Learning Thai

 I used to have zero interest in learning other languages and very much followed the stereotypical British way of thinking (“most people from other countries need to know English anyway so why should I bother?”). But once I had met some amazing people who didn’t speak much English, and seen the benefits of learning their language to communicate with them, it really interested me.

 

A mini Thai lesson from a bartender

Seeing as I was spending 4 months in Thailand, I really wanted to take advantage of this great opportunity to immerse myself in the language and try to learn as much of it as possible. I had already started to learn some Thai with the help of my half-Thai/half-Scottish friend, in the hopes of doing an exchange semester in Bangkok. In the end I couldn’t do the exchange, but I figured I might as well carry on learning to be able to communicate with more people while travelling.

 

This is what Thai writing looks like

My plan for learning was pretty much the same as for Spanish: talk to people in the language as much as possible (even if that’s only a tiny amount) and watch a lot of content in the language to get used to hearing and understanding it. I luckily found a YouTube channel called Comprehensible Thai, which had hundreds of videos of Thai teachers having conversations in Thai at various levels of difficulty. This really allowed me to practice my comprehension of the language and get used to the sound of the language. And I was able to meet and make friends with many uni students during my time in Thailand, which gave me lots of opportunities to practice speaking as well.

 

As well as this, in Chiang Mai I managed to have a few lessons with Natcha, a Thai tutor (@krunatchathai on Instagram). These lessons really helped me to get more of a foundation in the language so that moving forward I could practice it more confidently, especially since this was right at the start of my travels.