Bakunin's log

[Bakunin]

Thanks for your comment, Lampang Glad to see another Thai speaker / learner here on LLORG!

1. You mentioned a book on the Sanskrit/Pali roots of Thai words. Do you have the title of that? (And anything else of a similar nature.)

The book is คำไทยที่มาจากภาษาบาลีและภาษาสันสกฤต, by บุญธรรม กรานทอง et. al., published by ราชบัณฑิตยสถาน. The book is not bad because it is rather comprehensive and contains decompositions into Pali/Sanskrit roots plus their translations into Thai. What it is lacking is the Sanskrit spelling of those roots, which always requires a bit of searching on the net. The dictionary of the RID usually gives these roots as well but with less detail and without translations for the components.

2. What are your plans for Northern Thai? As you can probably guess from my name, I have a natural interest in this and I may be able to help.

I have two picture projects I would like to get recordings for and then publish them on my website. The first one (some examples pages here in my log, see above) is for basic, and the other (already on my website for Thai and Khmer) for more advanced vocabulary. I learn by listening, so my preferred approach is to get lots of comprehensible audio input, in particular to learn the pronunciation well. I think this is particularly important for unwritten tonal languages… Northern Thai doesn’t have the same tones as Central Thai, and I need to hear these new tones in a systematic way. I’ll send you a PM, you indeed may be able to help! Thanks again

[Lampang]

The book is คำไทยที่มาจากภาษาบาลีและภาษาสันสกฤต

Thanks. I'll see if I can track down a copy. (Though given its completely descriptive title, I feel a bit stupid for asking now!)

[Bakunin]

I’ve been looking into Glossika recently and started a little experiment to see whether I like it or not. Glossika is actually a technique (Glossika Sentence Method), not just a product. Some of Glossika’s original videos have been removed, but it’s easy to piece the technique together from reviews and discussions in language learning forums.

Here’s what I’m doing:
Preparation: I take some content for which I have both audio and a transcript. From this content, I’ll extract sentences or sentence fragments (I find about 4–5 second fragments work best) and save them as individual files (numbered). I also copy the transcript into a text file as a reference.

Work flow: I go in batches of 10 sentences. On day 1, I open the file in Audacity and listen-repeat until I can piece the sentence together, then chorus the sentence until I feel I’m in sync with the speaker, and finally do another short segment of listen-repeat. That concludes the first round. On day 2, after I’ve done the above with 10 new sentences, I go back to the last batch and transcribe them myself, then check against the transcript. After transcription, I do a short segment of listen-repeat. On day 3, I repeat what I did on day 1. Then I’m done with this batch and let it go.

In other words, on day 7, I do the following:
Sentences 61-70: listen-repeat, then chorus, then again listen-repeat
Sentences 51-60: listen-transcribe, then listen-repeat
Sentences 41-50: listen-repeat, then chorus, then again listen-repeat

The listen-repeat segment requires me to construct the sentence myself, for this I need to pay attention to the overall meaning but also make sure that I catch and produce each and every word. The chorusing segment helps me to get the intonation right, accelerate to the speed of the native speaker, and generally train muscle memory; it also helps to improve/practice pronunciation in countless other ways. The transcription piece helps again with sentence construction but also with spelling (which again reinforces pronunciation). The spacing over three days supports memory formation.

So far, I've taken the sentences from oral stories because I love stories. I don’t process the full story, I skip sentences and cherry-pick good ones, but I still feel that I’m telling/experiencing the story. I don’t know what sentences Glossika (the product) has, but stories always work well for me, so there’s no need to change that. I only work with sentences I understand 100%, so I don’t need any translations. I used to have transcripts of conversations in Thai but can't find them right now; conversations would also be great base material for GSM.

The three days don’t have to be consecutive, it’s actually neat that I can do a round of this whenever I want to without being forced into a rigid schedule. Each round takes quite a bit of time, between 30-60 minutes, and requires a lot of speaking. I find it a good - and intense - alternative to shadowing, and in contrast to the latter, the Glossika Sentence Method also works for weaker languages.

