The Rosetta Stone

[slinggalin]

Gonna try learning Thai. Has anyone tried the Rosetta Stone for learning a new language?

I hear it's pretty good..

[jimholio]

Tried it, gave it up.. Not the best way of learning i would say even tho i heard American embassy use it for their language training.

Perhaps im just too lazy or busy.

[nacha]

i`ve also tried it... just forget it!

without some basics you can`t learn a language with Rosetta Stone... (my opinion!)

there is better software, books and webpages available!!

[slinggalin]

thanks for the response. I guess I'll see if I get s few more before dumping it altogether

[wylos]

i thought pimsuleur was good for beginers..........went through 1st couple of stages then lost the files when my computer fecked up.

[slinggalin]

pimsuleur?? Never heard of it. Were you satisfied with it before your computer went down??

[Redeye]

Originally Posted by slinggalin

pimsuleur?? Never heard of it. Were you satisfied with it before your computer went down??

They are supposed to be very good. I recently got the Swiss German version from the US thinking it was on CD. Doh! Turns out it's audio tape only and I haven't got a player so I've not started yet.

[slinggalin]

I will have to look into this. thanks for the tips

[magnusvv]

My favorite for beginners is Pimsleur. It gave me a good head start into learning conversational thai. After that I tried out rosetta stone, it was ok but not really helpful, I would need a teacher to tell me if it was talking about a ball, red, or a boy. I could not tell from the stupid picture/context what was going on.

Currently I have a my wife home helping me learn the thai alphabet so I can learn from reading. Learning from english transliteration just does not work for me. I get the pronunciation all wrong.

I like the book from Bejawan Poomsan Becker. Its a great place to start things off correctly. But make sure you have some form of aid for pronuciation help, either a CD or a native speaker.

[hyku1147]

If you know how to use nzb files with a news reader, then go to this link.
Binsearch -- Usenet search engine

Changed the link to the full version.

[oneday]

Hey Slinggalin,

Aren't you here in Southern California somewhere? Dumb question as it says so on your post. PS area if I remember? Maybe we can meet someday as we are pretty close. I am in San Bernardino. You asked where I lived when I first joined the board.

I just started learning Thai when I came back from my first trip in April. In my opinion, without a teacher or anyone else to help it is going to be something you can not do casually. You will need to apply yourself, but I am finding it fun and I have nothing better to do while waiting for my next trip in October. I know a bit of German and have had 3 years of Spanish, but this is the first language I really fell motivated to learn and I believe that will make all the difference.

As the other posters said, start with Pimsleur. The overwhelming opinion seems to be Pimsleur is the best. I am on lesson 8 out of 30 lessons at 30 minutes each. I use this in conjunction with several books and two web sites.

Here are the web sites I have found incredibly helpful. The amount of information on both these web sites is amazing. On this first site you can find just about every word or phrase has been recorded by a native Thai speaker which can be played on your computer. The main dialog box on the opening page of this first site will except both English and Thai script and translate either way. Number one:

thai-language.com

Number two by a close second is

Learning Thai the Easy Way

both have their strengths.

I have also purchased "Thai for Lovers" which has a lot of phrases, even more than the book Nicke sells, "English-Thai Bar Guide", but I would also get this one and use both. I also purchased The Bua Luang WYSIWYS Thai Phrase Handbook only available at a bookstore in Thailand. Took 3 weeks to get and a bit expensive. It is so much more that a simple phrasebook. I am on page 68 and haven't really gotten to the phrases yet. Filled with great information.

The Bua Luang WYSIWYS Thai Phrase Book

The best English/Thai dictionary I found has 3 dictionaries in one, English/Thai/Transliteration. This way any Thai lady you are with should be able to look up what she wants to say by looking in the Thai script section. This book is by Benjawan Poomsan Becker the same author of Thai for Beginners which I also have, but will not get to until I have finished the Pimsleur courses.

I also wrote up a primmer on how to type the Thai language on your computer. I have found this to be essential. You can find that here. Don't know if you need to be signed up. If so PM me and I will send it to you, but this is a good forum you should consider joining.

Board Message

Hope this helps.

[jimholio]

PM me if you want to know how to get it, Pimsleur and Rosetta that is.