Comments on: TV Method Thai Progress Report 1 (12 hours)

By: jorsh

jorsh — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 08:17:12 +0000

hey you should check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADG-sG-mlMY&feature=related

It’s a Thai cartoon for kids. The stories move pretty slow so it could get kinda boring to watch a bunch of them in a row but I think they are good to watch every once in a while. Each story line is pretty simple so it shouldn’t be too hard to guess what the characters are talking about.

By: rikker

rikker — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:21:49 +0000

Oh, and by “if I see them again” I meant the price. Clearly you would want the dubbed versions, not the subtitled ones. :)

By: rikker

rikker — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:20:02 +0000

Most kids fare tends to be cartoons, but there are certainly lots and lots (and lots and lots) of cartoons either produced locally or dubbed from foreign sources.

If you want educational-type kids shows, it’s not just Sesame Street. Dubbed (or sub-titled) versions of Sesame Street, Barney, Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine, Noddy, Clifford, Magic School Bus, and Blues Clues are all relatively easy to find, and quite cheap.

For a VCD, a 30-minute dubbed children’s program will run 79-129 baht (US$2-4) list price, but I often find them on sale for 19-29 baht (US$0.50-$1), or 4 for 100 baht, etc. DVDs (which are nice because you can switch audio languages/subtitles off/on) tend to retail for 229 (US$7), but are occasionally found for cheaper; I’ve even seen as low as 50 baht.

I bought a bunch of subtitled Thai programs (so my daughter can hear the English) the last time I saw them in the 19-29 baht range. If I see them again, I’d be happy to pick you up a few and send them your way if you’re still doing the experiment by then. Catherine’s trip to Pantip may prove more fruitful.

Googling just now I found this site: http://www.babekiddy.com/

It’s all in Thai, but you can type the English name of the program you want into the search box to get an idea of what’s out there. I tried searches for “Barney” and “Sesame” and got lots of results, and cheap, too. I’ll have to bookmark this site…

By: thomas

thomas — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 18:06:40 +0000

@Catherine: Thanks! That’s cool. I asked some Thai friends and they said there really isn’t a Thai sesame street-like program. At least not anymore. There was an old one that went off the air a few years back (ran out of money?) called เจ้าขุนทอง. I can’t read Thai but my friend spelled it in roman letters this way: chao khun tong.

Youtube had a couple songs from the show (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id5irbri4mA .. I love the ox muppets) but that’s it. Songs aren’t as useful to me as regular conversations/skits would be.

If you can find some videos for the show, I’d love to find out where I could watch/order them.

By: Catherine

Catherine — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:20:59 +0000

‘…shows similar to Sesame Street’

I asked this awhile back on a Thai language forum and didn’t receive an answer.

Then just recently, Rickkr (Thai 101) shared a link to dubbed Sesame Street videos.

http://www.kidsquare.com/list.php?catid=565

I’ll track them down this weekend at Pantip (Bangkok) if I can get away.

I know you can’t watch lips with dubbed shows but Sesame Street is fantastic so I’m hoping they’ll be fine.

By: thomas

thomas — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:57:20 +0000

@Keith: I actually thought of that and asked a Thai friend about shows similar to Sesame Street or Shimajiro, and there aren’t any. Or rather, there used to be one but it stopped a while back because they weren’t making any money :(. I found three clips of it on youtube, but they are all songs, which I’m not ready for yet.

The next step up would be cartoons for young children (who can already talk). I found a Thai CG movie about some elephants on youtube. It’s looks pretty cool and it’s less than 2 hours long, so I’m going to give it a couple watches. My mom back home runs a daycare and the kids there often watch the same movies over and over again (Bugs’ Life, Aladdin, etc). I’m going to pretend I’m a little Thai kid.

By: thomas

thomas — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:06:39 +0000

@doviende: there are a lot of reasons. The main reason is I don’t want any English at all in the method. I can’t look up “banana” in a dictionary without English “banana”.

Another reason is I can’t read or write Thai, and I’m not familiar enough with the sounds of the language to make up my own transliterations. I think I know the word for telephone, and I could probably say something that sounds like it (I bet it wouldn’t be dead on though). But I have no idea how to spell it.

Another reason is that would be studying. Just watching TV is really relaxing and easy. There’s no stress. If I miss something, need to get up to grab a drink, no big deal. That’s a nice feature of the TV method. It doesn’t feel like studying at all. Looking up words and entering cards into Anki can be tedious. I know because I do it everyday with Japanese (I’m a supporter of that method!!) :) Besides, with the rate I’m going at, I’d be adding about 4 cards every week. That’s a lot of days with 0 cards due in Anki :).

Another reason is that this is an experiment. My primary goal is to test out the TV method. My secondary goal is to learn Thai. Maybe that will clear it up :). I don’t want to cheat and ruin my experiment.

100% aural immersion. That’s all it is.

By: Ramses

Ramses — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 08:19:45 +0000

@doviende
From a TV method standpoint, you shouldn’t do that. Still, the sentence method is all about doing exactly that, and it has proven to work perfectly. I normally don’t look up things from a book because I read mostly while traveling, but if you could, two – three words aren’t that bad. Just be sure to either look up an example sentence with the word (or several sentences) or copy the entire sentence from the book, and then enter it into Anki.

By: doviende

doviende — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:08:31 +0000

This is where i don’t quite understand the appeal of the tv-only method. Wouldn’t you now want to open up Anki and make some cards (perhaps with no english in them) for the words “banana”, “telephone”, and then maybe look up the other words you thought you almost had, and see if you were right?

seems to me that a little bit of force-feeding and reinforcement would go a long way toward accelerating your understanding. what if no one mentions bananas for the rest of the series? you probably want to be reminded by an SRS, imho.

this is what i’m trying to do with reading in german. I spend a certain amount of time reading with no dictionary, and i’m allowed to write down 2 or 3 words from every page that stand out, then later i review.

any thoughts?

By: Keith

Keith — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:04:08 +0000

Names are definitely harder to pick up on than one would expect, unless the language usually uses some kind of name-prefix or suffix like Japanese and you already know that. If not, you have no idea that a name is being spoken until after a while when it becomes obvious.

Object names are similar. I guess if we could, we might want to watch a ton of pre-school programs where they are teaching toddlers these things. But unfortunately, those programs aren’t usually sold and aren’t uploaded to YouTube, so you would either have to live in the country or ask someone who does to go through the trouble of recording and sending you the pre-school programs.