Thursday, August 16, 2007
Thai breaker
In anticipation of my trip to Thailand (which at that time was just a distant dream, not the nine-weeks-to-go reality that it is now), Diana got me a CD-based language tutorial called Conversational Thai for Christmas last year. The CDs have been languishing in their case for many months, partly because I was kind of intimidated by the challenge of learning an Asian language, and also because I figured it would be better to wait and learn Thai closer to the time when I would actually need to use it. Last week, I realized that if I wanted to hand off the CDs to Bri when I visit her in Cincinnati next month, that time would have to be now. And so the learning began.
Somewhere along the line, I had switched over from intimidated to excited when it came to the prospect of learning Thai. During my endless months of research, I've managed to pick up on a few essential Thai phrases, including "Hello," "Thank you" and "How much is that?" But as the CD program promised conversational Thai, I was very much looking forward to expanding my repertoire of Thai phrases.
So far, though, it seems that "conversational" means we're going to keep having the same conversation over and over again. Seriously. When the teacher dude mentioned at the end of the first lesson that some of the things we'd learned would be repeated in the second lesson, I figured they'd toss off a few of the same phrases at the beginning to get us into it, but then expound on that knowledge with a whole slew new words and phrases. Yeah, not so much. I'm up to lesson 3 now, and so far all I've learned are various permutations of the phrases "Do you understand English/Thai?" and "Are you American/Thai?" I understand the point of repetition as a learning tool, but come on. How slow do they think we are? Adding to the frustration is the fact that half of the stuff they're teaching me is never going to be relevant. I mean, what's the point of me knowing how to ask someone if they're American in Thai? Or knowing how to tell someone they understand English very well in Thai? It seems to me that my native language might be the best one in which to convey these sentiments. (Yeah, I guess you could argue that I'd need to understand if someone says these things to me, but I still don't think I need to repeat them 72 times to be able to do so.) There's also the fact that certain words in Thai are different based on whether the speaker is a man or a woman, which has led to much yelling of, "I don't care! I'm not a man!" at the teacher dude when he asks me how a man would say something.
Perhaps my expectations are too high for a one-size-fits-all language program, and I know the logical thing to do would be to skip ahead in the lessons, but I'm paralyzed by the fear that I'll miss something essential if I do that. Maybe it'll get more exciting soon. But since I've already learned how to say "Don't shoot!" and "Those drugs aren't mine!" from the awesome World Nomads Thai language podcast, I'm not sure how it could possibly get more exciting than that.
In anticipation of my trip to Thailand (which at that time was just a distant dream, not the nine-weeks-to-go reality that it is now), Diana got me a CD-based language tutorial called Conversational Thai for Christmas last year. The CDs have been languishing in their case for many months, partly because I was kind of intimidated by the challenge of learning an Asian language, and also because I figured it would be better to wait and learn Thai closer to the time when I would actually need to use it. Last week, I realized that if I wanted to hand off the CDs to Bri when I visit her in Cincinnati next month, that time would have to be now. And so the learning began.
Somewhere along the line, I had switched over from intimidated to excited when it came to the prospect of learning Thai. During my endless months of research, I've managed to pick up on a few essential Thai phrases, including "Hello," "Thank you" and "How much is that?" But as the CD program promised conversational Thai, I was very much looking forward to expanding my repertoire of Thai phrases.
So far, though, it seems that "conversational" means we're going to keep having the same conversation over and over again. Seriously. When the teacher dude mentioned at the end of the first lesson that some of the things we'd learned would be repeated in the second lesson, I figured they'd toss off a few of the same phrases at the beginning to get us into it, but then expound on that knowledge with a whole slew new words and phrases. Yeah, not so much. I'm up to lesson 3 now, and so far all I've learned are various permutations of the phrases "Do you understand English/Thai?" and "Are you American/Thai?" I understand the point of repetition as a learning tool, but come on. How slow do they think we are? Adding to the frustration is the fact that half of the stuff they're teaching me is never going to be relevant. I mean, what's the point of me knowing how to ask someone if they're American in Thai? Or knowing how to tell someone they understand English very well in Thai? It seems to me that my native language might be the best one in which to convey these sentiments. (Yeah, I guess you could argue that I'd need to understand if someone says these things to me, but I still don't think I need to repeat them 72 times to be able to do so.) There's also the fact that certain words in Thai are different based on whether the speaker is a man or a woman, which has led to much yelling of, "I don't care! I'm not a man!" at the teacher dude when he asks me how a man would say something.
Perhaps my expectations are too high for a one-size-fits-all language program, and I know the logical thing to do would be to skip ahead in the lessons, but I'm paralyzed by the fear that I'll miss something essential if I do that. Maybe it'll get more exciting soon. But since I've already learned how to say "Don't shoot!" and "Those drugs aren't mine!" from the awesome World Nomads Thai language podcast, I'm not sure how it could possibly get more exciting than that.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]