Where have you been?!?
so its been a while since i have posted anything. there is a reason for this...seriously...it'll come to me.....uhhhh.......global warming?i had decided to put this on the backburner for a few months whilst getting resettled and sorting out my life in London :) See, i have an excuse!
So now what?
Nonetheless, I had the opportunity to go to Thailand and visit a very beautiful and special soul (no names :) ) and saw it as an opportunity to test the system in another environment.
I had two weeks to prepare and knew nothing about the Thai language. So i got hold of some tourist language and went from there.
Programming 10 expressions in my head each week, i went to Thailand with 21 expressions ready to use!
I focussed on expressions used in introductions and general 'hello's.
successful. apart from the memory, i felt that a little more opportunity to practice the expressions would have meant much more fluency with these twenty.
How did it go?
What actually happened was that I taught my lovely "fian-Shay" (fiancee Shay) the technique, and together we put in 10 expressions connected with directing taxi drivers (directions). It was a typical situation we kept finding ourselves in.
Again, success. Constantly understood with no need to repeat ourselves, we built up confidence with each passing opportunity. Shay took to the method so much that she started using it putting other expressions into her memory that her friends would help her with
(ordering drinks in a restaurant)
So no issues then?
although, i must add that Thai is a tonal language, therefore contextually whilst you can predict meaning and others can predict yours, you do need the knowledge of how to produce the different tones to some degree.
i dont feel this is something special, just a small facet of a language's phonological individuality.
simple to overcome....awareness and practice.
having left Thailand with renewed faith in language learning, i have decided it is time to pick up the Spanish again and take it to the second reference bank, whilst at the same time starting Manderin.
will let you know how it goes
