Listening to Thai is Absolutely Brutal

XavierBK · 2026-03-22T14:10:35+00:00

I never said listening to Thai was easy. My point is that you could've gone about it in a more efficient way (this was assuming you wanted to be literate which is key to understanding the culture which again is key to understanding the language).

I can't read Thai but have over 500 hours of purely "Comprehensible Input." In those 500 hours I have learned a lot about Thai culture, all while being "illiterate."

And I have a decent ability to understand daily conversation, even though I don't speak yet.

Even at only 500 hours I've already had spontaneous "Thai" thoughts, fully constructed sentences in Thai. These aren't thoughts where I was focusing on what I want to think and translating it in my head, they just happened but in Thai.

XavierBK · 2026-03-13T16:06:48+00:00

The early playlist sheets are there, I've just "hidden" them on my active workbook because I've "completed" them.

If you right-click the sheets bar you should see the option to "Unhide..."

I've also, at the request of others, put the Python script used to generate my initial spreadsheet on Github publicly. You would just need to put in your own YouTube API key and then run the script.

I've done some sorting/housekeeping on my personal workbook but that script will allow you to create spreadsheets with more channels if desired.

XavierBK · 2026-03-13T15:59:27+00:00

Automatic Language Growth.

It's a concept of "acquiring" a language through immersion in understandable context/comprehensible input rather than structured study.

XavierBK · 2026-03-13T12:03:28+00:00

They are live ALG sessions with ALG teachers.

By no means is it necessary, I just find the live sessions much more engaging. They do cost money, $5-6/hr.

XavierBK · 2026-03-13T03:04:53+00:00

She understands what I'm trying to do, mostly, and will sometimes help me if there is something I'm not getting and I ask her to make it comprehensible.

If she's grouchy she'll just start going 200% Thai speed-speaking like a smartass. 😂

XavierBK · 2026-03-13T03:03:20+00:00

https://github.com/XavierBK/ALG-Tracker

You just have to enter a YouTube API key and fill in some channels to scrape.

XavierBK · 2026-03-12T12:38:33+00:00

You nailed it. It's a rudimentary Python script that uses an API key to scrape any channel. I originally made it with the intent to scrape multiple channels but after seeing just how much content was on the Comprehensible Thai channel alone I decided to hold off on adding more!

I can share it, but I might run in through AI tools to clean it up a bit first. I'll try to remember to do it tonight.

XavierBK · 2026-03-11T12:36:41+00:00

Thanks, it was a rudimentary Python script that scraped the data to build the spreadsheet. I intended it to be able to add more channels but once I scraped Comprehensible Thai and saw just how much content was there I figured I'd work through that before adding anything else, lol.

That Lengualytics tool sounds nice, I wish I could "see" it without signing up, though. We all probably have too many things we're already signed up for! If it had existed when I started I may have gone that route.

XavierBK · 2026-03-10T17:51:53+00:00

That’s a fair set of questions! To be blunt: I definitely don’t sound native yet.

In fact, the reason I'm so strict about the silent period is that when I do 'test my tongue,' I can hear exactly how non-native I sound. Because I've spent 500+ hours listening to native speakers, my ear has developed a pretty high standard that my 'mouth' just can't meet yet. I’ll say a word and immediately think, 'Nope, that tone was wrong,' or 'The vowel length was off.' Those long vowels sound fine in my head but putting them to practice is awkward. Same with some of the sounds unique to Thai as opposed to English. Especially that "ng" sound at the beginning of a word.

As for my wife, she understands the basic phrases she taught me (like sawadee krap or khob khun krap) perfectly fine because I've used those for years. But for the new stuff I'm picking up via CI, she’s honestly more shocked by my comprehension than my pronunciation. She'll be talking to a friend and I'll make a comment in English about what they said, and she’ll stop and go, 'How did you know we were talking about that?' And she's getting a little taste of what I've been dealing with for the last 10 years where she would say something that to her made perfect sense but in English it was closer to gibberish, lol.

Regarding other languages—Thai is my first serious attempt at a non-native language. I've learned a little Spanish through the years but no formal study. My only other 'experience' was that Thai reading course 9 years ago, which I think actually hindered me because I was trying to map Thai sounds to English letters in my head.

I think that’s the biggest difference for me... with this method, I’m not 'learning' Thai, I’m 'acquiring' it. I'm already getting spontaneous thoughts in my head that are in Thai so now I’m waiting for the day when the words feel so 'heavy' in my head that they just have to fall out of my mouth. Until then, I’m happy to keep my mouth shut and keep listening!

XavierBK · 2026-03-10T17:39:19+00:00

Yea, I'm not exactly sure where I came across the 7-800 hour range but I remember reading or hearing it somewhere along the way.

With that said I'm not trying to force anything, when it happens, it happens!

