After a couple of days, I started at the language school here. I will be doing an intensive Thai language course here. I have signed up for a month initially, and will just see how it goes. The 1st day was fun, but very intense! They weren’t kidding that it was an intensive course! We have 5 classes every day, and homework to do every evening. Our homework for the 1st week is to learn the Thai alphabet by the end of the week. That’s 44 consonants and 32 vowels! I didn’t believe it would be possible but I’m getting there. It sounds like such a lot, but thinking about it, it isn’t so bad. There is just one set of characters, not uppercase and lowercase like we have in English. And for the 32 vowels, although that is so much more than the 5 we have in English, they cover every possible vowel sound which makes reading a lot easier once you learn then. For example, in English where we have cat which has a short ‘a’ sound, car which has a long ‘a’ sound, and ball which actually has more of an ‘o’ sound, in Thai those would all be different vowels. The school has very good teaching methods and they try to help us by giving us words for each letter which describe something that the letter resembles and also has the same sound that the letter makes. That makes it a lot easier.

The actual class is pretty fun. So much more fun than the course I did in Phuket. They focus on listening comprehension as the foundation for learning. So learn how the words sound and learn to associate the word with it’s meaning and then when you eventually speak, it will come more naturally and you will know the correct pronunciation and tone. So the 1st week consisted of the teacher giving us orders in Thai for phrases such as stand up, sit down, pick up your pen, walk to the table, run to the chair, swim to the table, eat your pen, etc, which we had to act out promptly, and sure enough, by the end of the week, we had learnt all the new vocabulary and could pronounce and use it correctly. I would actually wake up hearing her voice giving me orders!

They incorporate a lot of activities and games which makes the time go relatively quickly. Here is a picture of me playing Twister while being told the colour names in Thai!