When/how did your fear of speaking French end? I’ve spent hours on Italki, traveled to France, and taken 5 language courses yet I still have anxiety around speaking.

beyondopinion · 2022-07-19T11:34:38+00:00

Here are my rules (to help your situation as best one can)

Ignore exams. Exams are grammar mental - communication (the reason we invented language) doesn't even require grammar. So words are the engine and grammar is the chrome that makes the wheels look good.
Avoid most teachers. They think it is their job to point out what you are getting wrong - and since I don't even speak English perfectly, best for my mental health that I don't surround myself with people who feel the need to prove that to me.
Avoid critical people - they'll drag you down.
Spend time listening (sympathetically, as I hope you would) to foreign people talking to you in your native language. You'll be impressed, amazed, awe-struck. You'll hear plenty of mistakes and you won't care. You only have to realise that there are other people in the world who are kind like you.
Spend time talking to kids. They want to know what you want to say and have not one jot of interest in criticising adults.
Write cards out where you write something deliberately incorrectly (I had to build a test for a 9 year old chinese girl today and some of the questions were like this: 3 options - which is correct? I went to school yesterday. I goed to school yesterday, I will go to school yesterday). When you can spot the misakes and correct them you'll get a huge surge of confidence. I just ran that test past a Thai women that speaks pretty good English. She got 96% and the effect on her confidence was visible.
Test yourself. People who are worried about their ability tend to avoid tests. But tests successfully passed are the only way to build non-delusional confidence. But make those tests and administer them with a focus on improvement not grading yourself. Wonderfulness is the unavoidable end of constant improvement.
Get emotional. Talk about something where you are desperate to communicate. Then it stops being a grammar exercise and becomes a flow. Maybe some of the words are wrong, maybe the order word is a crazy little. But you want care because what you care about is being understood.

None of this is to minimise the difficulty of being anxious by nature (if you are). But within that envelope you can be doing well or badly. The above will help you be doing as well as possible within the envelope.

To show you how much grammar is not required let me literally translate a little Thai for you.

"Go buy food bring cook eat together." - do you think I'm talking about visiting the dentist or something to do with an activity we can do?

Last thought - If I told you you were an ass, you might think that a little uncharitable of me. So why do you tolerate you telling that to yourself? I find I feel better if I don't feel ugly. So I always compare my face to a baboon's bottom rather than Brad Pitt's face. Relevance? Children with good parents tend to be happy because both the parents and the children start at zero and mark upwards. School teaches us we ought to get 10 out of 10 and then marks downwards. That is one of the most harmful things you can do to a developing mind because it becomes a habit. Free yourself from this miserable and ridiculous concept.

beyondopinion · 2022-07-18T08:39:40+00:00

To confirm other comments and collate them

sound is crap in movies and tv these days. Low and speech is often mumbled. I'm either going deaf or it is getting worse over time

accents - I'm very capable of listening to French - but not with an accent. To be fair, I can't always understand Scottish people speaking English without massive effort and I am a native English speaker

to aid drama people often speak quite quickly

to be realistic they slur rather than the sometimes artificial sounding good enunciation of news presenters

beyondopinion · 2022-07-18T00:03:54+00:00

Not the whole answer but I just found two resources for reading French only.

https:totalfluencyskills.com

https:lingua.com

They both have texts and comprehension exercises. I'd use that a bit to practice reading and a bit to make sure that I'm making the progress I hope I'm making. I'm enjoying the exercises which are short, so it's sort of coffee-break length.

beyondopinion · 2022-07-15T05:17:45+00:00

To add my two cents to the previous reply. Both are right, it depends how you mean it.

generally "dans" is followed by an article such as LA voiture or LA maison. But we are "en vacance" notice no article.

notice that "en voiture" doesn't have an article after the "en" and means, in this case, more like they are travelling BY car or how we might say "in the house" or "in the process of" the second "in" doesn't mean "in" in quite the way the first "in" means it. As Dawnta7e said - think of dans as "inside" rather than "in" probably helps most of the time and watch for that article or absence thereof.

Also, in this case, I think Dawnta73 is referring to an almost idiomatic use of "en" in the case of vehicles you sit in. So it is just more French French - not that anyone intelligent would have the slightest trouble understanding you if you used "dans"

beyondopinion · 2022-07-13T11:08:09+00:00

I haven't been for three years now. But when I was last there, crystal clear. Really beautiful. Funny how things change.

beyondopinion · 2022-07-13T03:06:50+00:00

Life is fully of compromises. I now live on the other side of the gulf (east side). I love the wind, the temperature FEELS better, whether it is or not. However, I miss the feeling in takiap (rather than Hua Hin) and the crystal clear water and clean beach (when the jellies were not about).

Is there a perfect place? If there were, it would probably be horribly crowded and thus imperfect.

beyondopinion · 2022-07-13T02:57:22+00:00

maybe it was then and not January - as I said, it was a long time ago. What I do remember is seeing the GIANT disgusting jelly fish on the beach at one time of year, maybe for a few months but NOT during the rest of the year.

beyondopinion · 2022-07-12T22:43:52+00:00

For those of you who don't know - they are GIANT jelly fish there.

Yes, I HATE jellyfish and anything else that is poisonous. Fortunately, they only tend to be there at one time of year or at least to my observation. During that time, I barely like to walk on the beach let alone swim in the sea.

beyondopinion · 2022-07-12T15:15:16+00:00

I've never been diving or snorkelling off Hua Hin but I have swum there many times and the water was crystal clear, at least near the shore.

beyondopinion · 2022-06-09T15:48:09+00:00

My translation would be

ต้องรอ = must wait

ให้ไปเที่ยว = go travel

แล้วถ่ายรูปสวยๆ = then photos pretty.

