Learning Thai Part II

An eight-month follow-up to a previous post.

color-coded days of the week

I have to confess that my Thai is seriously lacking. The truth is, I haven't really been giving it much effort. I reached a point at the end of the year last year where I was able to survive in Bangkok (which, truth be told is very much an English-speaking city). I can order food, give an address, and barter at a market, in addition to saying a polite greeting and very basically introducing myself.

This year, I've been putting my efforts into learning Mandarin Chinese, which I think is honestly a more useful language to know. The awesome and friendly Confucius Institute (aka Hanban - a cadre of highly-trained language and culture teachers sent by the Chinese government) at my school has been offering me private Mandarin lessons all year, and with the help of a few other resources, I'm actually progressing pretty well in Chinese.

It's not that I'm not interested in Thai, I didn't work on studying Thai much last semester as I had intended this to be my final year in Thailand, but a series of events have led me to extend my contract at the school for a third (and final) year.

some of my many resources - question word flashcards

But since James will be leaving next year, leaving me the most senior foreign teacher (excluding Geoffrey and Suzy), the teachers in my department have suggested that I step up my Thai study. In the past few weeks I've doubled down and restarted my study, and I actually feel that I've been really improving recently.

It helps that the other Mathayom teachers are interested in learning as well, so whenever we get some free time we will make flashcards at our desks or quiz one another.






I can actually read and write the Thai script pretty well now, although I don't know that many words. We will see what point I'm at in my language study when I likely write part III of this post next year. Stay tuned!