot, especially in restaurants. I've asked for something, they look confused until my wife repeats it. When I ask, my wife says that I spoke perfectly. Asking the waiter/waitress why they didn't understand the response is always "Oh, I thought he was speaking English!"

[handdrummer]

"Oh, I thought he was speaking English!"

It couldn't be that. Thais thinking? Not a chance.

[Chazz14]

Living here for 5 years I get various responses when I speak basic Thai i.e:

- (as already mentioned) the Thai is expecting me to speak in a foreign language and does not immediately realise it's Thai I'm actually speaking

- (in 7-11 especially) staff sometimes wait and let a colleague serve me or pretend not to have seen me (pathetic really)... reminds
me of the English barmaid doing her nails and looking in the opposite direction. There is even one girl who tends to disappear
when I approach the check-out. If she has to serve me she does it without making eye-contact or uttering a word!

- finally a positive. My preferred people to deal with are the m/cycle taxi boys in HH and the drivers of the orange bus from CA to
HH. They just treat me as a valued customer.

P.S. One book I can recommend to help you start learning Thai is Teach Yourself Thai by David Smyth (ISBN:0340590416)