Gaeilge

Gaeilge, Irish, or “Irish Gaelic” is the national and first official language of Ireland, as well as one of the official languages of the European Union.

Although everyone in Ireland speaks English, there are regions known as the Gaeltacht that use Irish as the main language of communication, both in businesses and in families.

When we say Irish (the language) we don’t mean our accent in English (i.e. Hiberno English – I’ve got a different post for that coming up!) – we mean a language on a completely different branch of the European language family tree.

More distant than French and Spanish, stranger than Slavic languages and more exotic and beautiful than many languages, Irish is an interesting specimen and something I’d like to share with readers today as part of a few posts for Seachtain na Gaeilge – the week celebrating the Irish language and culture leading up to St. Patrick’s day!

Níl sé deacair ar chor ar bith

While Irish is quite different, there are some things that make it pretty straightforward to learn.

It only has 11 irregular verbs (compared to 500 or so in English and thousands in Spanish/French/etc. depending on how you count them), there’s no indefinite article (so you can just say “Tá leabhar agam” – literally I have book etc. with no “a” to complicate things), and even though it has masculine and feminine nouns, the definite article “an” (the) is the same for both. It uses the same alphabet as other European languages (although it is the only language that still traditionally uses its own special font).

The phonetics (pronunciation based on spelling) are quite different, and this usually scares a lot of people. But you can learn the differences very quickly and after that they are consistent (unlike in English), so you can read any given text aloud pretty well after a small amount of study.

Most of the letters work pretty similarly to how they do in most European languages, but some changes include mb = m, gc = c, th = h, dt = d, bhf = silent, and some consonants change sound depending on if they are before i/e or a/o/u. This happens in Spanish/French/Italian and other languages too (with c/g for example) but is slightly different in Irish.

For example S before i or e is an sh sound – this is why the well-known name Seán is pronounced (and spelled, in America) as Shawn. Most of the vowels work similarly to as they would in English, with the exception of “ao” pronounced as “ee”, so the name Aoife is pronounced Ee-fa. The subtle difference between how some consonants are pronounced takes some practice but can indeed be learned .

This is important for saying Irish people’s names correctly (even when just speaking English). Even some titles are not translated in Ireland, instead of a “prime minister” we have a Taoiseach (the word we use in English too) – based on what I said above (and ‘ch’ is pronounced gutturally as in loch), you will see better why this is pronounced Tee-sho[ch].

The language also interestingly has no word for yes or no (like in Thai for example). We simply repeat the verb of the question, e.g. Ar ith tú do lón? D’ith! Did you eat your lunch? I did! (literally, I ate)

Cad atá tú ag caint faoi?

There are a few tricky aspects of the language that merit a mention though.

You know the way in most languages you change the end of words in certain situations? (car/cars, I eat / he eats, drapeau / drapeaux etc.)… And even the middle of the words in other ones (man/men, mouse/mice)? Well in Irish we very merrily change the beginning. This is something common in other Celtic languages and adds to a nice flow between words.

So, for those of you who don’t know, my name is actually Brendan (Benny is my nickname ). In Irish this is originally written Breandán and when followed by verbs and such it stays the same. Tá Breandán ag ithe - Brendan is eating.

However, thanks to the magic of initial mutations we can change the start of words in many situations! So if you want to get my attention some day, don’t shout Breandán!! but A Bhreandán!! – which is actually pronounced ah Vrendawn since bh=v! This would be the vocative case for the linguists out there. Another example: Mo = my & madra = dog, but my dog is mo mhadra (“mo wadra”) since mh=w.

This strange use of spelling and the other examples mentioned above may seem offputting, but it’s actually quite helpful believe it or not! You see, we keep the letter of the original base word (e.g. crann for tree) in a modified version of the word (e.g. i gcrann for in a tree – the ‘c’ is silent, but essential for recognising the original word when the modified one is written). This is way better than if the language was perfectly phonetic; even if you knew the word crann, if you saw “grann” in a dictionary, text, or spelled out for you, it would be much more confusing. I’m told that Welsh (in the same language family) operates more phonetically despite the same initial mutation situation and I’d personally miss my original letters for recognition!

The vocabulary of the language is of course quite different; it’s one of the few languages I’ve seen (the other being Esperanto) that has its own word for things like the Internet (Idirlíon), and even words you would hope would be slightly similar go way off; “vegetarian” is feoilséantóir (literally means, “meat shunner”).

However, despite the huge differences, like in some other languages, words are formed logically using prefixes, suffixes and combinations of roots. A lot of Irish words do this so after you have some basic vocabulary it isn’t that bad to recognise more complicated words and very quickly build up your base of vocabulary.

For example, astronomy is réalteolaíocht [réalta=star, eolas=knowledge/information, íocht=y/ity etc. suffix, or more generally the second part, eolaíocht = science, so "star science"]. And then sometimes we just separate the words in an easy way. Exit is simply bealach amach (way out).

Word order changes a bit from English, and we have preposition conjugation (same way in Spanish/Portuguese con + tu = contigo, except that it is applied to all persons for most prepositions). Also, because of the initial mutations mentioned above, capital letters (upper case) can occur as the second or third letter in a word! So Donegal (county in the northwest) is spelled Dún na nGall. These things do take some getting used to, but it really isn’t that bad.

Tá an teanga i ngach áit!

The best part of all, is that Irish speakers are generally always happy to help! We are a long cry from arrogant perfectionists (something that holds too many people back from speaking a language), so if you can form some sentences we’ll be very happy to hear them even if there are some grammatical mistakes Whenever I hear a cúpla focal from someone I always encourage them to keep going!

Whether in Ireland or abroad, there are usually some books in major libraries on learning Irish. You can also order them online – one of my favourites for beginners or those already with a wee bit is the multimedia Turas Teanga course (you can get it on Amazon US/UK) from Irish language RTE newsreader Sharon Ní Bheolain, who teaches the language while going around the country showing it used by natives. Teach yourself also do a great book about Irish for complete beginners (Amazon US/UK), and the more adventurous of you can even read Harry Potter in Irish! (Amazon US/UK)

But even if you aren’t in Ireland, the possibilities of being exposed to Irish are endless! As I’ve mentioned before you can use meetup.com or other social networking sites to see if there are other interested Irish learners in your city, and you can practice it through twitter as you learn it. I do this with all of my maintained languages so you can follow me @ilteangach as Gaeilge, and make sure to check out the hashtag this week for #snag (Irish language and culture week) or #gaeilge to see tweets in and about Irish.

You can also change the language of your computer and software to be entirely in Irish! Firefox, Open Office, Ubuntu and many more interfaces are available as Gaeilge.

Then of course there are lots of sites online to help you practice your Irish. Here is a small sample:

Liam Ó Maonlai has a free online course with PDFs and MP3s for download. The audio has some typical phrases that you can repeat.

Gramadach na Gaeilge – An extremely in-depth look at Irish grammar. Perhaps more interesting to linguists due to how extremely detailed it gets!

Irish Gaelic Translator forum – Get an almost instantaneous answer from a native or fluent speaker of the language on simple questions and short translations. This forum is very active and will be a great help! There is also the Daltaí forum.

Abair.ie – An amazing voice synthesiser for Irish text. It uses the beautiful Tír Conaill accent (Ireland’s 3 main dialects are quite different!!) and can help train you in your pronunciation.

RnaG – Ireland’s main Irish language radio station that you can listen to live. This is the best way to hear what the language actually sounds like! The entire page is in Irish, but click on “RnaG beo” (beo=live) link beside the radio image in the top-right to open up the stream.

Tg4 – Ireland’s Irish language TV station. What’s better than listening to the radio in Irish? Watching TV shows originally in Irish! Check out the Ros na Rún page (and click “Féach ar” [watch]) to watch a soap opera entirely in Irish! There are many more categories, but the site is navigated entirely in Irish of course.

Irish dictionary – free online dictionary.

Focal.ie – A free technical dictionary. Not good for basic words, but gives declensions and plurals for a lot of words; for intermediate and higher level learners.

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You can also check out a video I made about my experience in the Gaeltacht. The course I took was given by Oideas Gael in Donegal and takes place regularly every year for all levels. My Irish is far from perfect (my accent is definitely not as lovely as so many others that you would hear), but you can see some videos I’ve made entirely in Irish (most with subtitles) on my Irish videoblog. I don’t update it regularly, but I’m hoping to make a somewhat silly video next week about the Irish language.

I hope this post gives those of you out there curious about the language a little hint into how to learn and use it! Let me know in the comments about your own Irish learning experiences! Don’t forget to share this post with your other Irish-at-heart friends through twitter and facebook

Go n-eirí an bóthar libh!Similar Posts:

• Combining learning languages with your hobbies: My first video in Czech!
• How to speak Portuguese as if you were from Rio
• Why Czech isn’t as hard to learn as you think
• How to start learning Italian (video)
• Reading Thai and its tones isn’t as hard as you think

What an experience!!

This “dipping my toes” in my first Asian language has helped me see so many things I hadn’t realised before, despite the extremely little amount of time that I actually put into it, i.e. about 15 hours in the first month exclusively to be able to read the symbols and understand the tone rules, and the time around making the video just before leaving. What I really learned was in the many other hours I had of interactions with other learners and English speakers.

You’ll be surprised to see what I have taken away as the most important lessons; they have little to do with techniques for learning tones or dealing with Thai’s differences from European languages and more to do with general lessons relevant to other languages and those very interactions with other learners.

Confidence to speak is what holds pretty much EVERYONE back

It doesn’t matter what language you are learning; Asian or European, the reason you aren’t speaking it is because you aren’t confident enough. Learning all the grammar, tone rules, vocabulary and exceptions seems to be the way that a lot of people achieve this confidence. In my opinion, this is inefficient. The study and learning aspect is still very important, but only for improving on your spoken level, not for getting the confidence to be able to speak.

Learners focused on the details say that they will be ready to speak the language when they have enough. My 3-month missions are possible because I gain this confidence through speaking rather than through studying. You can speak in your first days of really trying (as I showed in the video), and gaining confidence this way takes way less time than through trying to know a language inside and out. That was a tough morning for me, but it was like tearing off a band-aid – doing it quickly was the best way. After that weekend I was confident in speaking Thai in so many situations in my final days, that I just wasn’t “ready” for before.

My lack of readiness was nothing more than a barrier that I had put up myself. The only real regret that I have in this mission is that I didn’t start with speaking and have that confidence from my first weekend rather than my last one. I would have effortlessly improved my speaking habits over the entire stay, even with very little work. In future I won’t wait to speak – reading aspects will come after that and not before it.

Flashback of other learners’ “encouragement”

Since my approach involves immersion, I simply don’t tend to associate so much with English speakers, or if I do, it would be through the language we are both learning. The benefits of this are obvious, but I had long forgotten one really important reason that also pushed me towards this learning strategy.

Other learners can be very discouraging!

In this Thai mission, this was just a minor annoyance because (as you can imagine) I’m already confident enough. You could call it arrogance, but the whole point is that I’m telling everyone else how they can do it too and that I’m not special. But I got a flashback to when I was learning Spanish and my enthusiasm was curbed by other English speakers at a time when I was way more vulnerable. When people hear you speak a language pretty well they can’t really do much to discourage you, but when you are still trying and not quite succeeding, they can be very unhelpful.

Frankly, English speakers have standards that are way too high on perfection in languages. I can think of very few times over the last seven years that a native has given me any unhelpful criticism (as opposed to helpful corrections and such) in the languages that I’ve learned, with the exception of the French (more specifically, Parisians, but I’ll be writing a post soon about a revelation I’ve made in my French/Paris experience thanks to a return visit there).

However, I have gotten an amazing amount of negativity from English speakers also learning the same language. This attitude is something I struggle to understand, but to be honest I find it easier to simply avoid it by avoiding English speakers altogether. It’s sad (especially when it also means I’m avoiding non-language-learner travellers, who have actually hugely enriched my Thailand experience), but fighting against anglophone negativity (unlike Latino and Asian friendliness) is energy I’d rather spend on speaking with natives.

Since I obviously have a “strange” way of going about learning language of focusing on the positive, I unintentionally got into a few arguments with people about the ideal approach. In always trying to see what’s easy in a language, other learners were constantly showing me what’s hard. I am way off speaking Thai well, but everything they told me looks like something that would take a finite amount of time to be able to absorb and I am very sure that they would be achieved quicker with an upbeat attitude.

