🇹🇭 Thai Language and Elephants

I once heard someone ask, “How do you eat an Elephant?” and the response was “One Bite at a Time!”

The same is true if you want to learn Thai language.

I think many expats have a hard time learning Thai language because they are getting too many bites at one time to remember!

With the exception of a very few, I would suspect expats would have to spend years in Thai language school to learn to speak Thai 100% fluently and with the correct tones.

But do you need 100% fluency? Do you have time or enough years left to learn the language without getting frustrated?

My husband was one the hardest people ever to learn Thai. But now he is very well versed.

I taught him Thai, one bite at a time with what I coin Situational Thai.

Situational Thai is where you outline a Situation and cover all the questions and answers for that 1 situation. Over time, you ONLY learn the situations you may find yourself in while living in Thailand.

An example of situational Thai would be breakfast.

Some of the things you might say are:

1. Good Morning
2. Are You Hungry
3. What do you want for breakfast?
4. Do you want to eat at home?
5. Do you want to go out to eat?
6. Where do you want to go?
7. Then compile a list of breakfast words to learn and ONLY learn the words for the things YOU would eat at breakfast. There is no sense learning breakfast words you will never use:
   • Coffee
   • Juice
   • milk
   • sugar
   • Toast
   • Sausage
   • Bacon
   • Eggs
   • small
   • large
   • glass
   • cup
   • fork
   • spoon
   • knife
8. Add in a couple of general phrases:
   • I want….
   • Can I have….
   • I need….
   • How much is this….

The key to situational Thai is not only learning to ask the question, you have to understand the reply from the Thai person you are speaking with (answer/replies)

Situational Thai really works best with a Thai partner.

An example is #2 above.

If you ask someone if they are hungry, their reply would be yes I am hungry or no I am not hungry.

You would first need to learn how to ask them if they were hungry (in Thai Sounds Like: Khun Hue Cow Mai Khrup/kha?)

Them you would have to listen and understand the person’s answer: Mai Hue (not hungry) Hue Khrup/Kah (hungry)

The trick here is to learn the question you would ask and ALL the possible answers you would receive.

Another example would be in you went to a restaurant for breakfast and you wanted some eggs.

Kaw men-new (May I have the menu)

You could tell the waitress I want some eggs Pom Awh Kai?

Her reply might be fried eggs (Kai dow?), Fried eggs hard (Kai dow sook sook)? etc. so you would have to learn all the possible responses to your question wanting eggs cooked a certain way.

Or course you can always learn to order exactly what you want (Pom awh Kai dow sook sook khrup/kah). Always learn ONLY what you would order.

Then you could order coffee (could be black, could be with cream and sugar) so you would learn to order exactly what you want. The waitress may ask you how many sugars? Large or small? Hot or cold?

So the key to situational Thai is to role play asking the questions and learning all the possible replies to that one situation.

Once you learn that, you can master ordering breakfast in Thai which is a skill you can always use everyday the rest of your life.

If you change the word list to lunch and then dinner, words right away you have learned 3 situations where you would be able to order breakfast, lunch and dinner in Thai.

By completely learning 1 situation before moving on, you will remember how to speak Thai for the things you will always use and not learn words you will never use!

Chock Dee!