Khmer
Busy with proofreading transcripts for my picture stories. I’ve been getting faster and manage most days to work through 12-15 minutes. I also had another tutoring session which went well. I’m not bad at picture descriptions and know a lot of words already, but totally lack some basics like greetings and simple questions (a shortcoming of my wordless picture book based approach). I’m thinking of adding Lexicarry to my tutoring program to address this.

Swiss-German
I’ve got a new colleague from Bern at work, giving me exposure to a Swiss-German variety I rarely hear here in Zurich. Yesterday, he taught me a new word, gängälä, which means something like ‘to buy useless stuff’ (internet) or maybe ‘to buy sweets’ (his definition). Here’s a tongue twister with gängälä and a translation into Zurich German:

Bern German: Gang geng gredi gäge Gümlige ga guge ob Gerber Gödus gielä garamel gängälä.
Zurich German: Gang imer graaduus uf Gümlige go luege ob am Gerber Godi sini buebe am zeltli chräämle sind.

[Bakunin]

I haven’t updated my log in weeks… I’m just too busy learning languages hahaha.

Khmer
In order to get my mouth moving and build up muscle memory etc., I’ve been doing the exercise I described in my last post almost every day. I’ve reduced it to 5 new sentences (or question-answer pairs) per day, and the program is now as follows:

Step 1: I extract 5 new sentences to mp3, save the transcript to file (which I have already, I’m not doing it myself)
Step 2: I go through the 5 sentences from the day before yesterday - first, I play the sentence, then repeat it, and I do this three times or until I get it right; then I chorus along for 10 or 20 rounds
Step 3: I go through the 5 sentences from yesterday - I play the sentence, then type it; then I compare my transcript to the correct one and practice misspelled words a few times
Step 4: I go through the 5 sentences from today (step 1) - first, I play the sentence, then repeat it, and I do this three times or until I get it right; then I chorus along as long as I like, usually 20-30 rounds

It seems to be a good program because it trains a number of skills:
- listen-repeat trains grammar and sentence construction - I’m forced to pay attention to word order, function words, prepositions etc.
- chorusing trains pronunciation and prosody as well as automaticity, muscle memory, native speaker speed etc. and on top of that is good fun
- transcription trains spelling and sometimes alerts me to details I’ve misheard or to discrepancies between spelling and pronunciation (in languages like French it would also train grammar)

I work on every sentence three days in a row and then let it go, reaping the benefits of repetition (and sleep between repetitions) while avoiding SRS torture.

Apart from that I still do a host of other things: I listen to picture stories, I check transcripts for my website, I’ve started listening to the news and very occasionally I write short picture descriptions on lang-8. I also do tutoring every two weeks, and each time it’s getting easier.

One activity I did with my tutor last time and really enjoyed was to take one of my basic vocabulary pictures (see here for a sample) and take turns asking questions: I ask a question, my tutor answers, then he asks a question, I answer etc. We tried to ask as many questions as we could think of before moving on to the next frame. It took us a good 45 minutes or so for 15 frames (didn’t even make it through a full page).

Example questions for frame 1: What is this? Is this a type of food? What color is it? How does it taste like? What do you use it for? How many are there?

Thai
I was pretty busy translating interviews into German for our film project, all in all over 70 pages. Triggered by wordplay I’d encountered in one of the interviews, we had an interesting discussion on FB on that particular structure, alliterative reduplication: you take a two-syllable word AB and transform it into ACAB. The syllable C has the same initial consonant as B but ends in -ong. In English something like T-shirt —> T-shong-T-shirt, notepad —> note-pong-note-pad. I wasn’t aware of that pattern/mechanism, but it can be found all over the place for many, many words, and, of course, it carries a specific meaning (roughly: extends the meaning to things which are similar, and also sometimes adds a slightly dismissive quality). I had great fun pestering my Thai friends with this wordplay for a few days. Here’s a list of examples I pulled together from the FB discussion:

กระดงกระได
กระป๋งกระเป๋า
การบ้งการบ้าน
กีลงกีฬา
เชียงหม่งเชียงใหม่
ทะลงทะเล: วันหยุดไปเที่ยวกันไหม ทะลงทะเล อะไรแบบเนี้ย
ที่นงที่นอน
ผู้หย่งผู้ใหญ่
(พยาบงพยาบาล)
ไม่กงไม่กิน
ไม่วงไม่ว่า: ไม่วงไม่ว่าฉันน่ะ
วันกงวันเกิด
(สตุ้งสตางค์)
ส้มตมส้มตำ
สัญญงสัญญา
สุรงสุรา
เสียจงเสียใจ
เสียดงเสียดาย
หนังสงหนังสือ: ทำไมห้องรกอย่างนี้ ทั้งหนังสงหนังสือ กระป๋งกระเป๋า วางไม่เรียบร้อยเลย
อากงอาการ
อาจงอาจารย์
อาหงอาหาร
อิจฉงอิจฉา

[Bakunin]

I’m currently in Buriram, Thailand, and it’s time for an update. I’ve been really busy with all kinds of projects recently, and it didn’t help that work got busy too… but now I’m here in the tropics!

My focus these days is exploring how learning of unwritten languages can be facilitated with illustrations and recordings. I’ve started three different illustration projects which are maturing now, and I’ve just started my first recordings projects with two unwritten languages, Isaan (spoken by about 20+ million people in North-Eastern Thailand) and Northern Khmer (spoken by about 1 million people in Thailand along the border with Cambodia).

The three projects are:
Basic Communicative Functions (aimed at beginners)
Basic Vocabulary (aimed at beginners)
Story Telling (aimed at intermediate/advanced learners)

My hope would be that the illustrations provide enough context for the recordings to be at least partly comprehensible without any other written materials (which don’t exist for unwritten languages). As I speak Thai (which is related to Isaan) and have a good base in Khmer (which is related to Northern Khmer), I’m unfortunately not in an ideal position to test that hypothesis.

The recordings are also meant to be used for chorusing, shadowing, vocabulary acquisition and developing listening comprehension. All of that will be useful to someone who really wants to learn an unwritten language. This work has to be complemented with other activities with native speakers, of course. If some bored member of LLORG with no prior exposure to these languages wants to do a little experiment to see whether it’s possible to develop basic listening comprehension in Isaan or Northern Khmer, please do so!

The projects have just begun. It will take many more months before I can close them. At the moment, I don’t intend to learn Northern Khmer myself (I still need to do a lot of work on Standard Khmer), but I’ll try to get into Isaan at a leisurely pace.

My website is here. The illustrations (suitable for other language work as well) can be found here.

[Elenia]

If some bored member of LLORG with no prior exposure to these languages wants to do a little experiment to see whether it’s possible to develop basic listening comprehension in Isaan or Northern Khmer, please do so!

I'm really tempted! But I've finally found some willpower (probably in the same place I dropped my Korean efforts), and so will hold off. I hope you find someone to test it, however.

[jeff_lindqvist]

I volunteered as a guinea pig nearly two months ago - listened to a two minute sample of Khmer four times (the first without looking at the pictures) and got half a dozen key words/grammar points right. The closest thing to comprehensible input I've experienced in a long time.

[Bakunin]

@Elenia: It was more tongue-in-cheek Now I run the risk of spreading myself too thin... the eternal struggle of the language enthusiast

I volunteered as a guinea pig nearly two months ago - listened to a two minute sample of Khmer four times (the first without looking at the pictures) and got half a dozen key words/grammar points right. The closest thing to comprehensible input I've experienced in a long time.

Yes, thanks again, Jeff, for being my guinea pig back then! You performed exactly at expectation, so that was a great data point for me. In the meantime, I've refined the recordings format and complement the 2 min one-sentence description with a much longer (10 min) series of questions and answers related to the individual frames. I would expect that to increase comprehensibility further, or at least solidify the key vocabulary even if the meaning of some of the questions doesn't become clear immediately. I know that the approach works at least for me because that was basically how I went about Khmer during the first few months, but it's always interesting to cross-check with others. So thanks again!

[Elenia]

@Elenia: It was more tongue-in-cheek Now I run the risk of spreading myself too thin... the eternal struggle of the language enthusiast

The whole project just sounds so exciting, that's the main problem!

[lingua]

Ciao Bakunin

I have looked at several of the documents for Thai (Noodles, Food Poisoning for example). I like what you're doing and plan to spend some time viewing/reading some of them over the next few weeks. I like the idea of being able to read, listen and look at drawings together.