Any list of exceptions and rules that they could give me, I could counter them with a similar list for any other language. Thai is clearly way more different to English than French is, but Thai doesn’t have noun genders, irregular plurals, definite/indefinite articles, complicated rules for use of prepositions, difficult conjugations and so much more. If I say this you can counter with more things Thai has that European languages don’t, but what’s the point? It just turns into a pissing competition for whose language is “harder”.

Having a view of several languages gives me a unique perspective, and I can say that an astounding amount people seem to believe that their task is the hardest one. Thai is harder, or Czech is the hardest language in the world etc. Sorry guys, but there is no hardest language in the world. I said it before and I’ll say it again; it’s all about attitude With a negative attitude anything you do can and will be hard.

You still need other learners

Despite what I said above, avoiding other learners is not a great solution. While I still think that Asian languages aren’t as different the monster that I thought they were, I couldn’t have gotten my head around the differences so quickly without help. Natives usually aren’t in the position to explain these differences… and this seems much more so in Asian languages, which means you need to turn to someone focused on the details! Uh oh…

Voicing my approach of learning languages got me into quite a few arguments with other learners – this was not a good idea. Obviously I’m very passionate to share my approach with others, but the lack of evidence I could provide this time (since I wasn’t actually speaking the language I was learning for once) meant that I wasn’t going to convince them by words of positivity alone. I should have accepted this from the start because some of the advice that they had given to me was actually really good and I should have tapped that resource for more! In future I’ll argue my point a lot less and just let the evidence speak for itself, since I will be working hard in nearly all future missions and not just casually curious like I was with Thai.

Others can help you so much in your language endeavours – even if you happen to be against the academic or other approach that they use, what they know is essential and important information. If they have been learning longer than you, they can definitely make things easier in your own journey when asked for advice.

Although I am a little annoyed at the cynical direction that the discussion went in the thaivisa forum, some of the advice given was fantastic! I was given a link to a pdf file to help me get my head around the font issue in Thai that I had mentioned, shown a great page on the Thai-language site for recognising tones, and given lots of other interesting facts about how Thai works. They were really very helpful (when not arguing how silly I was)! I definitely recommend other Thai learners to try out that forum, but maybe don’t show that you think that Thai might just not be that hard, and definitely don’t mention my name

My friend Aleksandra also believed that it was important that I knew the difficulties of Thai to get a more rounded view – once I stopped trying to argue this point and asked for specific advice, her knowledge was essential. The video I made would not have been possible without her coaching me and correcting me.

Everyone needs to be flexible

So I’m clearly torn! Avoid other learners or learn to get along with them? The first one is not a healthy solution; especially since I tend to live in cities and I am genuinely interested in helping others learn languages quicker, so I’m just going to be meeting more and more learners. So I’m going to swallow my pride and try to be flexible – at the end of the day, no matter how great I think my approach is, it isn’t perfect and is always open to improvements! Hopefully this flexibility will encourage the other party to be so as well, and see some benefits of what I might have to say

From this conclusion, my next mission will have this theme of improvements. I am going to be trying some new (to me) approaches that I never had before because I had dismissed them as incompatible with my view of language hacking. This blog has exposed me to so many other points of view and a lot of people say that they are combining my strategy with other ones, and happy with the combination.

Why should they have all the fun? I’ll be test-driving some other learning approaches, which may not be as social as what I usually do, but may indeed have some interesting merits for learning a language quickly.

End of Thai mission

In the end I achieved all of what I had initially aimed for – with the exception of not attempting to read unprepared text to a native. The real point of the mission was confidence in an Asian language, and I feel ready to aim for something much much higher next time I try So I consider this mission a success! I now award myself 4 out of 5 stars for the achievement:

The mission was mostly a break for me – when I reveal the next ones you’ll understand why I needed such a break!

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I hope you’ve enjoyed this story! The next one will be way more interesting and the target way higher than anything else I’ve aimed for before

But first, I’ll be sharing some details on how to learn the Irish language, my own tips on it, a video and several other posts. I’ll also be introducing another project I’ll be working on over the next months (other than the mission) very soon.

Let me know what your views are on experiences with other learners! Share your thoughts on anything mentioned here, in the comments Similar Posts:

• Next mission: Read and speak Thai in 8 weeks
• Summary of month 1 in the mission to become Brazilian
• My next mission: Become Brazilian in 3 months!
• Summary of month 2: on the final dash to see if I make it to fluency!
• Summary of first month of mission & top 100 language blogs nomination

Travel update – no language tips in this (long) post

My experience in Thailand has ended and I’m already back in Europe (in Paris for the weekend, Ireland for the next 3 weeks and then starting the next 3-month mission). I’ve learned quite a lot in terms of general life lessons, as well as for learning languages of course, but first I’ll give a travel summary to continue from my first impressions.

Ko Phi Phi – my favourite island

Just after my last travel update (in Phuket), I made my way to Ko Phi Phi (pronounced gaw pee-pee; yes, romanisation in Thai is very misleading). I stayed for about a week, and it was by far the best week of my entire Thailand experience!

Phi Phi is a magnet for young (mostly beautiful young Swedish) party seekers, and those with dreams of finding their Beach. In fact, the Leonardi DiCaprio movie The Beach was filmed in an adjacent island.

However, coming here to find an unspoilt paradise would leave you disappointed; the island is extremely touristy and chaotic, and quite expensive for Thailand. Although I was immediately struck by how clear the water was when getting off the ferry, I wouldn’t call what I had seen to be the most beautiful destination.

I actually did want to just party for a week and I got that and more! Open-access areas on the beach have music and a sandy dancefloor, and there are amazing fire shows; a fire skip-rope, fire limbo and fire juggling. Anyone can participate, and most do! I’d love to say how brave I was, but to be honest I only did the fire limbo when it was at the highest level and skipped the rope when the flames were least strong. Quite a few people got burnt!

What made this destination such a great party for me was how friendly the other tourists were there. It’s amazing, but even the attitude of other travellers changes between the islands (see below). I had absolutely no problem making some cool new friends; for weeks afterwards I would be elsewhere in Thailand and would be recognised by someone I had met in Phi Phi (although, I have ways of making myself easily recognisable that those who’ve been out with me know about!)

Parties (and seeing so many beautiful Swedish girls) aside, the main reason this island gave me the highest quality experience for this trip was actually because of people I had met online and ended up spending most of my time with there – fellow bloggers and “tweeps” Dan Andrews, Tom, Sean Ogle and his friend Ryan, as well as Baker and his family. They hugely enriched my entire Thailand experience; I had some amazing conversations, learned a lot from them, and finally got to hang out with some other “location independent” workers, which is something we all had in common. Most people I tend to hang out with in my travels usually wouldn’t even know what twitter is, let alone be as active online as my Phi Phi friends are.

I made sure that we worked together on my video and I was video interviewed by both Sean and Baker (I’ll link to those videos when they become available). Sean wrote an interesting post about how Phi Phi is where the productive go to die (i.e. getting any work done there is quite hard!) and I’ve been lucky to have been able to spend more time with him in Bangkok in my final weeks. I’ll otherwise be keeping in touch with that group until we meet again!

The inexperienced tourist

After Phi Phi, things kind of went downhill for the rest of my Thailand travels before I decided to settle in Bangkok. As initially stated, I was trying out being an English speaking tourist while in Thailand.

There are advantages to that style of travel, and it may be preferable for some people, but it really is not for me. Don’t get me wrong, I can be viewed as just as much of a tourist even when living in a city for several months and speaking its language, but pure-English-speaking tourism is not something I’ve ever experienced outside of countries that don’t have English as an official language. For my own curiosity and for the purposes of giving a rounded view on this blog (as I’ll be writing here for quite a while!), I really wanted to experience the other point-of-view.

This meant that learning Thai was purposely given the backseat and very little time commitment (once again, I had already said I’d be doing this when announcing the mission; some people seem to have misunderstood that I was aiming for fluency in Thai). I don’t regret this decision as I had wanted a new experience; even if it was bound to lead to some disappointment. I also think that a break from intensive language immersion and allowing myself to get to know so many English speaking travellers has been nice, especially since I will be speaking almost no English for the entire rest of the year starting in a few weeks time.

I have genuinely learned some important things from this experience.

Full Moon bucket-drinking session?

I went to Samui and based myself there for about a week surrounding the Full Moon party; one of the most famous parties in the world and on so many people’s lists of things to do before they die. To be totally honest, I was quite disappointed.

It didn’t seem to have anything special in it, and I wonder if people enjoy it so much simply because of the number of buckets of alcohol (yes, alcohol is served in buckets in Thailand) that they’ve consumed. As a non-drinker I have a different perspective on such things, and I never shut up about how amazing Burning Man or the Brazilian Carnival or other large festivals or events are, even though there is clearly a lot of drinking going on in such events too.

But the Full Moon party was just some beach party that happened to have a lot of people. The day I was there had the brightest moon of the year (due to its elliptical orbit), but you would barely have noticed it because of all of the lights coming from the bars and nightclubs. I hate to sound like a nostalgic traditionalist (I like my cities and development more than anyone), but I imagine that it would have been an extremely different and very special event in its early years.

For example, this time last year I was on a secluded beach in India with no artificial lights during a full moon and it was one of the most breathtakingly beautiful sights that I have ever seen in my life. The whole beach was spectacularly lit up in an eery black-and-white way from the light of the moon and seeing my shadow cast in such contrast with no sun or artificial lights was something I had never experienced before. The potential to enjoy yourself with friends in such a set-up is amazing. The Phangan-based party could be just as well called the monthly beach drinking session in my opinion.

Also, unlike in Phi Phi, a lot of the tourists at the FMP are on an extremely brief (between one weekend and one week, for example) trip to Thailand specifically for the party. It was quite hard for me to make friends with those crowds and the people I already knew at the party were extremely difficult to find in the chaos. I think if you are a big drinker or go with a group of people, you would enjoy yourself much more than I did, but you could have a beach party anywhere; to me, the FMP was pure quantity rather than quality.

After that I had caught a bug and was bedridden for several days in Ao nang. Hopping between major tourist destinations was getting old and I had put almost no work at all into learning Thai, so it was time to go north. I spent a few days in Chiang Mai and found the pace of the city and university population to be a reminder of things I liked in other cities that I’ve lived in (Valencia/Salamanca in Spain and Toulouse in France for example).

However northern Thai is extremely different (as far as I could gather, a much greater dialect difference than what I’ve come across in European language dialects), so the little I had learned from the reading part of the experiment would have been rendered almost useless, and any formal indications (in books etc.) on speaking Thai would have been focused on Bangkok’s dialect. So I decided to go back there for my final weeks.

Bangkok

It’s ironic that I came back to Bangkok for its own version of Thai because I ended up just spending most of my time indoors and didn’t even begin speaking or practising it until my final weekend. Once again, looking at my finances grimly reminded me that I needed to do another 3-week stint of double-time work 7 days a week. Such a work commitment has actually prematurely ended one of my previous missions, but luckily what I was aiming for in Thai was much simpler and I’m happy with what I achieved in the very little time that I put into it.

As you can imagine, I am getting quite sick of being locked in my room for such long stretches every few months. Despite enjoying my work, that experience is still quite stressful and extremely antisocial. I’ll be discussing an idea with you soon to hopefully get me out of that pattern.

There was one extra thing to make my Bangkok experience even less authentic! As I wanted to find an apartment as soon as possible (I had been living in hotels for my entire stay up to then; interestingly, that didn’t contribute to financial problems since it’s so cheap in Thailand), I chose the first place I saw that was modern, efficient for working in, right by a skytrain stop and near lots of restaurants. The flat itself was perfect for my purposes but what I didn’t notice when taking it was that it was a 2 minute walk from… (those who know Bangkok, get ready to do a facepalm) Nana plaza . One of the world’s most famous red-light districts.

So every time I went out just for a bite to eat, I’d get pestured by dozens of (both female and she-male) prostitutes. Seeing how many men were in Thailand for sex tourism was infuriating, and getting grabbed and propositioned when walking down the street was something that I just had to learn to ignore. Not quite the impression of Thailand I was hoping to leave with!! This is of course, entirely my own fault for not being better organised; I apologise to all Thais and to locals living here; I will come back another time to get a real perspective on Thai culture, I promise!! I will definitely not be claiming that I “know Thailand” after this superficial experience.

In the few breaks that I did take from work, I got to spend more time with some more location independent workers. Bloggers seem to like doing video interviews, since I had been invited for several other ones, including with Cody McKibben and David Walsh (that I’ll also include in a video summary post), both amazing individuals that I’ve learned so much from in our brief chats!