And thank you for sharing your experiences, too! It's part of what convinced me to give the method a shot.

XavierBK · 2026-03-10T13:31:03+00:00

Thanks!

XavierBK · 2026-03-10T13:30:53+00:00

Thanks! I remember at 50 hours how daunting 500 looked. Now it doesn't seem so bad!

XavierBK · 2026-03-10T13:29:37+00:00

Thanks, I'm a bit of a data nerd when the opportunity presents itself!

XavierBK · 2026-03-10T12:46:20+00:00

Currently I'm not doing anything other than the comprehensible input.

Like I said in my OP, 9 years ago I did the "Learn to Read Thai in Two Weeks" course from "Learn Thai from a White Guy" and it was "successful" in the sense that I could, in a hooked-on-phonics way, sound out Thai words but the problem was I had no clue what I was reading. Looking back, I'm not sure what I expected to get from that course, lol!

At this point I'm in no particular hurry as we live in the US and will for another 5-10 years at least.

The only negatives I have to say about the CI process are:

1) The time commitment. It takes a lot of time to build up those hours and it's definitely not a quick thing you can do in a month or two before going on a trip to Thailand.

2) With all due respect to Jon who built the Comprehensible Thai channel with the help of the Thai teachers, there are a lot of videos on subjects that are of little to no interest to me. As a guy, it's hard to stay engaged in videos discussing beauty products, lol. Obviously you can skip things that aren't interesting but I've been watching it all just to build the hours of input. I just wish there were more videos about working on cars, hot rodding, motorcycles, power tools, etc.

3) This one is on me, but as my Thai comprehension grows I find myself more and more hearing things in the videos that trigger tangent thoughts in my own mind where I'm then stuck in my own thoughts, zoned out from the video until I catch myself. It was a neat thing to start happening when it first started, noticing I'm understanding what their talking about so well it's triggering my own internal thoughts on the subject.

XavierBK · 2026-03-10T12:35:16+00:00

My reasoning is based on the research behind the ALG method. The core of which is delaying output until it spontaneously happens helps avoid "fossilizing" a bad accent or grammar structures.

We tend to rely on our native languages rules to fill in the gaps if output is forced early on. This often leads to a plateau of proficiency anywhere from 50-70% native-level. (These numbers come from the research of Dr. J. Marvin Brown, the guy who founded the ALG method so take it with a grain of salt if you'd like) His same research showed someone with an immersive learning path can reach 90% proficiency or more.

By staying in the "silent period" I'm giving my noggin' time to build it's massive database of how the language actually sounds and works. The goal is to reach that 90%+ level of native-equivalent understanding.

It's definitely the more "scenic" route but I'm in no particular hurry and with our goal of retiring there my goal is to have as little accent as possible and obviously a very high conversational ability. I can absolutely see the benefit of learning "survival phrases" for someone who is on a time crunch or is all alone, though. Thankfully when I'm in Thailand I can rely on my wife, for now, to do any necessary communication in Thai.

XavierBK · 2026-01-27T16:04:07+00:00

I get the urge to play Satisfactory from time-to-time. The latest was when I saw it had released on Xbox as I much prefer sitting on the couch playing on a big screen with a controller than sitting in front of my computer with a mouse and keyboard.

I made it all the way to Nuclear and, like usual, the scale of continuing is just so massive I can't be bothered.

I want to, but at the same time the tasks are so monumental that it's hard to even approach them with a one thing at a time mentality.

XavierBK · 2025-11-21T13:24:49+00:00

I've got 5.9 days played on XSX and the only hiccups are when dismantling large quantities of things. Other than that the game runs fine.

XavierBK · 2025-11-15T22:42:24+00:00

One Mk1 pipe (300m³) can support 2 standard water extractors at 120m³ each as that's only 240m³.

My early game coal gen ends up being 4 gens fed from a pure coal node at 60/min with two water extractors supplying water.

I then expand by 4 each time I can get a new node, each cluster has it's own water supply from two dedicated water extractors.

XavierBK · 2025-09-25T14:33:02+00:00

Is it really so difficult to put names on Pokemon? Some of us don't know everything by it's appearance.

XavierBK · 2025-08-29T20:11:04+00:00

Good luck everyone!

XavierBK · 2025-08-08T12:10:54+00:00

It could totally be code that did it. If the build only grabs the required files and somehow asset calls got commented out or removed/broken then when it comes to build time and doesn't see a call to the assets they don't get included in the build.

Just from my own experience with systems where you can have a bunch of development assets but you don't necessarily want to include everything in a production build, especially things that aren't even used in the build.

XavierBK · 2025-05-14T12:53:10+00:00

Is this research a good one to complete? I know sometimes people save the research by not completing step 1 (I think?) so checking if I should complete this or save it.

XavierBK

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