4.15.2010

1. again- อีก I feel like we use certain adverbs more than we think. They're thankless little words that we don't pay much attention to, but when you need to ask someone to say something once more because you didn't understand or something, they go a long way and can bring your request from broken foreigner speech to proper, correct statement.
2. to write- เขียน Always a useful verb. When communicating in a foreign country, having something in writing is always a tremendous help. If you don't remember how to say it (whatever it happens t0 be) or can't say it correctly, have someone write it down. An address, something you're looking for at the grocery store, a person's name, a menu item; all of these things can be written by someone you might find that speaks your language enough to communicate with them in it. They can then help you to communicate with others. Knowing a few simple terms, you can as people to write something down in your target language. Very useful.

One nice thing about Thai: like Chinese, they don't conjugate their verbs, so the dictionary form for "to write" is just "write" whether I'm doing it or you are or they are or even if we were doing it yesterday or you will have done it tomorrow (although these other cases can sometimes add things to the verb, it's not necessarily conjugation in the true sense, and most of those time and tense clues are given by other words in the sentence like 'yesterday', 'before' 'tomorrow' 'later' and so on). This makes it very convenient to learn a word and know that you'll pretty much use it just like that across the board, or at least can and still be understood.

3 comments:

la viajera said...

you have inspired me! Though I haven't decided which language to do this with yet. Nonetheless I will do it! Maybe I should do it in English. haha.....just kidding

I think it's a great idea.

Alan said...

Well, I think it works because Thai is a language I have a basic knowledge of. I know how to construct (basic) sentences and have some grasp of the structure of it all. So as I learn vocab, I can use them in progressively more complex grammatical structures.
This approach won't work, for say, Hebrew, which I'll be starting in just over two weeks. I have to start from scratch there.
Do you have any thoughts on which language? Any candidates?

la viajera said...

Well I was thinking it would be good to try and deepen my knowledge of French and Spanish, learn those words that only native speakers know. But I'm sure I'll get tired of that quickly. :) I don't think my Chinese is ready for it yet, tho I do need more motivation in that deparment.