Bangkok seems to be some kind of centre of gravity for so many interesting people, and despite my own lack of congruence with the English-speaking travellers’ world, I got to appreciate a whole new different type of culture through them. English speaking expats in themselves have something special that they share, which can’t easily be associated with the country that they come from. There’s an anglophone culture in Bangkok that simply can’t be overlooked, and I can understand why so many people are flocking here to experience it.

So having said all of that, this 2-month stay in Thailand has been an eye-opening and extremely different experience for me. I’ve had my ups and downs, and I have learned way more than I was expecting to, and am still processing and reflecting on my short but intense visit there.

Most important of all, I did genuinely make some excellent friends. On my last full day, I went (artificial) wakeboarding with the guys and had a great time with them. I will miss them a lot, but I’m still a nomad at heart, so it was time to move on. It feels good to be back in Europe where things make a little bit more sense to me

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In the next post, I’ll summarise the language part of my Thai mission, especially detailing mistakes that I’ve made, and my overall impressions of “dipping my toes” in my first Asian language.

Once I have done that, I would like to spend the next few weeks talking about something that a lot of my readers have shown an interest in, before I begin my first intensive language mission of 2010. I will be in Ireland for St. Patrick’s day for the first time in years, and the lead up to this is what is known as seachtain na Gaeilge – over a week to celebrate the Irish language and culture. To attempt to contribute to this, I would like to share ways of learning more about the Irish language (and culture) through this blog (between some posts with more general language and other tips), as well as making one or more videos about the topic.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy that!! In the meantime, if you have any thoughts on what I’ve written here, feel free to leave a comment. Please note that this post is just me thinking aloud about my Thai experience, so try not to take offense at anything I’ve said here as it’s just my opinion, nothing more. Similar Posts:

• First impressions of Thailand
• Is it better to travel to villages for language/cultural immersion?
• Finding the right accommodation for immersion in a culture
• Ironic post: Why English is all you need to travel the world
• My next mission: Become Brazilian in 3 months!

This post includes an embedded video. If you are reading it through RSS or email and don’t see it, click through to watch it on my site!

Note: Rather than this video being a how-to about Thai tones, it’s simply giving an idea of the way that I’m looking at and approaching them to help to make them easier. Since I had only been in Thailand for just over 2 weeks at the time of filming there are a few mistakes, but it should hopefully help others starting off!

Blogger cameo roles in the video

I was going to wait to record this video for another week or so when I would have had a better ear for the tones, but I couldn’t miss out on the opportunity to work on a shared project with some big names in the blogosphere! I spent an entire week in Ko Phi Phi and most of that was in the company of some fellow “location independent professionals” that went with me to the parties on the beach every night. It’s definitely been the best part of my Thailand trip so far.

I convinced some of them to help me with this video. They are (in the order you see them):

Sean Ogle Location 180: Sean quit his job and decided to move across the world and has a great blog about why it’s not as scary as you think to do that. In person he’s super cool and really great fun! We’ll be meeting up again before I leave Thailand for sure!

Dan Andrews Tropical MBA: Dan knows his business and he does most of it from somewhere tropical! He runs a cool podcast to inspire others to do the same and was giving me some great advice for how I should expand on my blog. His work partner Ian was the cameraman.

Tom Li: Tom, and the others above are all working together. Tom and I had an amazing time meeting people on the sandy dancefloors!

Adam Baker ManVsDebt: Adam’s blog is huge after less than a year since he started it, because apart from really amazing content, he is proving that you can travel the world even if you have a family and showing that there is a way out of debt if you are committed to it and sell all your useless stuff. His beautiful daughter Milly (who also appears in the video) and his wife Courtney are with him on the adventure of a lifetime. He’s really nice in person!!

Summary of the 5 tones

Just to expand on what I said in the video (and correct little mistakes I made), the way I see the 5 tones of Thai are as follows:

• High tone. This title is misleading because you would think it is just simply a higher version of the middle/low tone, but I actually hear it as rising. It does so in a different way to the rising tone (see below), and I think this can be pretty well represented by shock or surprise as I did in the video. So you start already high and make it higher.
• Rising tone. This title is better, but it’s important to note that you have to go down before you actually do rise your tone. This is precisely the same as we do in single word questions (like really?) on hearing interesting information.
• Middle and low tone. I still find these two a little hard, so in the video I just focussed on the difference between them; at the moment just making a tone that feels middle or low is what I’m going with. Since then, from more practice, from what I can tell, the low tone sounds like how we would end a sentence in English. Click the different words on this page to hear a native pronounce them and you’ll see what I mean. If you can give a better easy explanation than my “jaws” suggestion in the video, say so in the comments
• Falling tone. I totally messed this one up in the video; sorry! (One long take and a lot of stuff to remember, whoops!) In the link in the previous point you can hear what it actually sounds like; it’s like the opposite to the rising tone in that it starts high and then falls low. It’s actually not that hard at all; I was just a little distracted in the video.

One other mistake I made in the video was that despite saying it pretty well on the beach, I said the high tone almost exactly the same as the rising tone (I went down-up, instead of up-up) when giving the example in the last part. I think I sound pretty silly trying to point out the difference between two sentences that sound pretty much exactly the same and shouldn’t in Thai…

So overall, I definitely can’t say that I’ve “mastered” tones yet, but I hope that I have a pretty good idea thanks to comparisons with situations in English, as in the video, and with practice they will come! Rather than giving tips in this video, I wanted to just share the learning experience, even in the stage where I’m still making lots of basic mistakes. And of course, it was a great excuse to work together with the other bloggers on a common project that only took a few minutes!

Right now I’m in a small town called “fisherman’s village” despite there not being a single fisherman in sight; great fake title for tourist soundbites though. It’s on the north part of Ko Samui and I’ll be getting the 20 minute speedboat to the famous full moon party this weekend! Can’t wait!!

If you have any comments on the video, tips to help me improve my command over the tones, or if you are also a subscriber to the blogs of the guys I got to spend a week with in Ko Phi Phi, do share it with us in the comments!!Similar Posts:

• Reading Thai and its tones isn’t as hard as you think
• Combining learning languages with your hobbies: My first video in Czech!
• How to start learning Italian (video)
• Having fun at Esperanto events
• Learning the Irish language (Gaeilge)

The pessimist says the glass is half empty. The optimist says it’s half full. The pragmatist says its liquid contents are at 50% capacity. The ironist says it’s half full of air. The practicalist says the glass is twice as big as it should be. The psychoanalyst says the glass is your mother. The punk sitting next to you on the bus also says the glass is your mother. The zen master says, “There is no glass.” And me…, I say, “Waitress! Refill!”

Each one of these is a different perspective on exactly the same thing. A negative one is by far one of the biggest issues people have that holds them back from learning languages, in my opinion.

In the last 7-8 months blogging and being much more public about my missions, I’ve gotten lots of positive feedback and an equal about of scepticism. Scepticism is good, and I’ve shown that I too don’t believe in ridiculous claims so easy.

Despite this, I have achieved these goals. I learned how to speak Czech in two months and I spoke Portuguese like a Brazilian in 3 months. I am confident that I will speak and read Thai in just 8 weeks (at the moment I am aiming to do better than my initial goals with regards speaking; more on this later).

This is much less thanks to genetics and natural talent, and much more down to an efficient approach and a great deal of optimism throughout the task. Optimism isn’t just having a smile on your face despite setbacks, it can dramatically alter the course of your personal missions.

The half-empty perspective isn’t “wrong”, but it holds you back

People have amazing ways of justifying why it’s not possible for them. When the target is announced they’ll give a list of reasons to hold you back from achieving it and why you have your “head in the clouds” if you think it’s possible. And after seeing seemingly impossible tasks achieved they will find a workaround to why it’s not possible for them and just say that this person is an “exception” or a “genius”.

Hogwash.

I’ve talked to hundreds of sceptics in the last 7 months and I can now very easily summarise one thing that nearly all of them have in common, and that holds them back from achieving what I have. Their language is half empty.

With the Czech mission, they told me that the 7 grammatical cases, difficult to pronounce letter combinations, vast amount of vocabulary to learn and other factors are what will hold me back. In the Brazilian mission they said that an accent can never be lost, especially over a short time. And you know what? Technically they are indeed right.

The glass in the picture is half empty. This is not a falsehood. You can provide evidence and anecdotes of people that have tried hard tasks and failed, you can provide endless facts and lists of things that must be learned that seem like an insurmountable monster and you can constantly remind yourself how hard it is. You aren’t wrong.

But there’s a better way to look at it

The glass in the picture is also half full.

You can look at how easy a language is; how you already know words before starting, how a new writing system can be deciphered if you try a different approach, how noun genders aren’t that bad, how you can get rid of your accent, or practise the language without needing to travel, or achieve your language goals even if you are busy, etc.

This is what makes me different from those who don’t learn languages quickly. Everything you read on this blog reinforces how learning languages is not that bad and I focus entirely on the positive. Every barrier that appears in your path can be overcome if you try a new approach and have the right attitude.

Bad news will always come your way and you have to develop the ability to filter it only for useful facts. When I heard about Czech’s 7 cases, I found a shortcut and saw that there are lots of patterns, worked on them and decided to just accept 7 cases as a new concept that I’d incorporate into speaking. It did take some getting used to, but it wasn’t that bad, especially when I went further and tried to put a positive spin on it.

I could have spent a lot of time complaining about those “damn” cases in Czech, but that would not have helped. Instead I just said “Oh well” and got through them. This is the same thing I do for any challenge in learning a language. The reason I get through them quickly is of course influenced greatly by my learning approach, but I think an almost bigger contributor is the fact that I don’t look at this task negatively. With a bad attitude, anything can be hard to study and you’ll get through it much slower and much more reluctantly.

Here in Thailand I’ve met others who seem to have much greater intelligence and skillset than I do, who are also trying to learn Thai. And yet in talking to them I can see why it will be a struggle and why they may not succeed. They are focussing on the negative. Everything they say is technically “correct”, but I am looking at the facts from a different perspective and at the end of the day I will master the language because of this.

Impossible is impossible

Never say never, and especially never say “impossible”. It’s a word people throw around too much; for me impossible is nothing as Adidas say, or I’ll go further and say that impossible is impossible for most situations people use it in. If the laws of Physics don’t prevent you from doing it (clearing your debt, climbing Mouth Everest, learning a language) then it is NOT impossible. If anyone in the history of the world has done it, then you can certainly do it. If they haven’t then what’s stopping you from being the first?

Constantly reminding yourself and others about how hard something is and getting down because of that is an inefficient waste of time. It’s like Baz Luhrmann’s sunscreen song says; “Worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum”. If something’s hard, work through it or skip it and come back to it after you’ve learned something else important for your task, or find a better approach to deal with that hard aspect.

Simple as that. Really.

This is why I generally skip most grammar and focus on speaking languages from the start (I’ve got a different approach for Thai, that I’ll continue to elaborate on). Once you start speaking it (albeit incorrectly), grammar is more interesting and less intimidating and helps you, rather than hinders you, in speaking a language.

When I get response comments listing how “impossibly” hard something I’m trying is, I’m going to simply link to this post in future because that person is focussing on the negative. They are “right”, but unless they are giving me a way around the problem they aren’t helpful so I will simply ignore what they’ve said or pick out the actual “fact” (level of difficulty is pure opinion) and analyse it until I see how easy it can be.

From hundreds of conversations, I’m sure that this is one of the most crucial things I’ve picked up over the last 7 years that makes me “different” from the average frustrated learner. But attitude is in your head; you don’t need to pay for an expensive course or travel to the other side of the planet to change it. You need to remind yourself how easy it is until you really believe it. When you come to something “hard”, just repeat your mantra of this is easy over and over again, or do whatever it takes for you to change your negative way of looking at it.

With a positive attitude, your project becomes more fun and easier simply because you tell yourself it is and if “empty words” don’t help, find new approaches to learning that language (or achieving any goal) until you find a better method that does indeed make things “easier” for you. Where there’s a will, there’s a way!

It’s not that bad, come on!

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I got an amazing 22,000 visits in the last 2 days through stumbleupon on my post about learning any phonetic script in a few hours! It makes me really happy when my work is read by a lot of people, so please remember if you liked this (or any) post, to give it a stumble thumbs-up, or to share the link on facebook or twitter

Hopefully next week I should have the next update on my next milestone in Thai (and possibly a video update or two!)- at the moment I’m on Phi Phi island and very much enjoying it, and to make things better I’m with hanging out with other bloggers (and generally cool people) like Sarah Lipman, Sean Ogle and Dan Andrews, so I’ll stay here several days to enjoy the beautiful scenery and the company of some cool fellow travellers before moving on.

