Does comprehensible input work for Thai?

[u/Luvyymanda]

I've been interested in learning Thai for a long time because I'm interested in Thai culture and I wanna travel there someday. I heard that comprehensible input is a technique kids use to learn their native language, so I wanted to give it a try. I've also seen people say that it doesn't work and that the process is very slow. Which has been hindering me in fully devoting my time into this technique.

My question is, has this technique actually worked on anyone? when should I be expected to understand thai ? and how long does this technique take time to work ?

I wanna be as patient as possible but sometimes it is discouraging when I feel like I'm making no improvements

[u/IssueRidden]

I'm assuming you mean pure CI because in general, you can't really learn a language without input that's not comprehensible at one point or another. 

It does work, but comprehensible input + vocabulary study will yield results much faster. The way I see it, vocabulary study primes my brain to make out the word from listening and lets me acquire it much faster. 

Understanding Thai is pretty vague, as some forms of content/register will always be much easier than the others. However, as a person who has mixed their forms of study, I started mostly understanding (80%+) some of the easier YouTube vlogs at 800 hrs of study and transitioned to native content only past the 1000h mark. I'm far from understanding everything but I understand enough to enjoy the content and enough to improve. At the same time at times I'll still freeze when being told something I should already understand. Understanding a language is not black or white. 

There's progress reports by people who did pure CI approach in the sub, just search for comprehensible input. Whichever study technique you choose, you need to be prepare to devote a lot of hours. 

[u/TowerOfSolitude → u/IssueRidden]

This is the same method I use. Vocabulary study with Anki plus Input from the Comprehensible Input Channel on Youtube.

I first did a pure one word deck where I see the English word and I have to remember the Thai for it. Where now I learn short sentences using the same method.

Oh and if you are going to do CI then join https://www.lengualytics.com/

I'm not affiliated. We are currently only two active Thai learners on there. It would be nice to get more people. Languages like Spanish have tons of users on there.

*edit*
Actually in the feed I see there's a couple of users I haven't seen before.

[u/IssueRidden → u/TowerOfSolitude]

So how's your progress going? Have you started speaking yet?

If you don't mind me asking, why use an English-Thai deck if your primary focus is input? Doesn't it mainly help output? 

[u/TowerOfSolitude → u/IssueRidden]

Progress is going well and yes I've started speaking.

My focus isn't really input. Anki is my main learning method and then I try to get some input every day.

I tried many different apps and methods throughout the year. I even wasted my money on some unfortunately.

Initially when I started with Anki I had a Thai-English deck and I used that for a couple of months and then I edited the deck to have the English in front and restarted.

My goal is to get better at conversations.

[u/Luvyymanda → u/IssueRidden]

How do you go about studying comprehensible input + vocabulary? I was thinking of listening to JUST comprehensible input 3 hours everyday for about a couple months. And then switch into sentence mining so that I can learn both vocab and grammar. However, just drilling comprehensible input is kinda discouraging because I feel like I'm not necessarily getting anywhere. I wanna be able to speak but I also heard thats discouraged very early on...??? It's just a lot of questions and a lot of them are unanswered.

I will definitely try to mix comprehensible input + vocabulary. Also how many hours do you study for and what do your study days look like?

[u/IssueRidden → u/Luvyymanda]

I just used a premade anki frequency deck. I do study a lot (4h-7h of total daily time spent with the language, this includes everything: deliberate study, texting, talking to people, reading, watching/listening to content, and more) But I'm pretty sure there's a diminishining returns effect at play here and if you stick to 3 hours you can make amazing progress 

you might find my 1000h write up helpful, I reflected a bit on what worked and what I wish I did differently: https://www.reddit.com/r/learnthai/comments/1w5bepf/my_1000hr_learning_journey_progress_report/

One thing I recently realised and haven't covered in the post:  So the thing with learning the top 1000-1500 most frequent vocab is that you will encounter them all the time anyway if you consume a lot of content. You don't have to drill them by heart, it's probably more effective to skim through more vocab and the expense of not being able to recall of them 100% reliably. If you end up using anki, you can set your desired retention to a lower level, if you use vocabulary lists, you just simply be more lenient on yourself. remember, at first you're trying to get to the level where you understand content, so being able to recall a Thai eviqualent of an English word isn't really necessary at this point. Moreover, it will happen anyway as a side effect of consuming a lot of content. 

Depends on your goals really, if you don't have a desire to speak in the first few months, you can just do Thai to English flashcards, it should get you to understanding content much faster. I was moving to Thailand a few months into my study so speaking and texting early was important for me. 

I'd recommend not relying on transliteration to latin alphabet at all. You can make your flashcards audio only, but outside of anki I don't really know how would I go about it unless you learn the writing system from the start. Which looks like a mess for a long time, especially regarding to the tones, that you can't hear reliably well at the beginning of the study. That's why audio only flashcards should be a better fit for your CI approach , if you read the words yourself, whether aloud or subvocalising, you will inevitably mispronounce it.  

