Tag Archives: Thai language

Just do it!

nike-just-do-it2Here I am back in the swing if things. Its crazy. Despite being gone, I am not lacking for ideas and thoughts. It helps to take a step back and write for yourself and not for what you think others want.

A couple of interesting things have happened in the last few days that I thought I would share with you.

How do I get to where you are?

I have mentioned before that I am learning to code and develop workbooks/macros in Excel for work.  A year ago, when I started my current job, I knew very little about this kind of thing.  But I saw a need for it and so I sat down and worked really hard to learn it and a year later, I have become a primary point of contact, not just in my group but for others as well.

The other day, a good friend of mine at work asked me.  “How do I get to where you are now?”  That’s a simple question with a complicated answer.  How do you ask Mozart how to write music or Davinci how to paint.  Ok, maybe those examples are too extreme, I’m not a master at what I do, but the point is the same.  It’s not easy to answer.

I still attempted to answer him.  I gave a few pointers here and there, but ultimately I gave one advice that I felt was better than any of them: Just do it!  I learned more by finding a problem (or making up one) and figuring out how to solve it.

The same is true with language learning.  Stop reading about the best ways to learn and just start learning.  When you get stuck, come back to a language blog or a grammar book, but then get back on the horse and keep doing.  You will get further that way.

Working with Thai

I recently found a job posting for a research analyst in Oregon.  The candidate needs to be strong in both Thai and English.  I don’t know if the job will ultimately be for me, nor do I know if I would even be considered, but I decided to put a resume in so I can learn more about it.  Because of that, I will be emphasizing Thai for at least another month or so.

On that note, I would like to remind you all of the best place to learn Thai:  Women Learn Thai….and some men too!     Thanks again for reading and enjoy your week.

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Priorities

Hello out there.  Long time no post, right?  Yeah I know it’s been a while, but it’s that time of year.  Time to think about God and time to think about family.  To be honest, I’ve thought about writing something, but nothing has come to my mind.  I’ve been distracted and I am not ashamed to say that I am ok with it, because that distraction was my wife and my kids.  I’ve spent the last few days watching Christmases past and making Christmas memories with them.  I am so very happy to be married to my beautiful Kiwi wife who has given me 4 wonderful kids (5 if you count our still-born son).

Priorities in life are important

To be honest, that is what this blog is all about. Continue reading

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Filed under How to learn, Motivation

Not everything develops at the same rate….and that’s ok

Words have a power all their own

Words have a power all their own (Photo credit: Lynne Hand)

This week, I’ve had a little bit of an accomplishment.  It’s nothing large, but I did finish the Destinos Telecourse.  Not a real easy thing in that there are over 50 episodes, most of which are all in Spanish.  I do feel happy to know how it ends and to say I finished it.

By finishing it, I am now left me without a regular thing to listen to.   So I’ve been searching and I found my self back at lingq.com.  For those who don’t know Lingq.com, It is a website with an extensive library of audio and transcripts to go along with them.  All the words can then be either marked as words your know, or one can create a “lingq” with the definition for review later.    As I was using the website, I was reminded of some important things that we need to know when we are learning a new language.

The words we “know” are not the same in everything

Lingq.com likes to make a big deal out of the words you “know.” Continue reading

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Filed under How to learn, Opinions

You get what you get

Samuel Huntington, First President of the Unit...

Samuel Huntington, First President of the United States (Photo credit: Tony Fischer Photography)

 

Interesting thing to think about happened in the last 24 hours.  In the U.S. Elections, Barack Obama we re-elected as the President of the United States.  Now I don’t intend to write about any of the politics around that, but somehow I was able to connect that moment last night to language learning and in the most round about way, it’s weird.  I guess my brain functions in a weird way or I like to connect the dots differently than others.  Never the less, I still made a connection in the most round about, yet powerful (for me at least) way.  So let me bring you into the inner workings of my mind.

 

Somebody will always be disappointed

 

The thing with elections is that somebody, and in this case close to half the country, will always be disappointed.  If Mitt Romney would have won, it would have been there other half, but even though he didn’t, it doesn’t change that half the country will be disappointed.  If you are on the losing side and the person you voted for doesn’t get elected, what do you do?  The only thing you can do, which is make do with what you have been given.