I hope people agree with me that a bad attitude will definitely slow you down in any project. So let me ask you something, is your language half full or half empty? Similar Posts:

• Don’t just stand there… Say something!
• Any phonetic script can be learned in just a few hours
• Does drinking help you speak a foreign language?
• Starting to learn a language with the right attitude
• Why Czech isn’t as hard to learn as you think

Travel update: no language tips in this (long) post!

After travelling for about 7 years already, I thought I was immune to surprises, shocks and general wide-eyed awe.

And then I came to Thailand!

There’s nothing I can say about Thailand that hasn’t already been blogged, Lonely Planeted, Documentary Channelled, photographed or twittered a million times already. This country is on pretty much every RTW ticket and gap-year itinerary and is usually among the first countries that travellers end up in.

However, what is slightly different for me compared to other Siam first-timers, is my mission to speak Thai in just 8 weeks (so far it’s going according to plan) and the fact that I have more travel behind me than most of my fellow temporary farangs here (however, I’ve already met a couple of people here who could see my travel years and raise me 10+). So to be totally honest I’ve had no strong feeling of culture shock here and have been comfortable and confident in finding my way around.

Having said that, there are quite a few things that have stood out for me in these two weeks:

Thai massages

I took a brief training course in India in Ayurvedic massage, and that was my first true exposure to proper massage techniques. I both gave and received enough massages to get the general gist of how they worked, and presumed that other international versions were just massaging different parts of the body in slightly different ways.

This is not how I’d describe Thai massage.

It’s more like your legs and arms getting pounded, squeezed, poked and squashed, then a standard nice back/head massage, and then pre-football-training aerobic stretching applied to a limp puppet… in a good way.

Before I even attempt to take a course, I’ve been getting as many massages as possible (hard life, I know) usually for about 200 Baht (€4/$6) for an hour. And I still have no idea how to summarise them because each one I’ve gotten has been completely different; ranging from excruciatingly painful by a distracted gobshite not even looking at what he’s doing, who seemed to prefer massaging nerves rather than muscles, to an absolutely relaxing experience that made me feel great for hours afterwards.

To those who haven’t tried, I’d highly recommend one, but get a location recommendation beforehand. I’m just randomly picking places and regretting it about half the time.

And if you are a single guy, you have an entirely different problem on your hands. Then again it’s hardly a problem for many; the famous “happy ending” extra that they offer you in less professional parlours.

My random stumblings of course brought me to one of these so far (there’s a lot) and I had the rather amusing task of politely turning down a massage to the one part of me that she “missed”. I’ve been in way more awkward situations than this one before, and was very much psychologically prepared for this by the many stories told to me by some more… “eager” friends of mine who’ve travelled to Thailand. So to be totally honest I found her clumsy “accidents” of brushing against me in the wrong places (to get me excited) to be just silly. I put a stop to it before she got carried away.

The land of smiles?

Don’t get me wrong; I find the Thais to be exceptionally friendly and I am really looking forward to getting to know them better through their language.

But Thailand’s claim to its subtitle has escaped me. If you compare it to places where workdrones tend to walk around with surely expressions on their face, like some major cities in Europe, then sure, they smile more.

I just do not understand why it’s “the” land of smiles based on what I’ve seen in comparison to other places. Brazilians smile way more than what I’ve seen here for example. Maybe the citylife/touristy nature of Bangkok and Patong have jaded the locals and I’ll see way more cheeriness if I go off the beaten track, (in fact, I’m starting to see more smiles now that I’m in a quieter, but still a touristy beach at Karon) but excluding populated areas isn’t much of a land.

It’s not that it isn’t a land of smiles, I just find it pretty much the same level of positivity that I’ve seen in several other cultures. I’d call Thailand a land of smiles rather than the land of smiles…

Affordable luxury

My first week in Bangkok was fun after I got off Kao San road. That’s a great centre of gravity for backpackers, but if you don’t drink you might get bored of it quickly. I don’t think I can call myself a backpacker any more; I did that for many years, but now I have a different style of travelling (and I even ditched my 6th backpack and now travel with a suitcase; more on why this has simplified things for me another time).

I moved into my first ever 4 star hotel (by choice; I’ve stayed in hotels a few times before in the past for just one night and only out of lack of cheaper options) by a metro stop (สถานีเพชรบุรี/Petchaburi).

I was happy to spend a few days there; for just over 1,000 Baht (about €25/$35) I had a king sized bed, a huge modern room (serviced and made up every day), fridge, TV, great ensuite bathroom, air conditioning (it’s around 32ºC in Bangkok in the streets these days), very secure, huge filling breakfast included and wifi and a working desk. The last two are the reason I was paying “so much” (I need to be able to work wherever I go). You can actually easily get a room to yourself for 3 times less than that and still have lots of luxuries, but for the short term I was happy with what I had; especially since I was right by a metro.

Paying that daily isn’t realistic for the long term; I’m hoping to find a Bungalow somewhere soon and pay rent per week/month rather than per day to significantly reduce the cost. But I still felt like pampering myself a bit, and €25 is the price of a bunkbed in a hostel in some major European cities… I’m just not used to “affordable” luxury, so I’m trying it out

However, based on how much other tourists complain about insignificant things in hotels compared to those in budget accommodation, I don’t think I’d travel hotels all the time, even if I could afford it. Too much luxury would make you have unrealistic standards for everywhere you go and seemingly turn you into a whiny crybaby, which I’d rather avoid!

Location independent = Location unsure

I’m sending this post from Karon , a medium sized touristy town on Phuket island (pronounced poo-get despite what the not-very-useful romanisation tells you). I had no particular itinerary when I got here, and I still haven’t a clue where I’ll be in two days time.

The problem is where will I find that Bungalow? I asked online forums, fellow travellers, Thailand experts and friends about where to go weeks before coming here and all the time since I got here. Asking that question will give you a list of pretty much every destination in Thailand if you ask it enough times. It depends on too many factors. Some people like the neon lights with nightlife all week, some like laid back, for some a breathtaking paradise view is essential, others like adventure and others still have their favourite village with no other Europeans around for miles.

I don’t particularly need any of these. I’m not on the hunt for some lost paradise (it’s actually funny how many people on online Thailand forums ask for the name of a “secluded paradise with no tourists”, not realising that publishing its name online to a tourist kind of defeats the purpose), or some false sense of authenticity in a mere 8 week stay. I am well aware of the fact that I’m a tourist here; a forbidden word among a lot of superior backpackers who know better.

Since I’ll likely be back to Thailand again in future, I am devoting most of this trip to look around to find a place that I like. Simple as that.

But it’s hard to put what I’m looking for into words (trust me, I’ve tried!) – I do actually like a wee bit of home (i.e. Europe) around so I don’t feel homesick; Italian restaurants, crêpe stalls, some other travellers, things available to those who can afford it like day trips, windsurfing/massage etc. lessons. So yes, I do actually want to go to a “touristy” town. Most of these are based on the beach, so that’s why I’m covering coastal areas right now, but I don’t actually need the beach for anything more than a nice morning jog on the sand. I’m not here to work on my tan.

I could totally see myself in Bangkok, since it has everything I could possibly want in a city… but when you see so many people wearing face masks to protect themselves from the pollution from the city’s incredible amount of traffic, it makes you think twice about a medium-term stay if you are asthmatic. A lot of people warned me that Bangkok was chaotic, but I find it nothing of the sort. The road traffic is horrible, but the public transport on the skytrain and metro are very clean modern and cheap, and even the Chao Phraya express through the river and the canal boats get you to most other destinations.

I moved on to Patong for the weekend and there was a little too much going on for my tastes. Neon lights and constant reminders of sex tourism is not my scene. Karon is a slight improvement over Patong, but still doesn’t strike me as a place that would suit me to stick around long in.

Vague itinerary for next weeks

I think I’ll spend a night in Phuket town Tuesday before heading to Phi Phi. It seems just bouncing around is the thing you have to do, if you want to find which island/beach/town is best for you! I’ve got momentum behind me, so even if I find my perfect spot soon I might still move on to get some places I had wanted to see (Krabi & Ko Samui) off my checklist, so I can relax in one place for my last weeks and know where to go directly to, next time.

If I move fast enough, I might make it to Ko Phangan for the famous full moon party (30th), but I’d hate to skip places just to be there on time, since it’s on the other side of this stretch of Thailand. So if I miss it, I’ll catch it on my next Thailand trip. The next one (Mar 1st) is too close to my flight out.

So it looks like I’ll have to hop around for a few weeks. Even if I only find my ideal spot on the last day before going back to Bangkok to fly out, I’ll still be happy, knowing that it’s there for next time.

I did the same in Goa in India and travelled for several weeks before settling down (for a month). I hated the north and didn’t get along with other travellers there (minimalistic drugged out yoga retreaters vs non-drinking non-smoking yuppie language nerd travelling with enough technology to make the starship Enterprise look like a lightbulb… is not a good mix) but then I found a place I was happy to settle in, in the south; Palolem. I’d like to find my Palolem in Thailand!

Note that not going somewhere touristy will have little influence on the speak-Thai-in-8-weeks mission. I don’t need to go to a village; I can learn (and have learned) languages in touristy places and I’d just get bored in a town with little to do when I’m not working. I’ll have to devote a whole post to this some time because a lot of people seem to think immersion is only possible in villages off the beaten track and I disagree. If you especially like villages then that’s an excellent reason to spend time in one. I don’t.

Things I’ve never seen before here

To end the post (sorry for the length), I’ll give a random list of things I’ve come across that I’ve never seen at home or in my other travels before:

• the wai - the Thai greeting of putting your palms together and bowing slightly. I really like it! I do it to everyone before talking to them, and I will definitely miss it when I get back to Europe. As you can see in the photo above, even Ronald McDonald does it
• Casual sales of firearms. This is new to me; in broad daylight in a mall in Patong and in a flea market in Bangkok I’ve been very openly approached by the Thai smile and presented a “menu” with various hand guns and rifles that I can buy (free bullets included!) Usually you have to go underground if you want a gun. I don’t particularly like this “freedom” to be honest, but I presume Thai laws about firearms are much less strict than in the west.
• Fakes. Rolexes, Calvin Klein underwear, etc. I’ve seen lots of fakes elsewhere, but not this vast amount of them for sale everywhere tourists are. I think I’m the only one here with actual Havaiana flip-flops. The price for the fake ones are the same as the price for real ones if you buy them in Brazil…
• Go go bars. One visit was enough to satisfy my curiosity, and I won’t say what happens in there since I know I have some young readers!
• Thais’ level of English in the tourist industry. Apart from India (where English is a ’subsidiary official language’), I’ve only ever been in Europe and the Americas. In Thailand I’ve only been in very touristy places so far and I find people’s level of English to be quite low. This is not something I’m complaining about, since I’m here specifically to learn Thai. But it’s new to me when dealing with people used to tourists (I’m not talking about random people in the street). It has been frustrating having my orders in restaurants messed up or taxis taking me to the wrong places, despite the fact that I’m sure I have extremely easy to understand English compared to many other natives. But this is just further motivation to continue working on my Thai so I can soon explain it to them in their own language. In what I’ve learned from Thai I can see why European languages would be quite hard for them, especially when it comes to grammar. People have been very happy to hear the little I have already (I’m still working on the theory behind tones and their use in the writing system before I open the floodgates of conversation!) although that reaction is the same in other places with other languages.
• Hotel cards. I’m not a regular frequenter of hotels, so I don’t know if this is international, but the hotels I’ve been in have cards to open the door that you also insert into a slot inside to activate the power. Since you need the card to get back in, you take it with you and the room is not powered while you are gone. I find this to be a very very clever idea for conserving energy (since there will obviously be forgetful clients who don’t turn off lights or leave the A/C running while they are out).
• The glass in the picture on the right. I asked for a non-alcoholic cocktail (or mocktail as I like to call it), since someone just clicked the link on the site to treat me to one! I had a great laugh at the container it was served in!

Sorry for the very long post. If you made it to the end, congratulations!

In the next post I’ll get back to language learning suggestions, but getting used to a new country is part of the adventure and perhaps a few of you might have been curious to hear how that aspect was going for me this time!

I hope nobody takes offence to anything I’ve written here, I’m just thinking aloud and sharing with those curious. Feel free to explain things to me that I’ve misunderstood or share your thoughts on Thailand in the comments! Similar Posts:

• My Thailand experience
• Ironic post: Why English is all you need to travel the world
• Is it better to travel to villages for language/cultural immersion?
• Finding the right accommodation for immersion in a culture
• How to survive as a travelling vegetarian

Preface

Na’vi is the language spoken by the fictional aliens in the currently very popular movie Avatar. Even though it’s “just a movie”, Na’vi is an “actual” (constructed) language. It has vocabulary and grammar and was developed by linguist Paul Frommer. He’s hoping it will become the new “Klingon” of movie languages.

