Should You Learn Thai?Here are eight features about Thai language to help stude

Should You Learn Thai?
Good morning, everyone. In our lecture series of language orientation, today we will turn our attention to an oriental language—Thai. Ten years ago, I took my first Thai language class. After a trip to Thailand, I decided for the next one I’d try to learn the language so I signed up for a Thai class at a local temple near my home in the US. Fast forward ten years, and I’m living in Thailand. I am still studying Thai and becoming more comfortable in speaking it fluently every day. But, if you’re thinking of signing up for a Thai language class, is it really the language for you? Is Thai useful? Is it an easy language? Or would studying French or German be a better fit? Of course, only you can make that decision, but today I will tell you eight things about the Thai language. You may decide by your own whether Thai is your cup of tea.
First of all, Thai is a tonal language. Thai is one of the families of language that are tonal.[l]/[2]What that means is each word in Thai holds a specific tone and in order to speak it correctly you must be able to remember the tone and use it every time you say the word. Otherwise, others may misunderstand you. If you’re tone-deaf and cannot hear the difference between a low tone and a high tone, Thai may not be for you.
Secondly, Thai does not use the Roman alphabet. Unlike languages like French or Spanish, Thai does not use the Roman alphabet.[3]What that means is you have to learn a completely new alphabet of 44 consonants and 28 vowels before you can even begin to learn the language. Yes, you hear that correctly, 28 vowels or vowel sounds. Before you can learn new words in Thai, you have to memorize the alphabet along with how those consonants and vowels are written. For many who attempt Thai, they soon give up as remembering the alphabet alone is a lost cause.
Thirdly, vowel placement. Another lovely fun thing about Thai is where the vowels are placed when it’s written.[4]A vowel can either go before a consonant but is pronounced after the consonant. It can also go after the consonant, above the consonant or below the consonant.[5]Where it is placed in the word tells you how to pronounce it. Oh and yes, you have to memorize that too.
Fourthly, not many people speak Thai. If you want a language you can use all over the world, it’s not Thai.[6]With 64 million people in Thailand, only around 20 million speak Thai. The others speak one of various dialects or another Tai language and yes, that’s "Tai" and not "Thai". If you want a language you can use everywhere, probably you should try French, Spanish or Chinese. However, you can also look at it this way. Should you ever live in Thailand, you’ll be unique as few foreigners speak, read and write Thai well.
Fifthly,[7]there is no distinction between adverbs and adjectives. The same word can be used as an adjective or an adverb, as there aren’t separate words for the two.[8]Not as interesting a language as English or as beautiful as Spanish, particularly when you come to write poetry in it.
[9]Sixthly, there is no inflected verbs and no tenses in Thai. Unlike most European languages, where the language inflects, for instance, go, going, went, Thai has no inflection.[10]The word "to go", "Bpai", is always "Bpai", no matter who is speaking, whether it’s future, past or present, if there are more than one or any number of other reasons. So it might be frustrating when you’re trying to figure out how to say "I was going there tomorrow but...". Technically, there are no tenses in Thai. The verb itself "Bpai"(go)is used when modifying words are added, i.e. yesterday, today, next week, "ja" to indicate future, to help the listener understand what time the speaker is talking about.
Seventhly, Thai has so many pronouns to learn. Another frustrating thing about learning Thai is all the pronouns you have to learn.[11]/[12]Depending on who you’re speaking to, younger, older, a higher social level, a monk etc, you must use different pronouns. Thais know it instinctively. Anyone else often runs through pronouns in their head before they figure out which is the correct one and, by that time, the listener has moved on to speak to someone else.
Eighthly, Thais speak of themselves by name. I don’t know about you, but I’m not in the habit of going around saying "Susan will go to the market tomorrow with you", but they do in Thailand.[13]It’s deemed impolite to use the word "I" very much as it denotes being too self-involved,[14]/[15]so Thais often speak of themselves in the third person instead of first and by given name instead of "she".
Now, in all fairness, I love learning and speaking Thai, and have a great sense of accomplishment for how much I can speak already. I also think it’s a beautiful language, particularly in the way it’s written. For others though, the frustrations can often outweigh the benefits, so if you don’t have a lot of patience to figure out an incredibly complex language or want to be able to speak a foreign language you can actually use in most coun tries in the world, then Thai maybe isn’t for you And I hope this orientation will help you make a decision whether you are going to pick Thai as your second foreign language. Next time, I believe we will have another teacher from the Oriental School of our university to give you an orientation about Japanese.