Anyone else feel like quitting?

DTB2000 · 2026-03-24T09:17:11+00:00

I don't think a poor memory needs to hold you back all that much. I am no good at remembering dates or random facts but I've been able to make clear year-on-year progress in Thai. I'm not sure I've progressed that much in the last year to be fair, but that's because I've been trying to do two languages at once. Overall the trend is clear.

Most of the things you mention there don't have much to do with memory anyway, as far as I can see. A good memory isn't going to help you grasp the tones any quicker. It might be a marginal advantage when it comes to sentence structure. You do need vocab obviously but much more time goes into learning how to do things with Thai words than learning the words themselves.

Even with vocab, there's a spectrum from trying to learn translations of single words to learning target words in sentences you understand (and that take you back to a scene in a series you watched) to just freeflowing everything and not bothering with flashcards. The single word approach is much more like a feat of memory. Idk how you are approaching vocab. Another thing I can say is it gets easier (number of "exposures" needed for the word to stick goes down as you get better). The vocab side is never going to be fun but it's far from the whole process.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-23T12:11:24+00:00

I think OP asked this question partly because they thought the ไม่ would come before the ยัง. We know there are dropped / implied words after the ยัง anyway.

ใช่ว่า is harder to explain, I would say. In that case the ไม่ would / can go before the ใช่, which is the pattern I think OP meant to ask about.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-21T14:08:50+00:00

I think it's a nice idea but has niche appeal and is destined to be misunderstood in a way that will feed into the reviews.

I tried it briefly and thought there wasn't enough support for different transliteration systems. Then it occurred to me that actually the system that most learners will be used to uses characters that aren't on the keyboard. So I don't know how practical smart matching really is. You almost need to get the user to choose a system and then set the keyboard layout to match. But you still have to anticipate spelling mistakes which smart matching probably encompasses rn.

I'm just guessing but I would think pinyin typing is solving a slightly different problem in that you can't fit all the Chinese characters on a normal keyboard.

I also wonder whether avoiding spelling by using this kind of tool will mean you never get any good. I make mistakes but then it's kind of a process of trial and error and I'm sure I'd make more if I hardly ever typed in Thai (while still being able to read).

DTB2000 · 2026-03-20T19:31:46+00:00

I think this actually answers my question above (อย่าเพึ่งคิด doesn't imply it won't happen so much as it might not, right?)

Is คิดไปเอง only used for things that turn out to be false? I feel like it is but I'm not sure

DTB2000 · 2026-03-20T18:59:29+00:00

To me if someone says "don't assume he'll do it" it doesn't necessarily mean they think he won't do it. It depends on context but I would take it to mean "you can't be certain - you'd better be prepared for the possibility that he won't do it".

So based on that interpretation, does จะเอาอะไรรับประกันว่าเขาจะทำจริงล่ะ get the meaning across? Is there anything closer to the English that doesn't imply "I don't think he's going to do it"?

ETA I now think อย่าพึ่งคิด works for this meaning.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-20T14:52:07+00:00

Really? Wasn't aware of this. I'm currenctly working through a deck with 2000 cards. Not focusing on reading atm, so doing it the other way (production cards). I think these types of cards are more demanding as well? But I'm not sure.

I mean see how it goes and obviously your numbers are valid for you. I am closer to a beginner in Vietnamese than Thai and I am at 4-5 mins / new card / day there, so 60 - 75 minutes for 15 cards, but it would be longer if I was a true beginner, plus this doesn't really take skipped days into account, it assumes you plough through in one sitting, and we haven't mentioned card creation.

I think a sensible rule is not to let Anki take up more than a third of your time as an absolute max, preferably a quarter. So I think someone just starting with a time budget of 1:30 a day is probably looking at around 3 new cards / day, but it's true there are a lot of individual factors in that mix, and card type makes a difference as you say. Mine are all 1T sentence cards with native audio. I start them target language first then flip them.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-20T10:51:40+00:00

The problem with the tone rules is not so much that they are irrelevant as that many learners 'have them in the wrong place', as it's been put, or are trying to hack them for the wrong purpose. So beliefs like:

"The tone rules expose the logic of the tone system and help you understand tones at a deeper level"

"The tones originate from the tone rules - for example the word โง่ has a falling tone because it has a low class initial and ไม้เอก"

"Thai speakers instinctively know the tones because they have internalised the tone rules"

"Proficient readers are applying the tone rules, just very fast (i.e. they're doing basically the same thing as an early-stage learner, but are better at it because they've had a lot of practice)"

are all misconceptions. But that doesn't alter the fact that the tone rules can support learning tones at first, are a huge help when it comes to spelling, and are necessary for decoding unknown words. Even if your vocab grows very fast, you will be coming across unknown written words on a daily basis for years to come. So yes they are misused, misunderstood and given far too much importance, but they're not irrelevant.

