ศาลาชุมนุม

[tod-daniels]

I thought I’d mention an upcoming seminar by polyglot Stu Jay Raj. He’s doing his “Cracking Thai Fundamentals” dealy at the end of this month.

Here’s the link to it on Catherine Wentworth’s website Women Learn Thai;
http://womenlearnthai.com/index.php/the-new-cracking-thai-fundamentals/

Here’s Stu’s link on his site;
http://stujay.com/ctf/

And here’s his You Tube channel where there are some good videos about language acquisition and learning Thai too..
http://www.youtube.com/user/stujaystujay

I don’t know exactly how much a polyglot (who by the very definition is already adept at learning languages) is gonna really help the rank-n-file Thai learners . But hey, I’m really sure it can’t hurt us to look at different ways to acquire the Thai language either!!

Anway, just wanted to let people know about it.

BTW: I have NO affiliation with Stu Jay Raj and just offered this out for people learning Thai.

Tod Daniels

[tod-daniels]

This isn't a review per se, because due to scheduling conflicts I wasn't able to attend this event.

However, it was at a hotel just one Soi over from where I live so I wandered over Sunday morning. Stu Jay Raj was gracious enough to let me sit a bit of it. Thanx to him for that!!

Honestly I have never seen Thai "taught" in a more unconventional method, but in the same breath I hafta say, I have NEVER seen people "pick up" Thai faster than the way Stu presented it.

The bit I sat was the intro into tone rules. Which as any student of Thai knows can be a dry and troublesome thing for non-native speakers to wrap their heads around. Stu presented it in a unique way using imaginative stories that evoked visual and emotive cues in your mind which corresponded to the tones. Plus they were totally easy to remember. FAR easier than committing the Thai tones rules to memory.

While I won't go into the details, I will say before the two hour segment was over EVERY person in the class was able to hit the correct tone for the consonant classes, long/short vowels, live/dead endings and the tone marks when asked without hesitation. What was really interesting was that not once did he "parrot" what I’d consider a real "tone rule"; as they are taught ad nauseam in every Thai school I’ve ever been to, and in every book on Thai I’ve ever perused. It was really quite an amazing thing to witness!

I think that every person who attended his workshop came away with a LOT of valuable information and a much better understanding of how Thai "goes together".

My only regret is that I missed this workshop, because the bit I sat certainly provided very high "bang-4-the-baht" in terms of being well presented, interesting, and giving people a good solid foundation to "build" off of going forward.

My hat's off to Stu and the way he "teaches". The workshop is aptly named because by the end you certainly do know how to "crack the fundamentals" in Thai and then some!!

Just thought you guys might wanna know. If he does another one of these, I’m there for sure!!

[thainongkhai]

It looked like Mission Impossible to me but finally I learnt Thai tones by watching his
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV1F8ZE_AyA
And now I find Thai pronunciation to be more technical or anatomical than musical achievement.