Rosetta Stone

My dad bought me the Rosetta Stone ไทย Level 1 program for Christmas. I'd heard about Rosetta Stone, of course, but didn't know much about it; I heard it was overpriced but that's all. It's pretty interesting. No English is used, and no romanization. It simply gives you lines of Thai (spoken and written) with corresponding pictures (or vice versa.) It does it in a clever order that lets you infer the meaning of words, and it slowly builds in complexity. The first few lessons are elementary to me, but the structured repetition is just what I need to drill things in to my brain. I think it will help enormously with remembering simple sentence structure (I get confused on placement of กัน, for instance), classifiers, and pronunciation... and no doubt a lot of other things.

While I appreciate the lack of romanization, the program conveys absolutely no phonetic infomation. Since Thai is a tonal language with a complicated orthography and no spaces between words, I think the program would be pretty difficult for someone starting from scratch. Similarly, all the grammar is learned from inference- nothing is explicetly "taught". This is a different approach from what I'm used to- I'm interested to see how I do with it.

RS comes with a headset, which can supposedly be used to record your voice. It shows the waveform and pitch of both the speaker's example and your attempts. Supposedly. I haven't really gotten it to work well.

Verdict? Looks like a great study tool. ขอบคุณพ่อ

คุณผู้ฟังที่รัก

Thai music came. I really love DOObaDOO. Modern Dog is more standard alt-rock but it's defiently listenable.

I obviously can't understand much of the lyrics; it sounds like a babble of vaguely familiar words. The only phrases I've gleamed on early listens is กี่วันกี่คืน ("How many days? How many nights?") and the ubiquitous ฉันรักเทอ ("I love you"). More will come...

เกาะ

Quick update:

Still working through Thai for Advanced Readers. Just finished 1st go at the last reading; now it's on to newspaper articles, translations not included. It's been going pretty well; the vocabulary is difficult but I've been able to grasp most of it. Once in a while there's a sentence I can't grok even after checking the translation, but it's really just once in a while.

As for listening: currently watching Rak Nee Hua Jai Rao Jong; the two characters are stranded on a desert island. Wacky hijinks ensue. Still only grasping words here and there.

Bought two CDs from eThaiCD.com. Doobadoo and Modern Dog. Putting some Thai music in my iPod rotation should help things.

ทามโบย

I'm on the 5th episode of a Thai "lakorn" (prime-time soap opera mini-series?) called หัวใจ (heart of) Chocolate. Started watching to improve my "ear" for the spoken language and it's helped a lot. But I've also honestly gotten sucked in to the story. The destied couple is kind of boring but I like the tomboy and the "wacky" guy that talks fast.

I mostly read the subtitles and try to anticipate what will be said. They're fan-made and sort of overly literal, which is actually a bonus. I can now "hear" common phrases pretty consistantly,. (Noticing a lot of english loanwords peppered in- "tomboy" being one!) Any sentence longer than a few words and I can only catch bits and pieces. Which is to be expected, obviously. My vocab is scant and even if I know every word in a sentence, that doesn't mean I can parse the grammar quickly enough. ANOTHER problem is the frequent use of names as pronouns, so you have to remember each character's name. Which are usually short and mistakable for words. But getting tuned to the sounds is making my reading faster and that's helping the other areas. Still should do some vocab drills though! Half-assed and haphazard is right.

Also argh I learned ร as a trilled [r], knowing it sometimes was pronounced [l], but it seems [l] is more common so I need to adjust for this. The dropping of the 2nd consonants in consonant clusters also vexes me. But OH WELL that's the way language works, there's no "standard."

Been reading on linguistics recently. I'll try to write some posts connecting the things I'm learning to Thai. Some of it is esoteric and more interesting than useful to me, but some of it really helps snap things into focus. Obviously you can learn a language while knowing nonce about how it works: all children aquire spoken language automatically. But as busy adults, I'm starting to think a passing knowledge in linguistics really helps.

