u/1000h_Thai

Hello guys,

this is an update after finishing the B0 playlist from Comprehensible Thai.

Last update:

10h

Brief background

• Started on March 25 from zero, I'm trying to follow ALG as closely as possible to test the method

What I've done since the last update:

• Finished the "Thai ALG Course Into (Beginner 0)" playlist. The playlist is 21h53min long.
• Between April 1 and June 29, I've averaged ~15min of Thai a day (In my defence, I was travelling for about a month, and after coming back it took me a while to get back into my routine).
• Total input since starting: 31h29min

As per last time, some patterns I've noticed in the first four B0 videos, or rather some guesses that I have (not a conclusive list):

• "Kruu Ying ben kong Thai" -- ben is the same "to be" that I was talking about in the first post. "Kong" is the same one that is used to express possession (e.g. grandmother kong Anna, meaning Anna's grandmother). I'm very confident that the words are actually the same ones (i.e. the tone is the same as well and not just the sounds if that makes sense. Like, e.g. white and nine both make a "Kao" sound but the tone is different --> the word isn't actually the same)
• "mee gee" (mee as in to have). I've noticed "gee" only in conjunction with "mee" and when asking questions about numbers, as in "How many students do we have" or "How many states does Thailand have" (I also hear the "gee" when the other person is responding).
• "yuu (place)" to express that somebody is currently located at a place. This is one I actually remember clicking. I had heard "yuu" before but didn't know what it meant but there's this sequence in the third B0 video one of the teachers wonders if the students are in Bangkok. Answer is no, and then she says "yuu" followed by the students' countries/current location.
• re/ri to express "or" in questions (e.g. daughter or son?) -
• "ben" (as in "to be") to express gender

Some general stuff:

• I've decided to stop jotting down the patterns I notice. I made that decision somewhere between watching the fourth and fifth video B0 videos.
• Imo, the noticing itself isn't against ALG theory but I think writing them down probably is (the way I see it: noticing patterns is natural/automatic but writing them down is not).
• I'm glad I did the absolute beginner playlist first and I remember thinking that especially the first four, five videos were really comprehensible and the transitioning between the two playlists felt smooth.
• I mostly understood the videos, even tho there would sometimes be some moments I didn't have a clue what the teachers were saying.
• The only video that stood out to me was the basket weaving one (video 39/40), I definitely didn't understand 90% of the meaning on that one lmao

Progress since last time:

• Objectively, this is difficult to measure, especially since I stopped jotting down the patterns I notice. I'm still thinking of a way to externalise my progress without interfering with the experiment/ALG. I'm not a big fan of giving % understood because imo there isn't any reliable way to estimate that, I think that's especially true if the % understood is low.
• Subjectively, I do feel my comprehension has increased since the last update.

I've watched ~10h of Thai shows with English subs since my last update. Some small wins:

• I'm "catching" more singular words.
• I'm understanding stuff like "my grandmother" or "(character name's) sister"
• sometimes, rather rarely, I'll understand two words in one sentence

This is not a perfect assessment because of the subtitles. I'm also not consciously trying to learn since I'm watching the shows for entertainment.

Closing words:

I'll try my best to be more consistent with the B1 playlist :) I think I'd have prolly stopped by now if I was using more "traditional" methods.