Thailand Bangkok Mission

If you want to learn the language fast, hands down, the number one thing you have to do is speak a lot. Speak with everyone. That is the fastest way and the best way that you're going to learn the language. The second tip that I would have to say, and it's not very easy, but it's to forget the English that you know. Or if you speak Spanish as a first language, or, you know, whatever the case may be, speak as if you don't know English anymore. And it's kind of hard, but you just have to kind of have the mindset of, I don't know English, I don't know the grammar of English, I don't know how to spell in English, I don't know how to do anything in English. And then just focus on the principles, especially grammar and things like that, that you learn at the MTC and that you hear, and focus on those as you're learning the Thai language.

For tips for the language, honestly, it's just patience. The language will come no matter who you are and no matter how smart you are. It will always be hard and always start off hard. But just practice, practice with your patience, practice prayer. Because it takes everyone a long time to learn, but eventually everyone gets it and everyone gets good at it. Whether it's with speaking, understanding, or reading, everyone takes time. Just practice, practice, practice, practice, honestly.

One of the biggest language tips was just be patient with yourself and talk a lot. I know you feel stupid when you're learning a new language, it's difficult, but you will never get there unless you open up your mouth and talk. And also understand where they're coming from. Sometimes it's frustrating when you're like, I said what I was supposed to say, why don't they understand me? Think if it was them learning English for only a few months. It's not going to be the best in the beginning, and that's okay. People can understand through the sentence structure what you're attempting to say, but listen to how they talk and try to mimic that as much as possible. And again, be patient with yourself, pray like crazy, and you know what, it's okay if you don't get it right. You're learning, they're learning, the Spirit will help you.

Thai is a really, really hard language to learn. I thought there was no way I was ever gonna learn it, but it is doable. I would say the biggest thing that helped me was I was lucky enough to have a lot of native companions, and so I just got to speak with them a lot. But you don't have to have a native companion, you're around native members all the time, so just talk and ask them questions, and tell them to correct you if you speak wrong. That was something that really helped me, was just telling my companions like, if I say something wrong, I want you to tell me, and that helped me a lot to just get a lot of practice in. And don't be scared, because when Thai people hear you trying to speak their language, they will love you like 10 times more, and so they're super duper forgiving of language mistakes.

I've met a lot of people that try to learn Thai. One thing about Thai is that it's a tonal language, which you really have to be careful like whether you are saying my, my, my, my, my, because they're all different words. The tones you use change the word meaning sometimes. Another thing, there's kap, which you say at the end of sentences if you're a boy, and ka if you're a girl. One really important thing if you're trying to learn Thai is to learn the alphabet, because the alphabet, once you learn that, and the vowels, and all the different tones, it helps you to understand what people are saying so much more. And because once you start reading it, you can practice reading out loud. And the way you learn a language is through messing up, being willing to mess up a lot, and trying and practicing on your own, and also maybe through a class. And that's what I recommend for learning Thai.

It may be kind of cliche to say, but speak your language as much as you can. Take every opportunity you can, even in like your thoughts of just trying to translate things from whatever your native language is into Thai. Make sure you're reading the Book of Mormon in Thai every day, and make sure you keep the Thai to English dictionary handy, because that is a very, very comprehensive, not the Thai to English and English to Thai, but the only Thai to English, because that is a very comprehensive and very good dictionary to have.

So learning Thai is super fun, or at least it was for me. You can have a lot of fun with it, especially if you speak with the members. That was something I really did to help me with my languages. We'd try to like ask them language questions like, hey, what does this word mean? And just like have a lot of fun, like learning those words. And then they eventually just start to like teach you lots and lots of words. And then they're generally very like nice about correcting you. And they'll help you out with that if you ask. And it's just really important to just learn good words, not like words that you're not going to use or words that maybe aren't missionary appropriate, but just like good words that you can use and to move the work along. And then it's just important to just love the language and love the people. Because once you do that, then you will want to speak the language, you'll have more motivation to do it. And it'll just come more naturally.

The best advice I can give for learning Thai, which I feel I've done a pretty good job with, is to make mistakes constantly and all the time. Almost, I mean, you won't have to go out of your way necessarily, but don't play it safe, you know. Try to say things that you're not sure the right way to say it, and if you get a sideways look, ask what's wrong, you know, what you should have said differently. I remember there was one time as a greenie, I was trying to say something about cheese, and I didn't know the word for cheese, which is just a lone word, so it's just cheese, but I tried to make it up on the spot, so I thought, you know, it's a dairy, it's hard, it's milk, hard milk. Well, it turns out hard milk in Thai means something completely different and somewhat inappropriate, and so that was a fun laugh, but I definitely learned pretty quick that that wasn't the right word, so make mistakes.

Thai is super learnable if you first figure out the alphabet and then second start speaking it a ton so that you can learn all the different tones and figure out sort of the grammar structure behind it since it's a little it almost feels archaic in the way that it's structured but if you just start speaking it it'll click.

So language tips. Don't worry about it. It'll come. Just don't be afraid to make mistakes and just keep on talking. The more you talk, the more better you'll get with your accent, with your grammar, and also read out loud to yourself. You may be really frustrated. It may sound dumb, but it works and it helps and you'll be great.