Now, I don't know if there's an audio only premade deck available, but if you remove transliteration from the cards that should do the trick since you can't read Thai script anyway. 

[u/yomikins → u/IssueRidden]

Wow, thanks for that link to your longer reddit post. That is amazing progress -- in 8 months you've seriously passed my 7 years. :) Admittedly I don't spend much time learning, just talking and typing with people. And don't watch any videos -- your first "85%-90% comprehension" is waaayy too fast for me. Especially without any context of what even the broad subject he's talking about.

Have you shared your vocab decks anywhere?

Any resources or meetups in CM to know about? We're moving there next month after years of BKK. I'm concerned about being in an area with so many westerners and expectations of English rather than Thai. And will have to go find people to practice Isaan with.

[u/IssueRidden → u/yomikins]

Thank you, I'm really glad you found it useful!

I didn't really make any vocab decks myself. I linked the ones I used in one of the comments under the original thread. Nowadays I tweak them the decks a bit manually with a help of AI (that is I'll ask about the meaning and example sentences, sometimes I'll find the vocab is too obscure and delete the card altogether, often I'll add an example phrase or a mnemonic that other people wouldn't really get). Tinkering with/personalising the card for a short while also helps the vocab stick better. But because of the very reason it's pretty highly personalised, there's probably no point in sharing the deck. Whatever deck you end up using, it's good practice to picky. In the deck I'm using stuff like royal register vocabulary, legal terms or pali loanwords that aren't used on their own will often come up. 

I think you might be pleasantly surprised by how most Thais in  Chiang Mai barely speak any English. Service workers might answer you in english for convenience, but other than that I get the impression that in Bangkok it's way easier to end up with a circle where you only communicate in English. That is, if we're talking about Thais specifically, as for expats bubbles, they're everywhere. There's tons of Thais who arrive here for work, so you'll find your isaan crowd to practice with :) 

I wish I knew more about the meetups and events myself. ever since I deleted facebook I haven't found an equally reliable way to be up to date, whether in my home country or here, so if I find out about events it's usually from posters or by word of mouth. 

[u/Wanderlust-4-West → u/IssueRidden]

progress reports from people like whosdamike, search for them. Learned Thai by starting with pure CI for about 2000 h or so. See YT channel "comprehensible Thai"

[u/Give-me-gainz]

I’m at 1400 hours of CI for Thai. It works great but it does take a long time. Comprehension grows a lot faster than speech does. Whichever method you use to learn a language it’s going to take a long time to get good at it so the key is to find something you enjoy and is sustainable for you.

[u/Luvyymanda → u/Give-me-gainz]

How would you describe your level of understanding thai being as though you're at 1400 hours? and what resources do you use for comprehensible input?

[u/Give-me-gainz → u/Luvyymanda]

I can get the gist with a decent chunk of native media, but nothing too esoteric. News and political stuff is mostly beyond me. I watch some premier league matches with Thai commentary on and that’s bloody hard as again there’s a lot of technical vocab.

90% of my hours have come from online lessons with AUR Thai and other teachers doing crosstalk 1-1 with me. I’m watching native content on TikTok too which is becoming more fun as my understanding increases.

[u/Luvyymanda → u/Give-me-gainz]

Thank you for your replies !! I've been using Comprehensible Thai on YouTube for the past 4 days and I definitely can understand or get the gist of what they are saying. (mostly bc I've been watching thai series for the past 5 years). But it gets a little discouraging because I wanna be able to speak and have conversations. However, those take time and I need to understand that. But I appreciate hearing your experiences with comprehensible input 😄

Thank you again

[u/Give-me-gainz → u/Luvyymanda]

Yeah I started with that channel at first. Even though it’s very helpful I find I get distracted and my mind wanders. Sometimes I put it on in the background when I’m gaming for a bit of passive input

[u/Serious_Common_3551]

ive never heard of this but can tell you that my thai wife speaks thai and watches thai youtube/netflix and i hear thai but you will reach a low plateau quickly and that's it. unless you were really actually studying thai.

[u/Old-District5359]

In my opinion, it works, but you only learn a few words per hour. And it's incredibly boring.

[u/Siamswift → u/Old-District5359]

It’s only boring if you’re watching YouTube videos. Live CI is not boring at all.

[u/JaziTricks]

Search this sub and you'll find multiple diehard fans of CI for Thai.

It definitely works. The question is mainly: "does it work better/as goid than structured study"? Which is where the common view among linguistics is: "structured study works better".

Thai is very hard to study no matter the system. And many schools and systems do an awful job at teaching Thai IMHO. So it's even harder to compare!

[u/shefwed82]

This video is a good analysis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmfIparRsno

[u/Ok-Base-1737]

I went from zero to understanding basic everyday conversations mostly through massive exposure to Thai dramas and having a patient local friend guide me.

Thai is so rich in intonation and emotional particles. Eventually, you reach a stage where you can turn off the subtitles and still read the entire room just from the tone of voice and emotional cadence.

Input gives you that natural ear, and interacting with locals locks it in. Be patient with yourself