 

This reminded me of a common phrase used by my children.  My daughter taught it to me, actually, after she learned it from a teacher in school.  The phrase is “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.”  There is power in the simple phrase.  You can not control the cards you are dealt.  You do your best with what you have.  Making a fuss about it, will lead to know where.

 

How does this apply to learning a language?

 

Simple.  In a perfectly ideal world, you will instantly be transported to live and work in the environment which uses the language you want to learn.  At the same time you will have all the free time you need/want to study what and how you want.    Wouldn’t that be great?

 

For most of us, that is not possible. I don’t have the time and/or resources available to push myself into an immersive environment.  I don’t even have time to schedule a Skype call with any regularity.  I mostly have the time I travel to and from work.  So I could complain about my language learning situation as something horrible or I can do as my kids say: “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit!”

 

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The Decisions I’ve Made

Image from Wikimedia.org

Lately, I’ve had to make some decisions.  Not really complicated ones, but decisions were necessary none the less.  These decision would have an impact on this blog so I thought I would share them with you now.

To Esperanto or not to Esperanto?

This is about the question I posed a few days ago about bringing Esperanto back.  Continue reading

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3 months and counting

Language

Language (Photo credit: Jan Marlyn Reesman)

Last post I talked about which languages I’m not learning next year.  This means that there only 3 left that I could be possible learning.  Once again, for full disclosure, I’ve already chosen the language.  I know which one I learning, I just trying to build a little drama around the pick I guess.  On that note, don’t forget to take the poll on which language you think I will learn next.

Also on the right you will notice a big old count down calendar.  Thanks to a comment that was left of my fake post, I realized I had the year in wrong and now it’s counting down properly.  Not only are there 3 languages left, but there are 3 months left.  3 months to get as fluent as I can.  So I have reprioritized myself and set some goals to get me through the next 3 months.

More Speaking off the cuff

I have spent a good deal of my time, inadvertently  practicing my speaking in a very structured manner. Continue reading

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Reading Thai Newspapers

Starting this blog has put me in contact with some fantastic people who help me as I go about learning and improving the languages I speak.  One of those people is Catherine Wentworth, the creator of womenlearnthai.com.  Recently we had a fantastic opportunity to talk about reading.  We discussed the benefits of not stopping to look up every word.  Reading, not fast, but naturally.  The brain learns and understands differently than if we stop every other word to look up the meaning and grammar of each word we don’t know.

This conversation helped me change how I practice reading.  When I read Spanish, I use a program called Learning with Text.  You can find out more about how to use it here at this website.  Learning with texts, allows me to take real Spanish I find on the web, put it in the program and as I find words and phrases I need to look up, it helps me to quickly do so.

Prior to my conversations with Catherine, I used to spend a lot of time laboring over each word to make sure I got the correct nuance.  Now I read the same text a couple of times.  First without stopping, but without skipping any words.  Then I go back and look up words I don’t know, but still trying to not to stop very long.  I then read it again without stopping.  Once I feel I got a B, or in other words I understand about 80 percent of it.  Then I go on to a new text.  It’s been a fantastic system

Reading Thai

This week is Thai week and my goal this week was to improve, Continue reading

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Back from my “Thai” Vacation

Last week was Thai week.  It was great.  I listened to Thai TV, especially a very interesting hour all about Taxi driver’s not legally being able to reject passengers without a valid reason, and I read and practice speaking in Thai.  It’s great to have this monthly vacation from Spanish.  Eventually you work yourself so hard you get frustrated and you wonder if you are making any progress.  Today, I felt my Spanish is the best it has ever been, and I did not actively learn Spanish for over a week!

Despite last week being about Thai, I still found a fantastic tool that I want to share with you to help you learn Spanish.  What is this tool you may ask?  It’s a website called Duolingo.

What is Duolingo?

The best way to answer that is to watch this video:

It’s a win/win situation.  They get more people to translate, which the more people who translate, the better their translation is, and you get to learn Spanish.  Functionally it is a great program.  If this was your only method of learning Spanish, you would be lacking a lot.  As a complement to your other programs out there, it is great.  You can test out of subjects and levels you already know, which lets you move on quicker to the subjects you don’t know as well.