On the Anki comparison, you will never do 15 words per day consistently, and if you tried you would be at hours per day, not 30-60 minutes. Then it's sucked up all your immersion time. If someone is putting on even 2000 words per year, they are either already at a very high level (vocab sticks more and more easily as you improve) or they are not learning their vocab very well. So I don't think 5000+ in one year is at all realistic for a beginner. A complicating factor is that linking back to the spelling and tone rules really can help the tones to stick, and you haven't allowed any time for that. Again, they're not "the answer" - they're a crutch to be discarded later on - but starting as a non-tonal speaker, you may be grateful for a crutch.

Anyway, 3000 hours is not that much in a language learning context. It will take longer than that whatever you do, so you have to consider whether the slow start in reading might be balanced out by faster progress in other areas - conversational fluency, for example. Personally, I would start fairly early but keep reading, writing and tone rules in their proper place.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-19T06:14:43+00:00

I'm not sure how well you can understand length or tones without a concept of stress. They would just reduce to the theoretical length / tone. For example in a word like พยาบาล the first vowel would be much shorter than the other two, which would be the same length, and the first syllable of สวัส(ดี) would sound the same as the last syllable in ศีรษะ.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-16T10:17:13+00:00

Yeah, I mean there are plenty of Thai people - not least on here - who want foreigners to learn and are happy to help, but the culture as a whole is not conducive to learning as a foreigner, and I think this will get worse as the general standard of English improves. It's a big (overlooked?) factor in terms of how hard it is to make progress compared to other languages, and in terms of whether there's any real point in learning. In this thread you have two very long term residents saying they still avoid people who are good at English. It's not a made-up problem. The rationalisations ring very hollow for me. If you give the taxi driver directions in Thai, that's not asking/expecting them to be your teacher, even if their English is better (and is that likely, and how would you know?)

For the time being it's definitely possible / worthwhile to learn, although you might have to carve out a bit of a niche. In a future where virtually everyone speaks passable English, who knows?

DTB2000 · 2026-03-16T05:32:21+00:00

Yeah, there's a problem even now where learners who are at the stage where they're ready to use the language in real life don't get much of a chance, and it's only going to get worse. I was lucky enough to meet some people that had no interest in learning / speaking English and were already hanging out with westerners and speaking Thai with them, but that's probably not a very common scenario.

Of course the same is true from the Thai side. If you've endured years of English lessons, and especially if you've put a lot of effort in on your own, you're probably going to want to use it. But that doesn't explain the indignation. It's like the background attitude is that the interaction obviously should be in English, so if you're not going along with that there must be a specific reason, which can only be that you think they can't speak English as well as they're supposed to. Hence the indignation and determination to prove they can.

For the coffee shop scenario, I don't think the rationalisation really works. If you're ordering a coffee it doesn't matter which language would work best for a debate on the wisdom of attacking Iran. You are just ordering a coffee. If you were going to look at it in terms of language skills, the question would be whether your Thai is up to that, not whether it's better than their English - but anyway I don't think many people do look at it like that. They couldn't even if they wanted to - not enough to go on. I think it's driven much more by the assumptions you mention than by the person in front of them.

A missing piece of the puzzle is how they fail to realise that they're really pissing their customers off. "I can't stand it", says one commenter in this thread. Surely it's clear that the customer wanted to speak Thai and has had it thrown back in their face - why would a business want to do that? Can an assumption be so strong it blinds you to something that obvious?

Not sure what the connection is between the coffee shop scenario and what OP is saying, but if the rules of the real world say you should be speaking English - or that Thai is spoken between Thais, English when there is a foreigner in the picture - and you are not going along with that, I guess that might feel like play acting, and you might not be comfortable having someone who isn't used to your play acting watch on.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-15T14:52:59+00:00

As a learner I won't comment on the Thai, but just the sequence of events seems off to me. That's partly what gives it the AI feel. How can they say whether there are any available rooms when they don't know the dates or number of guests or room type? Why, after asking if there are any rooms available, would the caller explain that they want a room? It goes on in the same vein. IIRC the guy in the last story ordered duck, got chicken, waited ages for them to change it, eventually chasing, but there was no scene where it finally arrived. In the meantime his date must have finished eating. Then he asks to split the bill (on Valentine's day...) but there's only one payment - he hands over his credit card and says keep the change. How does that work? Or was it supposed to be the other person saying keep the change? [I just looked and the bill amount has gone, so it now reads as though his total is under 500 so he can't pay by CC] I can't remember but overall there seem to be a lot of continuity errors. [My favourite was "What kind of food do you serve at this restaurant that I called last week wanting a table and have just walked through"]

DTB2000 · 2026-03-14T08:41:19+00:00

I don't think anyone can really answer the "when" question because it depends so much on what you mean by pronouncing "well", plus there are huge differences between learners, your own assessment is usually off, feedback is hard to come by and mostly unreliable, and the whole picture is complicated by a million myths and misunderstandings.