Since the whole point of this blog is to show you that any language can be learned very quickly, I am taking it a step further today and claiming that even an alien language can be learned in no time if you have the right approach and attitude (presuming we are physiologically capable of pronouncing the words, which luckily we are for Na’vi!!)

I’ll be simplifying and clarifying the information on the Wikipedia article about Na’vi, and re-stating it and filtering it for non-linguists. After studying the article and related links for just an hour, I watched the movie a second time and actually did understand several things being said without relying on the subtitles!

For the rest of this article I will presume that you are ready to enter your Avatar and join the Omaticaya clan on the life-sustaining moon deep in space known as Pandora.

Na’vi for dummies

So, you’ve decided to move to Pandora! If you are among the lucky few that has had their genome sequenced and combined with the Na’vi natives so that you can become a “driver” of this amazing 3m tall blue humanoid and live in the forest among the Na’vi tribe for the rest of your life, good for you!

However, to really get the best out of your experience, don’t be a typical English-speaking skyperson! You should learn the Na’vi language. It’s true that some Na’vi in the Omaticaya tribe have already learned some English, but to really immerse yourself in that world you absolutely must learn their language! At first, some of them may prefer to talk to you in English, since the Na’vi get frustrated easily, but there are ways to convince them to always talk to you in their beautiful language!

In this article I’ll give you some tips on how to look at the language, and how to start learning it, to greater improve your chances of eventually becoming a man or a woman in the second birth ritual and become truly accepted by the people.

They may be a primitive tribe with limited technological capabilities, but don’t let that fool you into thinking the language will be easy! It has a very complex grammar system, including case declensions (genetive, dative etc.), and an entirely new set of vocabulary to learn! But don’t worry, if you start learning this language with the right attitude, you can master it very quickly!!

Even a complex language can be easy!

If you look at Na’vi from the right perspective, you won’t get discouraged by it’s grammar and vocabulary. My research tells me that the case declensions are extremely consistent. I found Czech’s 7 cases were not that bad once you see the patterns, and Na’vi has much simpler patterns that you’ll master very quickly!

To give one example; the accusative only has 3 possibilities: -it, -t, -ti and these only change depending on the letters surrounding them in consistent ways. So, if you wanted to say a nice typical beginner phrase like “Let my spear strike the heart”, heart is in the accusative case. Heart is txe’lan, but in the accusative it becomes txe’lanit. So the entire phrase would be “Oeyä tukrul txe’lanit tivakuk“.

Now, I know some of you may be quite intimidated by a strange looking phrase like that, but don’t worry! It will all come naturally very quickly Since the Na’vi haven’t developed writing systems yet, you are very lucky that you do not need to learn how to read strange alien symbols (although even if you did, that would only take a few hours if you did it right), and our earth linguists have devised a very straightforward way of reading and writing Na’vi using the Latin alphabet we all know and love!

You can actually read it pretty much as you would read English, with just some slight exceptions; for example, an x after a letter is not pronounced as in English, but represents an “ejective consonant” for the preceding letter. For the early stages, all you need to do is have a very slight pause whenever you see this x and  you will be close enough! For example, if some clumsy child steps on your tail, you can say skxáwng! (moron/idiot!) as sk’awng. Easy isn’t it!

Na’vi isn’t a tonal language, so you can raise your voice and shout teasing exclamations at your skxáwng friend who can’t mount his Pa’li (horse), in the same tones as you would in English! Although it’s also important to learn that in Na’vi we use an infix syllable to represent the attitude of the speaker (positive, negative or formal).

A useful example of this is Oél ngáti kámeie, which is of course the famous and beautiful greeting “I see you“. “Káme” is to “see” (not a direct translation, but deeper, since you also see into/understand a person), so when you greet someone, you are obviously glad to see them, so you add the positive attitude affix ei to give the word kámeie. You can do this with all verbs; after a short time you get used to it and wonder why we don’t do it in English!

As far as vocabulary goes, you can use image based memory techniques to learn many words very quickly! You’ll also be glad to hear that Na’vi can borrow foreign words, so you already speak some before starting! For example kunsìp is “gunship” and toktor is “doctor”. And you thought this was going to be hard!

Similarity to Earthly languages

The good news for those of you who already speak languages is that you will have given yourself a head start over monolingual English speakers! Here are a few examples of commonalities:

ESPERANTO

• This can also use the x writing system, for altering the previous consonant, however it’s only necessary on unconfigured computers. So cxu, and sxtatas are actually ways of writing ĉu and ŝatas (pronounced chu & shatas respectively). This certainly helped me to see past the ‘x’ as an unpronounced letter at first.
• Word order is completely flexible! This is great news for those of you sick with remembering if you have to put the verb at the end or not in hard Earth languages. Since Na’vi uses cases (like the Accusative mentioned above), you can pretty much put your words in any order you like and it will be a fully correct sentence (as in Esperanto)

THAI/PORTUGUESE/FRENCH

• Although the grammar is more complex than Asian languages, if you speak Thai (or Portuguese/French) you have one of the few sounds difficult to some English speakers already. The nasal sound (ã in Portuguese, on in French, ง in Thai) is very common in Na’vi and can start sentences, unlike in English. Those speaking those languages, especially Thai, will be better equipped to start words with this sound. This is written as “ng” (and as the sound we have in words like sing), but starts words like “nga” (you), which can be used in a phrase like Txo new nga rivey, oehu! (Come with me if you want to live!), always a nice icebreaker when meeting a stranger being charged at by a Angtsìk (rhino-like beast).

IRISH/GERMAN/GREEK/SLAVIC and many other languages

• It may take some getting used to for those unfamiliar with cases like the Genetive, but those who have learned languages that use them will be in for a treat! As I mentioned above, the rules for applying them are much more consistent and simpler and it is believed that they have no exceptions, unlike Earth-based equivalents. You never have to learn a new word, you just have to apply the common affix to the word.

SPANISH/ITALIAN/Other romance languages

• Double negatives! You never have nothing to fear when you don’t have no time to not go nowhere to not learn no double negatives!! If you speak these languages you are already familiar with them! So fiketuwong ke nayume ke’u is This alien will learn nothing (ke is not and ke’u is nothing).

Other important tips

The ‘r’ in Na’vi is rolled, so you should work on that as well as generally getting rid of your English accent.

Even though lots of Na’vi speak English, you should try to stop speaking English as soon as possible, or you may never improve your level. This would lead to you never being accepted among the people, since chants in Na’vi are necessary for rituals such as giving thanks to Eywa for the body of an animal you just hunted (although I’m a vegetarian, I have ways to convince this other culture to accept my alien eating habits!)

Make sure you have a good plan of action for learning the language, and you will easily achieve fluency in no time! Don’t get too daunted by the huge task ahead of you; have mini-goals to be proud of your achievements and you will be confused for a native in no time!

Make sure to leave comments to give other tips to those wanting to learn this language, or share your story of your dreams of being a permanent resident of Pandora. When you learn a foreign language you are always one step closer to your travel dreams Iráyo (thank you) for reading!

Kìyeváme!! (Bye, see you soon!)Similar Posts:

• Why learning a language is like learning a musical instrument
• Results of survey and planned changes to the blog

Welcome to everyone coming here from Zenhabits - this post has also received over 50,000 stumbles!

If you liked my association technique mentioned below, you would also enjoy my tips on using imagination to memorize vocabulary. See the most popular posts on the right for other interesting topics.

This blog is about my language learning tips, for becoming fluent quickly in any language. Anyone can apply them – so don’t forget to subscribe (on the right) and look around the site for any other articles you may find useful. Thanks a lot for stopping by!!

For those curious, this post discusses Thai, but the ideas can equally be applied to other phonetic scripts such as Japanese (but not as well for Chinese).

Just one week into the challenge of reading/speaking Thai in 8 weeks (actually only about 5 hours total, since I’ve been quite busy since I arrived, but I’ve made time to learn on the skytrain/in restaurants/taxis etc.) and I’ve reached the first major milestone already.

I can read Thai.

The major thing still missing is tones, which admittedly are an extremely important part of this language that cannot be ignored and I will get to shortly (Edit: Done! Thai tone rules aren’t that bad either), but in terms of phonetics I no longer need to rely on romanisation (using the Latin alphabet to see how a Thai word is pronounced).

Based on recommendations from other learners, abandoning romanisation was a huge priority for me; I didn’t want to use that system as a crutch preventing me from having a more natural way of learning Thai from within the language. Romanisation is a purely academic concept for Thai. Interesting for studying the language, but not so great when you actually want to read it. I don’t study languages, I learn them and speak them. I needed to abandon romanisation quickly.

It was actually way easier than I expected.

From squiggly symbols to new letters

When first looking at Thai it reminded me of the language Frodo read inside the ring he threw into the volcano:

เดอะลอร์ดออฟเดอะริงส์ เป็นนิยายแฟนตาซีขนาดยาว ประพันธ์โดยศาสตราจารย์ชาวอังกฤษ เจ. อาร์. อาร์. โทลคีน เป็นนิยายที่ต่อเนื่องกับนิยายชุดก่อนหน้านี้ของโทลคีน คือ

It’s a mess of incomprehensible symbols that would take possibly years to get your head around, right?

This is exactly the attitude that seems to hold everyone back. I can tell by talking to those who have given up on learning languages that they just see each aspect of a “hard” language as this insurmountable monster. The reason for my success in languages has little to do with natural talent and a lot to do with attitude, especially in the early stages.

When you look at the letters as ’squiggly symbols’ it’s very hard to imagine them worming their way into your head. How could you possibly even remember what each symbol means? Is months or years of practice the only way?

I threw out this unhelpful concept immediately.

The technique used – image association

With a bit of imagination (in the same style used for learning vocabulary) you can very quickly associate each symbol with its corresponding sound.

There are 44 consonants, 15 vowels (which combine into about 28 forms) plus 4 tone marks, so let’s say there’s a total of about 75 “symbols” to learn. If you use a good memory technique and devote an entire minute or two to each symbol, that’s just about two hours to learn the entire set. Add in extra time for practising and testing yourself and it really isn’t that much time, especially since there are patterns in some symbols you start to see that reduces the work for others.

If you aren’t used to image association, then the first few will take more time but you’ll get the hang of it (you were certainly imaginative as a child, it will come back to you!) and the rest will come much quicker.

In my research since arrival (and thanks to commenters on this blog) I’ve come across Stuart Jay Ray; another polyglot who has had many many more achievements with languages than I have. What most interested me is two short videos he made about remembering Thai vowels. After watching them, I applied his suggestion and think immediately of “ah” when I see:

า

His amusing suggestion is to imagine the path taken by your pee as you relieve yourself against a tree, and the sigh you’d make as you do it – more relevant for men of course!

His other suggestions were also very useful, and I’ve applied the same concept to consonants myself. For example when I saw

ท

and needed to associate it with ‘t’, I thought of a number of common words starting with t. None of the first few looked anything like it, but then I got to toe! The symbol looks pretty much like your big toe, with the circle representing the nail of the second toe (if looking at your left foot). It’s very easy to remember and very hard to forget! Now I think of t instantly when I see that symbol.

It took time, but I’ve come up with such an association for all symbols. Some are funny, or nerdy, or related to sex, or something childish. Some require a ridiculous stretch of the imagination to make it work. Whatever did the job best to help me remember.

Practice makes perfect

Learning with image association is way more fun than pure repetition, but it still slows you down as you try to recall the association. With very little practice it comes quicker and quicker and soon you can skip the association altogether as the sound comes naturally and quickly. About half of the symbols are like this for me already (such as the two mentioned above), and I no longer need to remember the association. In my mind า is ah and ท is t. Plain and simple.

Here in Bangkok, many signs are “bilingual” Thai + romanisation. This can be extremely useful to learners of the language, and not just tourists who don’t speak Thai. When it is a translated word like hospital you can use this to learn vocabulary, but this is not currently what I’m focussed on.

Instead, I look at untranslated words (names of places etc.) and see if I can pronounce it based on the Thai. I do this with advertisements, road signs, notices inside a taxi etc. and all of this practice is giving me an idea of how to read the language. The romanisation used by the Thai government does not help at all with tones, but it does help with confirming and checking pronunciation; the focus for my first week.

