I've been a little bit lazy about learning Thai this year, I'll admit, but with James and Ryan leaving Thailand at the end of this year, I'll go from the third-best at Thai to the only foreigner who can read Thai in our office. That kind of feels like a lot of pressure, because while my reading is actually not bad, my speaking leaves a lot to be desired.
Over the course of the past year, my colleague Ryan developed a color-coded method for working out the tone-rules for Thai. Thai tones have been a real challenge for me, and to tell you the truth, I kind of skipped those sections in my book that explained them. Over the last week, Ryan gave me a color-coded chart about how to work out what tone a syllable follows, and while it's still confusing, the color chart actually makes it a lot more clear.
This week Ryan gave me my own set of colored pens and highlighters so that I can follow in his footsteps and become the new farbemeister ("color master" in German). I'm hoping that this will help me develop my Thai as quickly as he has his. I'm still working on Thai for Beginners, and he's halfway through Thai for Intermediate Learners. My goal is to finish Beginners, the "orange book", over the school break and move on to Intermediate, the "purple book", at the start of the next term.
I'm really proud by how well my written Thai has developed this year. I can now write pretty well, and I'm very happy that with the exception of a few very complicated vowels, I can read and pronounce Thai decently. My reading is better than my written Thai, which is much better than my spoken Thai. I'll need to work on improving my conversational Thai next year.
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