When I went into the MTC before that, they gave us a little card of how to read. I know it's been changing a little bit and people are getting a lot better in the MTC where they don't even teach you in the English and then to Thai. They kind of start you off straight with learning Thai and it's so awesome. But if you have the opportunity, for sure learn the script card of the letters and try and start to learn how to read because that will help you. And once you can learn how to read, your language boosts so much and it's incredible how fast you can learn it. And just don't forget to pray because honestly the gift of tongues is real and God loves you and he wants to help you with the language and sometimes a little stressful but don't get down on yourselves, you'll get it.

Just be willing to mess up. Just accept that you're going to mess up a lot trying to learn this crazy tonal language And I promise if you're just willing to mess up just keep going with it. Honestly, you will get it It comes just keep going and read a lot reading helps a ton. So I would say the most important thing you can do is read Be willing to ask people specifically your companion any words you hear in lessons Just talking to people especially if you're just talking to people out in the street and you don't understand a word Don't feel afraid to just ask someone it's not weird at all. Like they totally understand. They're trying to learn English themselves So they think it's really cool. But yeah, just be willing to mess up and keep going. You've got it for sure

Language tips. Number one is to speak as much as you can, and number two would be to use your language study time to the fullest. Some best ways that helped me to use my language study time, one was throughout the day if I heard a word that I didn't know or that seemed like it'd be useful, I'd write it down in English if I thought it'd be useful, or I'd write it down in what I thought the tie was if I had heard it, and then during language study I would ask my companion first. If he didn't know, I would try and look it up. If I couldn't find it, then I'd go and ask members on Sunday or when we had activities and things like that, and that way you can get all these new and useful words and you can study them and practice them.

Thai is a tonal language, so it's important to start first knowing how to put sentences and words together, and then second, learning how to get that inflection in your voice correct. I think for me, starting with the alphabet and working my way up helped a lot, and then eventually applying tones as much as I could.

One thing that really helped me learn Thai was learning the vowel clusters and just being able to recognize them right away and understanding the differences between the short and long vowels. Honestly, I just spent a lot of time focusing on vowels and that helped me learn kind of the structure of the language and be able to identify words and the long string of sentences they have with no periods or I guess no spaces.

The thing that absolutely helped me the most with learning Thai, I mean outside of talking with people every day, was reading the Book of Mormon and other scriptures and talks from General Conference in Thai. That was so invaluable. For me, it was really helpful to be able to see how words were written and how they were used in sentences, you know, being able to visualize it and see, okay, this is kind of how it's structured, this is how the language is structured, this is how this word is written, and being able to help me pronounce it by being able to see how it was written. So reading, especially the scriptures, was really, really helpful for me. You know, as a missionary, you're going to be saying all these gospel words, a whole bunch. You're going to be saying gospel and holy ghost and Nephi and all these things that you might not read in like normal book or newspaper or things like that, but things you're reading in the scriptures. So for me, that was by far the most helpful, being able to read the Book of Mormon, read those scriptures, and actually seeing it was the best.

Thai language part two. So now that you know that the words can change based on how your voice goes, the best thing that you can do to sound native is to figure out how to make your voice go up and down like that. Now, if you're familiar with music or notes, that probably will come a little bit easier for you. If you're not familiar with music or notes, it may be more of a challenge, but if you would like to sound like a native Thai person, the closer you can get to your voice mimicking all the ups and downs, the more likely it is that you are going to be a successful Thai language learner and sound like a native. The other part about that is learning the grammatical parts of the sentence, which in Thai are actually pretty easy. There are not a lot of conjugations that make Western languages really difficult. So the best two pieces of advice I can give are to learn the tones and make sure your sentence structure is correct.

Thai is a tonal language. This is part one. Being a tonal language means that how you make your voice sound can change the meaning of the word. For example, this word, M-A-A, ma, ma, like we would say ma in English, right? If you make your voice have a straight line, ma, that is the verb to come. But if you have your voice go like a ditch, ma, that is the word for dog. If you have your voice start here and go down, ma, that actually doesn't have a meaning. This word is typically tacked on to other words. Or if you start your voice here and come up, ma, that means horse. Or if you start your voice here and have it go like a rainbow, ma, that in some areas of Bangkok where it's heavily Chinese, that means grandma.

For language, biggest tip I have is it's all about exposure. The more you can expose yourself to it, the better. The more you make yourself feel uncomfortable with it, the better you're going to be in the long run. Everyone takes a while. It took me six months to have an okay conversation in Thai. The more you just jump into it, let yourself make mistakes, it's okay. Before you go, if you can even just trying to listen to it, listen to some Thai news stations. If you got some local Thai restaurants, go speak to the owners if they're Thai. Yeah, exposure is key. The more you can get involved, delve into it, and just embrace it. Embrace the awkward, the better off you'll be.

One of the best pieces of advice I learned was from another missionary about learning the language. He said, don't try to speak fast, try to speak clearly. Because sometimes when you learn a new language, you get nervous. And when you get nervous, you can sometimes start to speak fast, and then it just sounds like gibberish. So one of the best pieces of advice I can give, in addition to all of the other great advice out there, is learn to speak clearly. And once you've mastered that, then you can work on frequency and speed.