Challenges

One thing I never even thought about, which confuses matters somewhat, is fonts. You never even think of this when learning other languages that use the Latin alphabet, since fonts work the same for them as in English. But there are completely different ways of writing a letter in formal announcements, casual advertisements/magazines, LED displays, handwriting, and within each one there are subsets of fonts or styles (e.g. a versus a are quite different if you really look at them).

This means that the symbol is not exactly as I remember it. I kept seeing an “S” for example when reading shop signs and couldn’t find it anywhere in my notes until I put two and two together and realized that it’s just the way that

ร

is rendered in that font.

Another issue is separating words; finding out where one word ends and another begins is a challenge since there are no spaces, but it is still doable, as the order of vowels before or after consonants is consistent, so you know which one it is associated with. Thai is extremely phonetic (with a few exceptions), so reading it left to right as you see the symbols really isn’t that bad.

The road ahead

I have started learning some basic vocabulary entirely through the Thai writing system with no romanisation. i.e. to speak is พูด for me and it’s clear how this is pronounced without referring to romanisation. This will be important in how I continue to learn the language.

There are some surprises still incorporated in the writing so I definitely can’t read perfectly yet, but I’ll continue to practise as I go on with other aspects of the language. Something I’ve said a few times this week to people is that I do not aim for perfection. Reading “pretty well” is quite alright for me, even if there are several holes in it. The rest will come as I progress with the rest of the language. I don’t want to dwell on reading too much; for the moment “good enough” is enough!

This method could work just as well with any language that uses a phonetic writing system. (I’ll deal with languages like Chinese some other time)

Right now, I still am not speaking much Thai beyond basic courtesies; I feel that trying to do several things at once will slow me down a bit and result in me spreading myself too thin, so I am focussing on the building blocks that will take me to my objective. I can now start to learn some key vocabulary, specifically to words I am likely to use in day to day encounters. I’m using the triage system as always, to prioritise what I learn, so if it’s something I can point to or mime then I don’t need to learn the word yet.

I’m expecting to have an explosion of vocabulary and conversation when the time is right. Until then, I need to continue building the foundations to make sure that that can happen.

For the purposes of this mission, I will try to have mini-goals that last for 1-2 weeks and the next couple of weeks will be focussed on tones and learning vocabulary through the writing system (both to practise it and to increase my communication ability). The tone part can be subdivided into being able to decipher from the text which tone is involved, saying the 5 tones correctly, and of course distinguishing them when others speak.

—————————

In my next post, I may mention a little of what I generally think of Bangkok (edit: that post is here); my first window into Thai culture, before I fly to Phuket on Saturday.

However, very soon I want to talk about something that I feel holds many learners back from ever making progress; focussing on what they don’t know. I feel like this attitude may be the biggest block for learners to even get a good start on a language (and the greatest fuel for sceptics of my method) so I want to discuss it. (Edit: that post can be found here: Is your language half full?)

So, for example, anyone who meets me over the next few weeks who speaks Thai to me or tests my spoken Thai will be greatly disappointed. I don’t care. I have a plan and I’m sticking to it. I know from experience that speaking doesn’t happen magically overnight, so not being able to have a casual chat in Thai for the next few weeks is not going to discourage me, since I’ll be working on making a structure out of my Thai and have a clear idea what I’m aiming for. When you have a well formulated plan, you should stick to it and not give in to pressure to change from that course.

Any thoughts on how I’m going through with my challenge? Did you learn Thai’s (or another Asian language’s) script this way or was it completely different for you? What do you think my chances are of speaking and reading Thai in 8 weeks? Do share it with us in the comments and don’t forget to stumble this post or share it with your friends!! Thanks

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In my travels I always try my best to speak a language fluently (or better), but sometimes this is not possible, since I may be only spending a few days in a country.

As well as this, you need to start somewhere if you want to eventually speak fluently, and “enough to get by” is how I like to start!

For example, I’ve just spent the week around New Year’s in Poland. This was actually for an Esperanto event (JES), but to get from the airport at Krakow to Zakopane and to talk to everyone outside of the event, I needed to be able to get by in Polish, which is a language that I’ve never learned before.

Of course, nobody was waiting for me with a sign at the airport or held my hand at the train station and interpreted for me when I needed to find where I was staying. Non-rich travellers have to take care of themselves, and this involves talking to locals outside of the tourist trade who may not speak English.

With just a few hours on the flight, I managed to learn enough Polish to get by and adequately communicate what I wanted to say for the basics of asking directions, getting the right train, and generally not being rude in forcing English on people who wouldn’t understand it (which turned out to be quite a lot where I was).

If you are in a similar situation with another language, you can try the following to make sure you learn exactly what you need for your short visit.

Triage – priority on important words

A hospital triage is where the sickest (or dying) patients are seen to first, and those with bloody noses and sprained ankles just have to wait. This is the same level of urgency you have to apply to what you’re learning when given a short time frame.

Because of this, you have to completely abandon grammar. Word genders, correct use of cases, etc. are almost never necessary for you to be understood. Grammar is the rules of tidying up a language to make it correct. Getting your point across does not require you to be correct.

If someone were to say in English “Where bus station?” or “These seat number 4?“, it may be incorrect and improper use of English, but the answerer will understand it – that’s all that really matters at this stage. The triage for learning enough to get by in a few hours requires priority to be given to learning vocabulary, and to be very restrictive in what you learn.

Only learn the essentials

There are too many situations you may come across to be able to cover all possible vocabulary, so the only things that are important to apply to memory are those that you’ll use most frequently and that are time sensitive (like “Help!”). Everything else, you can simply look up the word if you have a small dictionary or phrasebook in your pocket/purse, which you always should if possible.

The list of words and phrases I learn off for such a situation are quite limited: Where (not caring about is/are), that (for pointing and choosing), yes/no, one, and, hello, goodbye, please, me, excuse me, and very few other words are all you need to communicate yourself basically. Imaginative use of hand signals (or drawing pictures) and gestures are infinitely more useful.

Understanding the wording of their answer may not be necessary. I asked for directions several times in that trip in Poland and I didn’t understand a word of what they said, but hand gestures (at least in the west) are universal for such explanations and I could understand how many streets down (hand hops) to go and whether to go left or right (pointing).

When you need to speak English, don’t say it in English

Sometimes this isn’t enough and you really do need to speak to someone in English to get what you need.

As far as phrases go, “I don’t understand” and “Do you speak English?” are very important. I never actually say the English version of these; it can be quite rude to force English on someone without bracing them for it first, or asking politely. If they don’t speak English, they may just look at you confused when you start talking. Even “Do you speak English” might not be something they ever learned, or have long forgotten.

If they don’t speak English, but they understand that you do from your question, they usually produce a co-worker or smart teenage student that can talk to you. They will go to that trouble since you’ve gone to the trouble to say something in their language, and it’s usually appreciated, and they associate their language’s equivalent of the word English with that person, whereas they may not make the link when they hear you speak “noise”.

Whenever you do speak English, it must be slow and clear. I hear way too many native English speakers make themselves very difficult to understand to non-natives; a use of simpler vocabulary, clearly separating words and opening your mouth wide to exaggerate pronunciations when you talk works wonders. Repeating the same thing louder instead of rephrasing it with synonyms or different words just makes you look stupid and makes people like me roll our eyes at you.

What to study?

You can grab a phrasebook in the airport duty-free to study. I actually prefer Lonely Planet phrasebooks as my first book to study in the long term with a language, but for the basics they actually cover way too many situations. The Rough Guide series is a little better for this situation since their dictionary at the back usually has more words, and the amount of basic phrases at the start is actually enough to study on the flight over.

A pocket dictionary is not so useful because they usually use the international phonetic system, which I personally find very useful, but if you aren’t familiar with it, then you may pronounce the word too wrong to be understood. Good phrasebooks have English equivalent phonetics that help a lot. The phonetics are all you need, and you can ignore the original spelling (unless it’s for recognition, such as in signs like “exit”). Use memory techniques to help make it stick in your mind.

If you are more of an audible rather than visual person, then you can get an audio course to listen to on your flight and ignore how it may be spelt entirely, although these are usually not available at airports, so you should get it in advance. Your local library likely has a good audio course that you can copy to your MP3 player to listen to later. I find the phonetics in phrasebooks to be more than enough, but hearing the language in advance definitely helps you get a better feel for it. With tonal (many Asian) languages, an audio course is much more necessary.

———————–

Of course, I also applied this to getting some of the basics in Thai in my head to get started I’ve settled well into Bangkok and on Monday I’ll summarise my first 6 days here for those curious of the travel part of this mission (Edit: I’ll stay in Bangkok for the week, so I’ll sum up my time here after I’ve left) I’ll summarise my first impressions of the language and my chances of achieving the mission.

I found Polish interesting in the little I’ve learned from it. Although not necessary from what I said in this post, I went further and studied how the phonetics of the writing system works. The currency, the złoty, is actually pronounced zwoty (that l with a dash through it acts as a w) and Kraków is pronounced Krakoov. The little Czech I have left helped me in some words like pokoj (room) and Nie rozumiem (similar to Nerozumím: I don’t understand), but not much more than that without further study. Fluent Polish may be one of my missions soon enough – time will tell!

How do you start learning a language? What material do you use? Any books/courses in particular? Has anyone else been successful in learning enough to get by in just a few short hours? Do share it with us in the comments!Similar Posts:

• Travel phrasebooks: a serious language learner’s best first book to study
• How to make the transition from typical English-speaking tourist to local language speaking expat
• How to make time if you are too busy
• Redifining your motivation
• Starting to learn a language with the right attitude

It’s time for my next mission!! Sceptics beware; as always I’m going for an ambitious goal

In a few short hours, I’m going a complicated route (Krakow –> Prague, Prague –> Amsterdam, Amsterdam –> Bangkok; it was the cheapest option and gets me “miles” in my preferred programme) to Thailand.

With an extended tourist visa and a ticket back to Europe 8 weeks later, I plan to be able to read and speak Thai by the end of my stay.

I’ve never been in Thailand before (which is kind of unique in this day and age for someone who’s already been travelling for 7 years) and I don’t speak any other Asian languages. I’ve never dealt with a tonal language before, and I’ve never read a language that doesn’t use the Latin alphabet.

Despite all of that, I’m confident that I’ve got a good chance of reaching my goal! But first, I should very clearly define that goal!

The hard part

I plan on achieving something that I imagine very very few tourists do on short visits to Thailand. I want to be able to correctly speak the 5 tones of Thai and be able to read a given text of several sentences aloud to a local (who is not necessarily familiar with English and European accents), so that they can understand it.

This of course, involves me learning how to read Thai. There are 44 consonants, 21 initial sounds, 8 final sounds and 32 vowels. And of course, it’s written in symbols that are completely strange and foreign to me, with no spaces between words and an entirely new set of vocabulary to learn. Sounds like fun!!

I don’t plan on being able to read with a perfect Thai accent, but I want Thais to understand me when I speak. This is much harder than it sounds because even pronouncing a word correctly can still leave it as incomprehensible if you don’t apply the right tone to it.

For example, I see that the word mai can mean new, no, silk, turn a sentence into a question, or is used to form new words, depending on which of the five tones you apply to it.

So I believe this is indeed an ambitious goal! I will award myself 5 stars at the end of the 8 weeks if I can read a short text of several sentences (that I’ve never seen before) to several different Thais who don’t speak fluent English, and who definitely understand what I’ve said.

To make the mission even harder, I will be working full time (as always), so all work I put into learning and practising Thai will be less than part time, since I also plan on enjoying myself in my free time in ways other than speaking the language .

The easy part

The hard part of this mission is definitely the reading aspect and mastering the tones. The rest will be much easier. Thai grammar is much simpler than it is in European languages, and unlike a typical backpacker arriving freshly in Thailand on his round-the-world ticket for his gap year, I’ve got 7 years of developing my method of learning languages and actually applying them and achieving fluency several times over (anyone could apply the same method, but sadly, most don’t).

Apart from the tones and Thai script, I imagine (correct me if I’m wrong) that this will be more or less the same as learning a European language, just with more vocabulary to memorise, and a much simpler grammatical system.

Despite that, because I’ll have my work cut out for me in what I outlined above, I won’t be putting as much work into speaking “fluently” (that will come in the next visit to Thailand if I decide to). I’m not even going to aim to speak pretty well in 2 months. I’m told that tones and script are the hardest part of Asian languages, so I’m going straight to the core of the problem and focussing on it from the start.

The “speak” part in the title of this mission is also a mockery of those who aim to “speak” a language for something such as a New Year’s resolution, without clearly defining what this means.