The vocabulary builds on itself, so you need to learn basic animals and clothing before you learn colors.  Why?  Because you will be taught using sentences such as gray elephants drank water or I have a red hat.  So you are constantly reviewing old vocab as you study new ones.  Don’t worry if you learned plumo instead of bolígrafo.  It will accept any answer for “Pen” that exists.

Four more months!

As of this month, I only have 4 more months of Active Spanish left.  I really need to get down and push myself hard.  I have turned my Google Chrome immersion tool to “fluent” so that it translates whole paragraphs now.  I sometimes feel like I am way off, but I know that If I push myself hard enough I will make my goal to be basically fluent in speaking by the end of the year.

So four more months and you will hear me Speaking a new language.  What is that language going to be?  It’s one of those 4 on the right.  Which one would like to learn?  Vote now and share which one you would like to learn.

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Filed under How to learn, spanish, Thai

Another Sunday Edition

 

When I actually write a post on Sunday, I tend to like to write about a more spiritual side of things.  I do know and respect that most who read this blog don’t read it for my spiritual insights and I am sensitive to that fact.  At the same time, as Shakespeare said, “To thine own self be true.”  Today I was watching a YouTube video put out by my church.  Before I explain why I thought about posting it, let me show it to you:

I like this video, because I do believe that there is a bit of our Heavenly Father in everything around us.  This also gave me chance to reflect on my two years I spent in Thailand.  I make no secret that I learned Thai as part of my desire to share the Gospel with others in Thailand.  To do that, I had to understand and respect the religion of the people, primarily Buddhism.

One may think it’s a contradiction that I can be out trying to convert people to my religion and still respect them for following theirs.  To me it’s not.  Thai’s have a saying in regard to religion.  ”All religions teach us to be good.”  I agree with this whole heartily.  If they are not teaching you to be good, then it’s not a religion.  If I had never learned Thai, I would never have learned about Buddhism and I would never understood the general message of what Buddhism teaches.

So on this short Sunday edition of Want2SpeakThai.com, I would encourage all to share your beliefs and be willing to have others share theirs with you.  When you have language exchanges, ask to learn about their church/beliefs.  You will not just learn more about the language and culture of those who speak your language.  You will understand your own more as well.  That is what happened to me in Thailand and that is what will happen to you.

 

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Filed under How to learn, Memories, Motivation

Thai week

Thai Emblem

Image from Wikipedia.org

Today was the official start of Thai week for me.  A few weeks back I mentioned that I will be doing “Thai Week” once a month so I can take a vacation from my Spanish Langauge studies.   This is a helpful in that it allows me to take a momentary step away from the problem and let what I have learned sink in.  I can rest and get ready to start again.  In the mean time, I can take some time to focus on one of my other passions: Thai.  Like I said in my ‘vacation’ post, you don’t have to study another language on your time off.  You can read a book or just catch up on some other hobby you enjoy doing.  The point is to take a break.

Taking a break doesn’t mean I’m still not learning

I also recently posted about how to learn two languages at once.  So even though I may not be ‘actively’ learning Spanish, I am still improving my knowledge of Spanish.  I realized that I don’t need to use English as my reference language.  When I learn Thai, I cross-reference into Spanish and the same goes the other way around as well.  It’s very powerful to make connection between the two languages, that I never would have made with just English as a reference.

There are two major things I am doing.  The first thing is that I am pulling out my old beginners podcast/audio courses in Spanish and translating them into Thai.  I got this idea from my post about going back to the basics.  I listen to these courses that are partly in English and partly in Spanish.  The Spanish is very basic so it allows me to really solidify my understanding of the basics, in both languages.

The second is adding cards to my Anki decks.  When I look up words in Thai, I cross-reference them into Spanish.  This forces me to have to learn both at the same time.  Why shouldn’t I learn the word in Spanish at the same time as in Thai.  Of course, I use my Anki Deck efficiently and don’t waste too much time per day on it.

That isn’t all I do in Thai

Of course, not everything I do is cross referenced into Spanish.  For example, I listen to Thai TV at work.  I listen because I need to be actively doing something.  I like listening to Thai TV instead of Thai radio.  For me, there are different types of social interactions on TV that are not on Radio.  It’s more entertaining.    I am also Reading Thai news papers and other Thai websites.  I am also using the Google immersion tool set to Thai.

That’s how my Thai week is scheduled.  Like my plans?  Got any suggestions.  Please share.

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Filed under How to learn, Thai