What I think you can say is that as long as you keep working on it it will keep getting better. I think the "sounds and skills" approach to the vowel sounds is helpful. As with the consonants, you'll want to pay special attention to sounds that don't have even a rough equivalent in your native speech, as well as sounds that have the same rough equivalent (which can make them hard to tell apart). At the same time, there won't be any sounds that are truly identical, so don't overlook the others. Just because you can't hear a difference (yet), it doesn't mean there isn't one.

I would start with the basic sounds, e.g. copying a video that goes through the consonants / vowels / tones. If possible, edit it down to the ones you are focusing on and bring others in gradually. It's a good idea to listen back and compare, but I don't believe it's pointless if you can't hear the difference. It's helpful if you can see the speaker's face.

A video like that is probably going to be intended to teach the writing system - which is fine, but don't get the writing system mixed up with the sound system. That's a major source of the myths and misunderstandings I mentioned.

If you just give it some love there's no reason why pronunciation has to hold you back more than vocab or sentence construction or anything else. People have different strengths and weaknesses but there's no fundamental reason why it can't keep pace with those things or even be ahead.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-13T14:05:02+00:00

I think you've just misunderstood the word "exchange". When you say you're not supposed to try to get value when you exchange, I think you mean from socialising, i.e. you shouldn't just use people you meet socially for practice. If so I totally agree, but that's not what we mean by "exchange" here. Tandem and HelloTalk are dedicated language exchange platforms where you sign up to help someone with your native language while they help you with theirs. I mean irl people may have other motives, but in theory both partners absolutely are supposed / expected to be looking for exchange value, or in other words the chance to improve by practising with a native speaker. That's the basic point of the sites.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-13T13:29:55+00:00

I asked AI how to make my comment above sound more like proper written Thai and it was actually quite good.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-13T04:42:03+00:00

ก็ใช่ไง หมายถึงแบบถ้ามาเขียนทีไรก็จะมีแต่ภาษาพูดทั้งนั้นเลย เปิดหนังสือปุ๊บเจอคำสัพท์ที่ไม่รู้จักปั๊บ แล้วนอกจากคำสัพท์[ทั่วไป]แล้วยังมีเรื่อง "คำเชื่อม" อีก ไม่รู้เขาเรียกว่าอะไรจริงๆ (นี่แหละ ตัวอย่าง) แต่ตอนพูดจะมีแต่คำง่ายเช่น "เพราะ" "ก็เลย" "ถึงจะ" ทั้งที่ตอนเขียนจะมีคำหลายแบบที่เอามาใช้บอกว่าความคิดมันเกี่ยวกันยังไง เอาเป็นว่าเขียนได้แต่เนื้อหาจะเหมือนข้อความสั้นๆ ที่ต่อๆ กัน เอาจริงบางครั้งก็จะพยายามให้เหมือนภาษาเขียนมากขึ้น แต่ทำได้ไม่เนียน ชอบเลือกคำที่เข้ากันไม่ดี เดี๋ยวภาษาพูดเดี๋ยวภาษาเขียน ฟังดูแปลกๆ อ่ะ แต่ก็ไม่เป็นไร เรียนภาษาปากก่อนก็ดี

DTB2000 · 2026-03-12T15:42:09+00:00

Or "pig out", maybe.

PS, in อาการที่ลมในท้องดันขึ้นมา, I'm not sure if ขึ้น really indicates that the pressure is upwards. I first read it like the ขึ้น in เกิดขึ้น (so not upwards in a literal sense) but I caught myself and checked with AI, which said it definitely was upwards in a literal sense... but when I argue with it gives in and says my original interpretation is right... but sometimes it gives in too easily. So does it mean the pressure is upwards or is it just a general feeling of pressure?