If you say you “speak” a language, this can be anything from being confused for a native, to having just a few words or sentences. Hell, even a parrot can speak! It doesn’t actually mean anything in terms of language level or actual comprehension. So no matter how great or how miserably I do in this mission I will “speak” something at the end of it.

More specifically, I am aiming to speak basic to lower intermediate Thai in the 8 weeks I’m there; asking directions, ordering food, basic small talk and haggling etc. and getting the gist of typical responses, without relying on my phrasebook.

I would push this goal up higher, but as well as the difficulty of the tones and reading part, I’ve decided to go south to the islands, rather than north where I’d be immersed much more and not speak any English; by far the best way to learn a language quickly. I’m told that the south is much more touristy, and I am very honestly telling you that I am not going for an “authentic” experience in just 8 weeks, having never been there before and feeling in the mood to relax a little.

Most of the rest of 2010 will involve me being immersed in cultures and avoiding English speakers, and going for even harder goals than this one. So I’m going to take it easy in Thailand, live on a beach, get regular cheap massages (and, unfortunately, work full time), hang out with both Thais and other tourists and party .

At the end of my stay I’ll make a short video entirely in Thai, so any curious readers of the blog can hear how I’m speaking.

I’ll be in Bangkok for my first days and will investigate where to go to from there.

Can it be done?

Despite the fact that I am being upfront now about the fact that I will be a “tourist” in Thailand, I plan on putting a lot of work into the tones, and understanding the writing system and I’m fully aware of the fact that this will be hard work.

Since this is entirely new territory for me, I’ll be relying on advice from others to help me (as well as my own experience). For example, Matador recommends that I should get a tutor (I usually prefer to learn almost entirely through active natural application of a language, but I’ll make an exception this time), and sing it (music has already hugely helped me to learn other languages; I’ll explain how in a later post).

If anyone else has some useful advice, such as image association for the symbols etc. then please do let me know of them!! Otherwise I’ll just develop my own method

Although tones and writing systems are completely different across most Asian languages, I feel that if I can find out how to master them quickly, then I may indeed be able to become fluent in 3 months in other Asian languages.

So this mission is actually a long-term investment for me. I’ve asked around and those who have learned Asian languages have consistently told me that tones and writing systems are by far the hardest part of those languages to master. So, rather than slowly work my way through a language, I’m going straight to the core of the problem and focussing almost entirely on this “hardest” aspect. If I can indeed master them quickly, then I don’t see anything else holding me back, or even holding back anyone else who follows advice from what I’ve learned, to quickly learn how to speak an Asian language fluently.

If I don’t achieve my goal, I’ll analyse why and try again later, although as always, I will presume that I’ll be successful until proven otherwise

So, what do you think? Can it be done? Have I set the bar too high this time? Is 8 weeks way too short a time? Will I spend my entire stay with a confused look on my face as in the photo? Any advice to help me succeed?

Do share your thoughts in the comments and join me as I learn to read and speak Thai in 8 weeks!Similar Posts:

• Getting along with other learners & conclusions of Thai mission
• Mission complete! Partial success – What will Benny’s next mission be?
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• Summary of month 1 in the mission to become Brazilian

Happy New Year!!

Four years ago I made a New Year’s resolution to never ever make New Year’s resolutions again, and I have stuck to it! The reason? I almost never kept to the resolution. I’d join the gym, and go just a few times and then get lazy, and stop, or I wouldn’t last a week past “giving up” TV etc. It just wasn’t working.

This doesn’t mean that I’ve remained stagnant in the last 4 years and not improved myself. Quite the contrary! I’ve found a method that works much better for me for achieving my goals, and of course I never limit it just to the first few weeks of the year.

So if you’ve made a new year’s resolution to learn French/Spanish etc. then maybe this approach may help you so that you actually achieve that goal.

New plan of action

The problem with a resolution is that it just envisions the end-goal and not the process. “Speak fluent German” is a nice promise to make yourself, but it doesn’t actually mean anything unless you’ve defined exactly what fluency means to you and set yourself a timeframe to achieve it by. Frankly, a year is way too long and you may end up making excuses and constantly postpone it until “the next” month since you still have plenty of time until the deadline.

Even if you think fluency is out of your reach in a short time (which this blog attempts to prove that it isn’t), you can aim for a pretty good level of the language, enough to communicate basically, or even enough to order from a waiter without relying on your dictionary or other less daunting goals; as long as you are very specific about what they mean.

My most important goals have 2-3 month time limits, and I have been successful in a lot of them, for example, my most recent one to speak Portuguese with no accent in 3 months. 2010 will be made up entirely of such goals for me (and I’ll blog about them here of course). This shorter time limit has given me more pressure and based on Parkinson’s law, I’ve achieved the goal in that time limit.

Even then it’s still too broad a task to seem achievable, unless you break it up into mini-goals. Rather than make just one resolution of fluent in 3/6/9 months, break it up into achievable chunks like learn all vocabulary related to the kitchen by the end of the day. Each of these add up much better to the end goal than most vague resolutions ever do.

Mission possible

In fact, you should abandon the use of the word resolution entirely. It’s boring. Those following my blog know the word I like to use: mission.

Having been brought up with way too many action movies and TV shows, I like to add a little drama to otherwise mundane tasks, and the concept of a mission to be completed makes it seem much more exciting.

James Bond, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, the teenage mutant ninja/hero turtles and Captain Planet had missions. Joe Shmoe who wants to just “speak Japanese” is making a resolution with no plan of action, and he very likely won’t achieve it, or at least definitely not that year. A resolution is a hope to achieve something. A mission is an urgent plan-of-action to achieve it; this is more than just a change of use of words. The underlying process involved is completely different.

When I have a mission, I may not be saving the world from aliens, shredder, Dr. No (or Dr. Evil), but I’m achieving something important to me; so this has equal urgency as a mission to a fictional hero does. I create urgent pressure such as going to the country where the language is spoken, or blogging to hundreds of people about my progress so there is that extra bit of motivation not to fail.

If you respond to that thought process with “but I can’t travel!” you are still in the resolution mindset. There are ways around any issues you may have (such as not being able to travel). Those with a mission do whatever it takes to achieve that goal. Those with a resolution come up with lazy excuses why it’s not possible and abandon it early on.

Turn this resolution into a mission!!

Other practical language tips

Those of you familiar with the blog will have seen that I’ve completely changed the layout! (Check it out if you are reading this by subscription – many thanks to subscriber Randy for his help in getting around a few technical issues!)

Now, there is an option to see categories of articles, including those related specifically to tips about learning languages. I summarised most of the earlier ones when I discussed how to learn a language pretty well in two months, but more specifically see how the following posts can help (also given in the “Learning Languages” category of the site):

Making the most important (and hardest) decision of not speaking English, learning a language even if you are busy, hosting natives in your house (for free), getting rid of your English accent, getting used to noun genders, practising the language without travelling abroad, seeing the thousands of words of the language you already know, convincing natives to speak to you in their language, faking a conversation in the early stages with the right connector phrases, memorising words easily, being clear about your motivation, using phrasebooks as the first book you study, and having the right attitude if you think your language is hard.

There will of course be many more articles along the same lines this year, so keep reading and maybe with one another’s help, we can both achieve our language missions I’ll introduce my next (ambitious) mission on Monday!

What is your language mission for the next few short months? Do you think this mindset will help, or is it just fancy semantics? Oh, and do you like my new site layout?? Do share your thoughts in the comments!Similar Posts:

• Mini-goals are the path to achieving fluency
• Hitting a brick wall in your language progress
• Redifining your motivation
• How to speak a language pretty well, starting from scratch, in just two months
• Defining fluency in order to achieve fluency!

[No language/travel tips here; just a summary of the survey results and plans for the website next year]

Last week I requested that a few of you fill out a survey to help me improve this site for next year; I was expecting perhaps a few dozen responses at best, but I’ve actually gotten 130!! (That’s almost 20% of my subscribers) Thank you!!

There was so much information to get through, but I’ve analysed it and will definitely be applying lots of your suggestions! I’ve also learned a lot about the type of people who read my blog; knowing my audience better definitely helps

So, I thought that I would share my conclusions from the survey with you here; any further comments, be sure to write them at the end of this post!!

Content

Something that quite surprised me is that a huge amount of you said that what you most enjoy in my posts is the positivity and humour I convey in writing. This is funny to me, since I consider my posts rather factual, and any positivity and humour just comes naturally as my style of writing and thinking. Based on this feedback, I’ll think of more topics to discuss relevant to the attitude necessary to learning languages and travelling.

The huge amount of encouraging comments (a lot of which I’ve written personal thank-yous for) has made me feel great over the holidays! It’s amazing to see how my blog has inspired a lot of you to take on the task of learning a language or considering travelling as not-so-impossible and realistically reaching these goals by seeing me prove how it’s possible.

Some of you also listed your favourite posts. The one that stood out by far was the smartest decision you’ll ever make to achieve fluency. I’ve gone back to that post and edited it for readability by splitting up the extremely long paragraphs (great advice from Scott Young, an experienced blogger who has been helping me a lot lately). I agree that this is the most relevant post of the year, since not speaking English has been the deciding factor in achieving my language goals. I will expand on that concept more in the coming year.

The second most popular post was the more recent getting rid of your English accent, where I got more technical on specific aspects of speaking a language. A lot of you said that you like it when I get technical, so I will be going into more detail on such posts in future!

The third most popular post was the one telling you not to be scared to meet new people; this one surprised me somewhat since this post has much fewer comments than other ones, but it corresponds to what you said about attitude being an important aspect of this blog. I can only tell how much you like a post based on number of comments, as well as retweets and links from other blogs or shares on facebook (all of which I get notified of), so if you appreciate any post in particular, please do let me know so I can write more like it

People also mentioned that you would like me to go into more detail on mission updates. While I do not want to turn this into a travel blog (you can get my daily updates of what life is like in the country on my twitter account), I will try to give more regular updates on my thoughts on the language and culture that I’m currently immersed in!

Finally, a lot of you enjoy my clear way of writing, especially as a means of practising your English if you aren’t a native. While I do make the occasional mistake, I always carefully proofread my posts for quality and I agree with those who mentioned that a lot of blog posts out there are very sloppily written. If you see any mistake, feel free to contact me and I’ll correct it.

Post length

I’m glad to see that the length of my posts do not deter most of you, and some of you pointed out that going by “suggested standards” of snappy posts for an impatient general Internet user (or those with the “attention spans of hyperactive gnats!” as one of you amusingly put it) is not always that great.

Some did point out that posts can go a bit too long, but going into detail is just my style. I believe I do not ramble and do give lots of information. This post for example is quite long, but I know that those who aren’t interested in this topic will simply skip the post, and that’s fine with me.

I’m interested in giving full details in all posts to anyone who may happen to enjoy that post and I’m fully aware that it’s impossible to write every post to be interesting to absolutely everyone. More people will read snappier posts, but they won’t give the same amount of information and will thus be lower quality in my opinion.

I’ll only spread it across several posts if I think it would enhance reading about the topic. I like one page (and hence one Internet link) to entirely discuss a message, so that I can refer to it later as just one link, or so that others may share the link too.

Nevertheless, I definitely do have some quick tips that I will share in posts that are much shorter, since they do not require in-depth explanations or much background information.

Post frequency

Quite a large number of you said that you would love to see more posts each week. I’m afraid that this depends entirely on pure availability. If I could, I would love to write in this blog full time and post daily, but I work full time (or am travelling) so it’s just not possible, since I do put several hours into each post and do research to make sure I provide the best links for those who want to find out more.

If I can start earning a little money from this blog, while not destroying the site with annoying advertisements, or sacrificing content, then this would allow me to write more frequently, so I will investigate this possibility in the coming year.

For example, I saw that 15% of you didn’t even notice that I have a “treat me to an Orange Juice if you liked this post” at the end of each post (and on the side of the blog). When I get enough OJs, I specifically take a break from work and devote that time to blogging (after going out for a nice cold one!), so feel free to click and send just a couple of euro my way if you’ve enjoyed any posts. I’d rather people think of it as treating me to a drink as a thank you for a helpful post, rather than it being a “donation”

I’m not travelling the world because I’m rich (I put that response in as a joke, but sadly, a few of you actually think that it’s true). Last year I reached my credit card limit (i.e. several thousand euro in debt) twice, and had to work 80 hours a week for a month (that’s 30 consecutive days with no break each time) to pay it off. [Queue sad violin music]

I’m not trying to create a sob-story, since it is my own fault from bad financial management that got me into debt each time, but it’s important that my readers know that I actually do appreciate even tiny extra boosts, and that they do make a difference Remember, you don’t have to be rich to travel the world!