The aspects of Aspect

Aspect!
In English, tense and aspect are usually conflated. Thai doesn't grammatically mark tense at all, but it has an "extremely rich" system for marking aspect. ARGT outlines 19 "aspectual auxiliaries."

This is an exercise identical to the one I did on pragmatic particles- I've hunted for "real" examples of usage from my Doraemon manga. My standard disclaimer of "I don't know what I'm doing" applies to both my translations and interpretations of my reference grammar's explanations.

I've bolded the auxileries and bolded the words they translate to, when applicable. Often it's just not possible.

Perfective:
1. _แล้ว
This shouldn't be confused with the perfect/anterior usage of แล้ว (see below @ 11.) It "shouldn't", but honestly, I'm finding the distinction difficult to understand in certain contexts. I may have this example backwards.
Anyway, in this form, it indicates a completed event. Sometimes translated in ARGT with "after".

อ๋อ...! นายกินโกหก 800 เข้าไป... แล้วพูดว่าฉันคงไม่ได้กลับมาแล้วใช่มั้ยล่ะ
"Oh! You drank the Liar 800... and said that I wouldn't return, right?"

Notice the 2nd use of แล้ว, which I believe is the #11 usage. I'm probably overthinking this, because I do seem to grasp the meaning in either use. It doesn't really matter that I can't discern the precise linguistic difference.

Imperfective:
2. _อยู่
This is "used post-verbally for all types of continuous aspect". Other pre-verbal auxiliaries can be used in conjunction- ARGT details กำลัง, ยัง, นั่ง, and คอย.

อยู่ can be used on it's own.

ทำไมนอนซีมอยู่ล่ะ
"Why is it sleeping?"

กำลัง _ (อยู่)
"Emphasises a continuous situation"

ฉันกำลังคิดอยู่เหมือนกัน!
"I'm thinking the same way!"

ยัง _ (อยู่)
"Indicates no change in a situation."

เปโรก็จะยังมีชีวิตอยู่
"Then Perro will still be alive."

3. นั่ง _ (อยู่)
This is used with either stative or "low-energy" verbs and must have a human subject.

นั่งเหม่อลอยทุกวันเลย
"You're absentminded every day."

(This is a bad example, as นั่ง also means "sit" and can be interpreted as a serial verb- this is more probably "You sit here absentminded every day." ARGT notes the ambiguity.)

4. คอย (อยู่)

คอย also means "wait" but I couldn't find any example of it being used aspectually.

5. _ไป
ไป is a very common verb, but here it's used as a "continuative" auxilery which implies more deliberate continuation than the regular progressive aspect.

ดูไปสิ
"Keep watching!"

(There is another usage of ไป, (see #13) but the contexts are so different you can't confuse them.)

8. กำลังจะ _ อยู่
Inceptive. "refers to the phase which leads to, or may lead to, an event."

กำลังจะไปโรงเรียนต่างหาก
"You're about to go to school on your own."

9. จวนจะ _
This is similar but "can be used for a less intentional event with inanimate subjects."

10. _ จบ, _ เสร็จ
Terminative- "finish doing". จบ focuses on "completion", while เสร็จ focuses on "the ending of an activity, not necessarily the completion."

พองานเสร็จแล้วจะเอาลงให้นะครับ
"When our task is done, we'll take you down."

(I don't see how this differs from just being a resultative sequential verb but oh well.)

Perfect/Anterior

11. _ แล้ว
This is what ARGT says: "Perfect/anterior aspect concerns the 'relevance' of a particular situation with respect to the current situation." It translates the examples with the word "have", as in "I have eaten" vs "I ate."

ลูกสัญญาไว้กับโดราจังแล้วนี่นา
"You had promised Doraemon this."

With stative verbs (adjectives), it "indicates that the critical point has been reached".

คราวนี้จะเอาจริงแล้ว
"Now I'm serious."

รู้แล้ว
"I know!" ("Eureka!")