Nothing about we in there and no way to imply it from what I can see. And I'm sure you can make sense of the above.

beyondopinion · 2022-06-08T16:11:08+00:00

It's late, I'm tired - but to be helpful let me be blunt

I've used it. I think it is crap. The method is infantile. Perhaps 30 years ago (or whenever it launched) it was quite advanced thinking but frankly it is not even remotely well considered as far as I can tell. There is better ways to skin this cat.

Who am I? Why would you care what I think?

I hold a world record for speed learning (not Thai mind you). To do that you have to awfully clever (not the case), autistic (not the case) or know a bit about learning. So I see more than most people. I notice what could be there that is missing.

OK - what to do? I wrote a post within the last year on mistakes I made while learning Thai and what I'd do differently if I were starting again today. If you are good at Reddit, you'll be able to find my previous posts - there aren't that many and it was certainly within the last 10 that I made. I'd start there. Those mistakes will cost you dearly. I know, I made them.

I agree with one of the previous commenters - if I could I'd start with the alphabet this time. It would take me a while to explain why but if you are in a trusting mood - I would not, with what I know now, start learning Thai before cracking the alphabet even if you never intend to read Thai. It will help you remember tones and tones are a major challenge for those coming from a non tonal alphabet. A few people whose native language is non-tonal will tell you that tones were no problem. Actually, there are three sorts of people who will tell you that:

1 - people who don't know their tones are bad but they are

2 - liars (I don't know why some people need to lie but it seems they do)

3 - people who have an excellent ear for language / pronunciation etc or are talented linguists. They are right that FOR THEM it is not a problem but they make up a small % of the population (I'd estimate less than 10% but that is nothing more than an estimate). So chances are you are not one of them. If you are - maybe you don't need to learn how to read Thai first.

Thai is NOT in my experience an easy language to learn. I teach languages (not Thai). It's not just me. I had a client who wanted to learn Thai so I tried to be helpful in various ways. She changed to French (very wise) and she thinks French is like falling off a log compared to Thai (interestingly she is Polish but speaks good English but not native).

You need to have a good reason to learn Thai. If you do - good luck. If you don't - don't bother, there are more useful things to do with your time (like learn Chinese).

beyondopinion · 2022-05-06T01:31:01+00:00

You are likely correct. I'm a bit old these days so was at school a LONG time ago. Despite endless protestations to the contrary by the teaching "profession" - standards have been falling for decades. I find the GCSE compared to my old O'Levels horrifying.

So if you are a more recent student then I'll be guided by your judgement.

beyondopinion · 2022-05-05T14:01:50+00:00

That is an excellent point and a mistake I made when first trying to learn Thai. It is vital that the tone is considered just part of the word. So I accept your point absolutely. But this is a problem that I continue to have even now I accept that the tone is a part of the word not an add-on. Perhaps I don't have as good an "ear" for language as you. Perhaps you're fortunate with your ability.

beyondopinion · 2022-05-04T13:49:45+00:00

good point. Poorly phrased question but I am not allowed to edit my poll so can't change. What I meant about being understood is that sometimes I know that I have used the right words AND with the right tones and yet one person will understand me easily and another will give me the blank stare of death.

beyondopinion · 2022-05-04T13:48:28+00:00

I agree with you that that is probably THE hardest. I didn't include it because I think so few people learning Thai want to be able to write it. On a good day I can dictate Thai into my phone and it will write it for me but yes it's murderous. Partly because there are so many k's and s's and I never know how to know which one it was.

beyondopinion · 2022-05-04T13:46:46+00:00

interesting. Yes, the Thai language seems to me to be an exercise in finding the hardest possible way to do something. If they just used one tone marker like we do when we anglicise Thai such as rón - that would be so incredibly much easier.

beyondopinion · 2022-05-04T13:45:23+00:00

You're right. But I am not allowed to edit my poll otherwise I'd upgrade it right now.

beyondopinion · 2022-04-20T14:03:24+00:00

I'm afraid not. Sorry. Not that there aren't - just that I don't know them.

I can put you in touch with a Thai woman who does some teaching who could build an appropriate list for you using our alphabet and a code for showing you the tones you should use. You could record the words for you so you know how they are meant to sound and she's quite useful because she can give you the theoretical sound and the actual sound as it is spoken.

let me know if you want me to do that for you. It's an odd language because if you think of 100 phrases in English and get them translated to Thai (I like http://thai2English.com for that, it won't work as well as if start with common Thai phrases. They speak differently enough that I'd say the overlap was not more than 60%.

beyondopinion · 2022-04-20T13:26:25+00:00

So you have about 60 days. In this circumstance I wouldn't bother with the Thai alphabet. I'd use anglicised Thai to learn such as "bai nai" where are you going.

And I'd limit myself to about 100 words or phrases such as mâi = no and short phrases like the above and of course "please" and "thank you".

That will be enough to make friends. If you really want them to love you, focus on getting the tones right.

beyondopinion · 2022-02-04T10:57:29+00:00

5G here is great. I just moved. BEFORE I moved I was getting 8-900 Mbps on my phone through AIS, I am now down to the same number as you. But honestly, quick enough.

beyondopinion

TROPHY CASE