Thai Thai Thai

Today I went over to Kanchana and Chaowalit's (called, inexplicably, Ju and Prite). They are really nice. :D

We made Pad Thai, which was delicious, and then we sat around and talked for a while. It turns out that, mostly through video games, Prite and I have a lot in common. They also tried to teach me a little bit of Thai.

I have no real idea why, but I've decided to eschew learning random phrases in favour of learning the bona fide basics of the language, which is usually a bad choice, because I'll end up knowing (theoretically) quite a bit about the grammar, history, etc of the language, without really being able to use hardly any of it. Which will make me frustrated, because people will assume I just know a few phrases, when really I know so much more that can't easily be expressed!

But I pick my own poison.

The first tricky thing is tones. I can feel that I'm about halfway (and it hasn't all been smiles and giggles, either) to understanding tones in a very basic, textbook sense. Once I get that, then I can start trying to put them in words. And then in sentences. Oh, god.

If someone says a word to me with a tone, I can parrot it back at them pretty well. But then, ask me to say a word they said earlier, and I've forgotten the tone. My brain just isn't hard wired to consider the tone as a fundamental element of the word meaning.

I guess the good news is that if I ever get the hang of this, it will be much easier to deal with other tone languages. Which is, of course, why I'm putting myself through this.

I like this website:

http://www.fonetiks.org/sou7th.html

Somehow having each tone said twice, with two different words, helps to reinforce it. Still, it's hard... and even just practicing the tones in isolation makes it's own difficulties.

For example, I am using 'maa' to work with. Maa with high tone means horse, with rising tone means dog. So not only do I have to recognize what someone says as (or produce) one of those two tones, I have to remember whether that tone is the rising or the high tone, and which one of those two corresponds with horse and which one corresponds with dog. If I falter at any one of these steps, I am wrong wrong wrong, as wrong as if I had failed at all three. (But terribly, not if I had failed at two. Let's not talk about that. ;))