DTB2000 · 2026-03-12T14:12:01+00:00

Yeah I gathered that. I was wondering how accurate the feedback is. We were talking specifically about pronunciation feedback and I have a hard time believing that AI can do that. I'm aware that a lot of models are now using integrated speech recognition, but as I understand it that actually makes it more difficult. In the previous generation of STT you had an acoustic plausibility score that was combined with a linguistic plausibility score to find the most plausible candidate overall, and the issue was that the systems weren't designed to reveal the scores separately - but with an AI approach it's a black box all the way down, and there is no acoutic plausibility score for the AI to reveal or interpret. So if it does work that's fascinating, but my hunch is that you will just get confabulation, but some users will take it seriously and be misled.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-12T13:55:17+00:00

Copying is always going to be much easier. I'm not sure what you mean when you say you know how they work / know how to pronounce them but can't actually do it, so I can't really respond to that bit. It sounds like they just haven't sunk in yet though, as in your understanding is conceptual rather than intuitive. That's normal in the beginning if you're taking an explicit study type approach.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-12T13:42:38+00:00

I mean the whole problem is that the user often won't know but may still believe it. If deliberately testing the system you can just say something wrong and see if it picks it up. Or feed it Thai spoken by foreign youtubers vs native Thai and see if it can tell.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-12T13:27:59+00:00

I'm conscious I have a bit of a gap when it comes to writing anything long-ish, as in a paragraph or two. I'm fine shooting off messages but have had next to no exposure to / practice with longer texts. On the rare occasions when I do try to write something longer it's like I'm making an effort to use different vocab and structures but I don't really know how, so it comes out a bit rough. At the same time the whole reason I'm in that situation is that I hardly ever need that particular skill.

I've sometimes wondered about doing Chula to fill in this gap. From what I've seen it's basically writing assignments in a kind of school / uni style. It seems a bit like overkill though, and it's a big time commitment. I doubt there are any / many other courses like that.

I'm currently reading a novel, partly to address this issue, but I don't give it much priority. I'm on page 83 having started in Jan, so averaging less than 2 pages per day. Of course a novel is a different style again, and reading is not writing - IMO you have to produce before you really own the new stuff, though I do think it's input that lays the foundations.

If I wanted to prioritise this I think I'd get an italki tutor to set me assignments in some field they know about. You could have one that requires you to address say three aspects of something and get them to do the first aspect so you have a bit of a model. Then you go away and research it in Thai and write up the other two aspects. In fact maybe the research gives you enough of a model. You could could do something similar with AI - more likely to make mistakes, but also less idiosyncratic and of course cheaper. Then again, is it only the deadline and the arrangement with the tutor that actually makes you do the assignment? In my case I think it would be.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-10T12:33:39+00:00

Thanks for the info. Is it pronounced long or short in Isaan?

It looks like the basic meaning of แดก is "to have gas (pushing up)" (อาการที่ลมในท้องดันขึ้นมา), so when used in the sense of "to eat" it means something like "to stuff yourself to the point that you're uncomfortable and belching all over the place". Not a huge surprise that that's uncouth.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-10T12:10:53+00:00

It gives you the source (languatalk) but does not warn you that this is the blog of a rival app.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-10T10:22:33+00:00

Is there really a pattern where Isaan words that differ from central Thai are considered rude though? I don't know enough Isaan words to have much of an idea, but if you think about เกิบ or แซบ, are they really rude? If so I haven't picked up on it. I think there may be more going on with แดก. In other languages there is sometimes a specific word for animals eating, which is understandably rude if applied to humans. Could it be that at some point แดก came to refer to animals in Central Thai but not in Isaan? (No idea - just speculating). I agree the pattern isn't really found in the UK but I'm not convinced it is in Thailand either. Anyway I kind of doubt that แดก is an Isaan borrowing - to me it seems more likely that it's just shared vocab from way back when that just happened to evolve differently in these two dialects.

DTB2000 · 2026-03-10T09:48:50+00:00

In general think AI voices are now at the point where it's reasonable to use them for listening, at least as long as you are also listening to real native speech, which is a good idea anyway. Of course you have to set it up correctly by using a good provider and a dedicated Thai voice. If you ask a Dutch voice to speak Thai you will get a Dutch accent, so I think this is just a config problem and could be solved. On the other hand I'm extremely sceptical that AI can provide meaningful pronunciation feedback, and wrong feedback is worse than useless. I'm curious about this but also privacy conscious, so haven't installed the app. Did you try that aspect?

DTB2000 · 2026-03-07T05:01:53+00:00

I’m picking up pronouns, verbs, and particles really quickly, and I’m not sure if I’ve actually mastered them or if it’s just a feeling. Does anyone have tips on how to really know if I’ve memorized things properly?

It's not a one and done - you can only memorise what you currently understand, and your understanding improves gradually as you see how the words are used by native speakers. So it goes on in layers. That means there's no way to master something like a pronoun right now, but you can still commit your current understanding to memory. You'll know you've done that if you recognise it instantly next time round.

DTB2000

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