One other issue with post frequency is Internet access. I had hoped to introduce the next mission before the end of the year, but there is no Internet in the room where I am staying this week (despite misleading advertisements…), so writing in public with lots of distractions slows me down and I won’t be able to introduce it until hopefully the weekend. I’ll try to not make a promise to make a post by a certain date again unless I’m absolutely sure that I can make it.

Otherwise, I will continue to write at least once a week (and sometimes up to 3 times, whenever possible). I have enough ideas for blog posts relevant to travel and languages for all of next year and always make a note of a good idea when it comes to me.

Site background theme

40% of you agreed on the use of the theme that I had suggested, while 6% of you pointed out that the colour style used with Black hat has more personality (while the rest of you don’t care either way since you read it through e-mail/RSS or see it as much less important than the content).

The different colour was one of the reasons that I chose this theme, but unfortunately it does make it a little harder to read some text, and the dark colour doesn’t go so well with the upbeat message I try to convey in posts.

However, I will edit the default theme that I’ll apply next, to my own style, so it will still be unique! I’ll change themes as soon as I get the chance to make the edits that I want (I am currently having an issue with compatibility with the Disqus commenting plugin. If anyone with Wordpress/java familiarity could give me a hand, it would be great!!) Edit: the new theme is live! Hope you like it

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So let me say thanks again to all the amazingly positive feedback that you have all given me!! There are actually several other points that I haven’t discussed here that were brought up that I’ll also be applying. I always appreciate your comments and can honestly say that I feel like I’m going through these missions in good company thanks to all my readers

My next post will be some practical advice on the plan of action to take in order to achieve a New Year’s resolution of learning a language, since I imagine a lot of people will be making such a commitment to themselves.

Then I’ll finally start discussing the next mission (hopefully this weekend before I fly out on Monday); ooh, the suspense!! Those of you linked to my facebook page or twitter already know what that language is of course!

All the best for everyone in the new year!Similar Posts:

• Why learning a language is like learning a musical instrument
• Friday fun: Learning Na’vi for your Avatar

Rio de Janeiro

I am absolutely amazed by this city. It has a fascinating cultural history, an active music and dance scene, some of the most outstanding scenery I’ve ever come across, the world’s most famous Carnaval, samba, enough to inspire judges to have it be the host of both the 2014 World cup final and the 2016 Olympics, and, most important of all, Cariocas – its residents.

I came here in September of this year, with the mission of trying to become more like them (me carioquizar), and I got so much more than that from my time there!

3 months in the marvellous city

Some things that foreigners are expected to do in Rio include going up the Christ statue and sugar loaf mountain, visiting specifically during the Carnaval (or New Year), getting an apartment/hotel in Ipanema (or Copacabana), going on a favela tour, and getting to know only other foreigners or those working in the tourist industry.

I didn’t do any of these in the 3 months that I was there. All expats are tourists in one way or another, but I have my own “touristy” style (not better, just different). Hoping for an “authentic experience” is the holy grail of tourists and long-term travellers. I’m not unique in that goal; but I think my way of doing it through emulating locals (both outwardly and linguistically) does make it that wee bit more achievable.

I had wanted to learn to samba, but didn’t find a set-up to conveniently learn it intensively in the way I wanted, as I had done for tango in Buenos Aires, so that will have to wait for next time. However, Brazilians (and Cariocas) are not just samba, football and beaches, there are so many sides to them that I personally appreciate. Based on the response to the article I wrote about why I love Brazilians, Brazilians themselves have confirmed that I “get” them, at least better than your average gringo.

Other than that, I had gone up the Christ statue and the sugar loaf in 2006, when I was in Rio for a few short days (a visit cut short due to a “disagreement” with a federal police officer, but that’s another story). This time I really wanted to get to know the city through its people.

Day to day life

I made friends mostly by just talking to them in the street and in parties (Brazilians and definitely Cariocas are very friendly) and also through Couchsurfing, meetup.com and Orkut. I love eating out, so I would socialise over dinner (always vegetarian), or go out for drinks (non-alcoholic in my case).

To save enough money to give me some financial security in case work dried up again in future (as it did when I was in Prague), I had to work about 50 hours a week for most of my stay. This meant spending most of my week at home and spending much less time with Cariocas than what I ideally could have spent.

Despite this, I achieved my goal and learned so many ways to vastly improve my Portuguese to even sound like a Carioca. I am always working full time while trying to achieve the goals in all my missions, so I remind others that lack of time from being “too busy” is not a good excuse for not realizing important projects.

Since I was to spend most of my week there, I found some really good accommodation (you can watch a video tour I made of my home). I would go out once or twice a week to parties, mostly at the weekend because I had to get up quite early during the week (since my clients are all in Europe, I have to follow European work times, no matter which time zone I may be in).

For the last month I hosted various pizza parties, where I invited up to 50 people to my penthouse apartment and we simply ordered delivery pizza and enjoyed the view and one another’s company. That pizzeria absolutely loved me for the amount of business they got thanks to me!

Tips on how to become a Carioca

It turns out, (surprise surprise) that I was not the first gringo in the history of the universe to ever try to become a Carioca! (Although I may have been the first to seriously attempt and document it in such a short time frame).

There is an excellent book written for those on a similar mission, who wish to know the mannerisms of Cariocas, simply called How to be a Carioca (Amazon UK, US). It contains some excellent tips on how to act like a Carioca. It’s a humorous account and most of what it says is amusingly accurate. It’s got a few handy Carioca words, but otherwise does not help with actually speaking; although I found my own way of becoming fluent in carioquês.

Most things that I learned myself were confirmed in the book, the most frustrating of which was Cariocas’ relationship with Paulistas (residents of São Paulo). It’s the only part of Cariocas I didn’t like – they make up ridiculous reasons why São Paulo and its residents are the mole on the ass of the world. ”Well… I’ve never been there, but my sister has a friend who went once and someone was rude to him in the street!!” I heard this same explanation several times (with sister replaced by brother/friend/doorman).

If you wish to become a Carioca, you’ll have to hate Paulistas for no good reason; I can’t do this – São Paulo was my first port of entry ever in Brazil and I have very fond memories as well as some amazing friends there. But this competition between major cities, major universities, major sports teams etc. all in the same country is something I’ve seen in other cultures too. It’s rarely logical.

Other than that one negative point, I loved everything about Cariocas A few points I’ll add myself that I didn’t find in the book:

• Cariocas love to take the piss (sacanear). While they are always friendly with strangers, they will play tricks on and mock friends in a cheery way. Fortunately, Irish culture has this dry humour between friends too, but it still took some getting used to, since I’ve been out of practise in other countries that don’t do it as much (or make it really obvious, like the American “I’m kidding” frequently added to any humour so there is no confusion). It’s very important not to be overly sensitive and to take this in your stride, it shows how comfortable and relaxed they are with you. I quite liked this!
• Cariocas can be relied on. One surprise I found was that Cariocas were actually quite punctual (by South American standards). If they make a promise, they will live up to their word. However, a true promise needs to be understood from the context. For example, a casual eu te ligo should not be taken literally as written in stone that they will call you. An inability to distinguish between these “filler words” and real promises will have you feeling disappointed!

There are other points I had to work on, which are more generally Brazilian or simply non-anglophone, such as:

• Snappier formalities. It was immediately pointed out to me that I dragged out telephone conversation formalities too much. The equivalent of “It was nice talking to you, I’ll see you later, have a nice day!” is replaced with “um beijo!” (presuming you are talking with a woman). Day-to-day conversation is also much quicker and to the point. When ordering food from street venders for example, you just say what you want, you don’t precede it with the equivalent of “Good morning, I’d like a…”

Closing remarks

There are many other points that I’ve learned in these three months that I feel may be common to other Latin cultures and languages, so I’ll discuss them at some other time.

I really felt the passion that Cariocas have for Rio during my stay, especially for during the lead up to the announcement of who would host the 2016 Olympic games. I have to admit that I was almost in tears in hearing the passionate presentation given by those representing Rio, and I could feel in the resulting celebrations that they really wanted it; not out of arrogant pride, but out of genuine love for their city.

Cariocas really adore this city, and now so do I. For reasons much greater than those seen superficially by very brief visitors, I now finally understand why it’s called a cidade maravilhosa; the marvellous city.

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I hope you’ve enjoyed joining me in this journey! If you have your own experience in Rio you’d like to share, or your thoughts on my time there, please leave a comment below

That just about wraps up this mission! If you haven’t had the chance yet, could you please leave me your thoughts on how the website has presented this mission in this 10 question survey (I’ve already gotten an amazing 120 fantastic and insightful responses!! Thanks so much to all of you that have contributed already!!)

I’ll summarise the results of the survey in the next post (I’m planning to make big changes in how I post thanks to your suggestions!) and then later in the week I can get started on posts relevant to the next mission Similar Posts:

• Why I love Brazilians (& Br. Portuguese)
• My next mission: Become Brazilian in 3 months!
• Finding the right accommodation for immersion in a culture
• My Thailand experience
• Is it better to travel to villages for language/cultural immersion?

I was about to update my facebook status to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, but this creates a certain problem; most of my facebook friends are not native English speakers and some don’t celebrate Christmas.

While they may have enough to understand the simple phrase “Merry Christmas”, it’s forcing a language in their feed that they may not be able to respond to well.

When I do get responses to some updates, I get them in several languages and a real discussion can never take place, and people get notified in their inboxes of languages they don’t understand, if they have responded or liked an update.

As well as this, I have friends who don’t celebrate Christmas (several Jewish friends, and some atheist friends), but I’d still like to wish them well with different wording.

I’ve noticed some of my friends get around it by simply repeating the well wishes over several statuses or even clogging up one status with various messages or languages; this can get annoying to those reading it in their feed.

This was a problem until recently, but facebook has made a fantastic upgrade to how your statuses are displayed: filtered updates.

Setting up the filters

This takes a few minutes, but is worth the investment if you want to make targeted status updates. There are so many ways you could use this: just to those who speak a particular language, just to those in your town, just for the single pretty girls, block the update from those you don’t want to hear about it, just for family, just for work-colleagues etc.

When logged into facebook, click “friends” at the top and then “Create new list”, write the name of the list (Argentina, Esperanto, fellow nerds, etc.), then select that list on the left, then Add friends to list… and simply click through all those friends and save.

I like to simply label the country first (if enough people are part of that country, otherwise I’d go straight to language), and add any other label for that person (they can have several, for different types of filters) and then after labelling everyone’s country, I can sub-filter just the countries and assign languages broadly to countries (Spanish to Spain and Argentina for example) if relevant.

If you are filtering by language, make sure to put everyone else into the English category (or language you usually update the status in), because otherwise everyone would have to read these statuses, including those who have already read it in another language. Also, when you accept new friends, you’ll notice that there is an option to add them to a list as you accept them, so they can be included with the correct category.

Depending on the number of friends you have, this may take some time to set up, but it’s a worthwhile investment for filtering your status updates, sending emails, seeing the friends separated in chat and many more reasons.

Updating the status

Once you have your lists set up, all you need to do now is write it out for one group (language, location, religion, etc.) and then click the lock symbol to the left of “Share”, followed by Custom. Here you can select the group that will see the update by selecting “Specific people” and typing the name of the list. Everyone else will not see it. You can also select a group to not see it (ex-girlfriends, parents, co-workers etc.), in the “Hide from these people” option, which can be very handy when you want to share some sensitive news.

This means that you can write “Happy Christmas” followed by “Feliz Navidad”, “Joyeux Noël” etc. all one after the other, and your friends’ will only see one of them and their feeds will not be flooded by you. It also encourages you to practise foreign languages by always updating your status in English and in the language you wish to practise, without annoying those not interested in reading that language.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it on facebook, but there’s no need to use a filter (non English speakers can read the translation of this post given above by G-Translate).

So go on and wish your friends a Happy Christmas, a late Happy Hanukkah, feliz navidad, happy holidays, Joeux Noël, etc.

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By the way, thanks to everyone so far for filling out my survey from yesterday’s post! I’m still hoping to get a few more answers so if you have 3 minutes to spare, I’d love to hear your opinion on how I can make this site better in 2010!

If you liked this post, you may be interested in seeing how to make your computer multilingual.

Do you already use this feature in facebook? How else have you used facebook’s lists? Do you have friends from many languages and cultures, or is there another way you might think of using this status update? Do share in the comments Similar Posts:

• How your computer and the Internet can correct your grammar and spelling (for free)
• How to make your computer multilingual
• The best online dictionary for learning any language: Google Image!
• Best free online dictionaries for translators and linguists