12. มา
Similar to the previously mentioned แล้ว but doesn't fall at the end of the sentence. In some cases emphasizes the fact that a situation has been continuing up to the reference time."

ฉันเลี้งมาตั้งแต่เป็นไข่เชียวนะ
"I raised it since it was an egg."

13. _ ไป
When used with "destruction or disappearance" verbs, this emphasizes the destruction or disappearance.

ช้างหายไปแล้ว
"The elephant is gone!"

14. _ (ไป)เสีย
"Indicates that an event has taken place completely with an irreversible result."

ไม่ได้พบลูกเสียนาน
"I couldn't find you for the longest time."

This is another swiss-army word, so I'm not 100% on this one.

15. _ ไว้
"Indicates a completed event which is considered beneficial in the future."

ปีที่แล้วสัญญาไว้แล้วนี่
"Last year you promised!"

16. เพิ่ง(จะ) _
An action that has just happened- "immediate perfect/anterior"

ก็เพิ่งได้รับอิสระครั้งแรกนี่จ๊ะ
"He's just recieved freedom for the first time."

17. เคย_
"have an experience of doing". Basically "ever."

เราเคยมีความสุขกันแบบนี้
"We once were happy (had happiness) like this."

Inchoactive

18. ได้ _
When ได้ is pre-verbal, it basically means "get to do" (the more common post-verbal usage conveys ability.)

แล้วผมก็ได้อพยพไปที่บ้านนอกพร้อมกับครอบครัว
"And I got to evacuate to the countryside with my family.

It seems more common in the negative, where it "normally refers to the past time frame." IIRC, it often sort of acts like a general past-tense, which is why I'm not translating the following sentence with "get".

แมวไม่ได้พูดจริงๆ
"The cats weren't speaking truthfully."

The translation doesn't really contain any hint of the inchoactive ได้, but its effects is there. If you take ได้ out of the sentence, you get แมวไม่พูดจริงๆ, "The cats aren't speaking truthfully." The inchoactive ได้ defiently alters the aspect, marking the event (the cats lying) as completed.

19. _ ขึ้น & _ ลง
"Change-of-state" verbs that apply to stative verbs (adjectives). The former means "increase" and the later "decrease", although they act differently on some words.

ลมชักแรงขึ้นแล้ว
The wind's strength has increased.

พอสงครามสงบลง
Then, the war ended. (Lit: got quieter (สงบลง).

This text appears over a mushroom cloud. Assuming that สงบ acts the same as it's synonym เงียบ, these auxs have an interesting effect. With ขึ่น it "implies that the degree of silence has increased" while with ลง that "the degree of noise has decreased". Seems an apropos way to describe the effect of an atomic bomb.

Next: Question-word-questions, which are giving me a bit of trouble due to their ability to also be indefinite expressions. 

ลึลๆ ในใจ

This is the first Thai song to get stuck in my head. I found it on eThaiMusic and on first 23 listens I didn't understand anything but the chorus. But yesterday I combed through the lyrics and realized there was only a handful of words I didn't know. Otherwise, after one read-through, I could comprehend the lyrics completely. I think this has been very helpful in connecting the written word to the spoken.

As for the written word: I've gotten to the point where the Doraemon comic book is starting to actually seem like the children's comic book it is. Parts are still challenging, but I'm taking a break from it. I picked up Thai for Advanced Readers for the first time in a while and was surprised to find how much easier it is. I'm confident my reading is good enough to work through it until the end. (I'd made it about halfway before.)

exciting opportunities in rote memorization

I just discovered Study Stack.

The site is a little clunky, but it's awesome.

It lets you import simple simple data... and generates a bunch of helpful or stupid study aids. It's absolutely *perfect* for studying vocabulary. I've inputed a lot of margin notes.

I have 80+ words in the stack now. I figure I'll weed out words as I learn them (already a few, like หนี, I have down) and add new ones as needed. Also trying to use mnemonics to memorize vocab (never tried this.)