ศาลาชุมนุม

[JSW88]

Does anyone know where I can find translations for the reading exercises at the end of the book Thai for Beginners? I find myself frequently understanding every word in a sentence but having no idea what the sentence is saying due to the differences in syntax and grammar between Thai and English. English translations would be immensely helpful but for some reason weren't included in the book.

[pensive]

It's probably something simple that you are not understanding. Why don't you post a sentence, or give a reference for it. For example, F is:

Yesterday I went shopping at Silom. I bought a pair of shoes, (Buy shoe come=past one pair) (maa=come can form the past tense)
two bags, three books, four pens, five pencils, six tee-shirts, and seven belts. (An exercise in classifiers.)

[JSW88]

I think I've determined the general idea of most of them, but it would be nice to have a reference to confirm it. I'm having more trouble with the sentences at the end which don't have spaces between words, it makes it much more difficult to read.

Here's an example of one I still don't understand:

บีหน้าน้อยอยากจะมาเรียนที่อเมริกา

I got: year season little difficult will come learn at america

Maybe my translation is just off and that's the problem, but what does this mean?

[Tgeezer]

I think I've determined the general idea of most of them, but it would be nice to have a reference to confirm it. I'm having more trouble with the sentences at the end which don't have spaces between words, it makes it much more difficult to read.

Here's an example of one I still don't understand:

บีหน้าน้อยอยากจะมาเรียนที่อเมริกา

I got: year season little difficult will come learn at america

Maybe my translation is just off and that's the problem, but what does this mean?

Next year น้อย would like to come to study in America.
ปีหน้า year ahead อยาก like จะ future มาเรียน come learn.

[JSW88]

Ahh yes I confused want with difficult, I missed the อ. That makes a lot more sense. So is น้อย supposed to be the person's name? It's confusing when a person's name is also a Thai word and there's no way of differentiating between a proper noun and other parts of speech.

I think I'm just messing up my translations because of the lack of spaces between words. There's so many compound words in Thai, it's easy to mistake a compound word for two separate words when there's no spaces and that seems to be the main problem I'm having. Google translator is actually quite useful for these exercises though.

I just need to work more on improving my vocabulary so that I can recognize these words more easily.

[Toffeeman]

I just need to work more on improving my vocabulary so that I can recognize these words more easily.

This is so true. I have had a blitz on learning new vocab for the last 6 weeks or so. About 10 words a day picked up from newspapers, books that I read and words used by friends. I have put them all into anki and I review a certain number everyday, usually about 75 plus about 10 new words per day. My comprehension in reading and listening has made a noticable jump too. A concerted affort to learn and remember new vocab will go along way to helping you understand what you are reading.

[JSW88]

I've found Anki extremely useful for learning and reviewing vocabulary also, I'm going to try to focus on it for awhile to get my vocabulary to where it should be.

[HTWoodson]

Ditto with the Anki. I've been consistently getting 10 new words a day for the last few months and it's definitely making a difference. Vocab really is the foundation upon which everything else is built. You just have to knuckle down and memorize some words to get anywhere.

[tod-daniels]

I concur; learning to read proficiently in Thai is NOTHING except memorizing Thai words, TONZ of ‘em and having those words tied to a corresponding meaning in your head.

Early on I’d go thru, put lines between the words I knew, then go back and see if any of the words were compounds (tied to a neighboring word which might change the meaning), and then finally look up the words I didn’t know. Those Thai nicknames still throw me for a loop too. ..

I got used to the continuous script without much difficulty. I don’t think it slows down a reader all that much ONCE you get to the stage where you’re reading by “recognizing groups of characters as words” insteada character by character. Just as I’m sure if I sent you an email in english without spacing out the words, your brain could still read it, it’d just take longer because you’re not used to it. Granted learning a dissimilar alphabetic system, memorizing TONZ of words, and plowing thru continuous script is a tough row to hoe, but it’s doable.

I still suck at reading any of the “real” Thai newspapers, only because I have NO interest in Thai politics, everyone seems to have a mile-long surname and work for the Ministry of this-or-that. It’s the abbreviations which kill my comprehension.

I can read the gossip columns, the horoscopes and the sports stuff pretty well. I buy the Thai versions of Maxim, FHM, (for the articles, not the pix of Thai gurls with foreign noses ) and I started reading Science Illustrated last month because you can do what I call “predictive reading” from the pictures. I also read what I call “Thai teen trash romance” novels seeing as they’re written in colloquial spoken Thai and have a lot of useful slang.

A good paper to pick up is that free rag they hand out during the week at the BTS/MRT stations called M2F (Monday to Friday). It’s usually written “for the masses” and isn’t that hard to get thru.

I know if I can teach myself to read Thai, just about anyone who puts their mind to it can to, because I sure ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. .

Good Luck, sorry for the long post. . .

P/S: There was a bunch of stuff I think which was on Richard Barrows site Paknam Web Forums which tied into Benjawan Beckers books, questions, vocab, etc. I can’t find the link(s) any more but I’m sure I remember seein’ it once upon a time. Perhaps a Google might turn up something. . .