Debunked: 'Thai is the World's Most Complicated Writing System' Part 1
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 พ.ค. 2024
- There is one clip on TH-cam that has probably done more to destroy the spirit of people learning Thai than any other. 'The World's Most Complicated Writing System' (Thai) by TH-camr Xidnaf came out about 6 years ago and while at first the clip just frustrated me through its preposterous claims and deductions, I didn't think much of it.
Part 2 of this Clip is up now -
• Debunked Part 2: 'Thai...
Links to referenced clips / topics below.
Over the years however, I have heard soundbites from this clip used by many people as an excuse to justify giving up learning Thai because it's so 'complicated', 'complex', 'confounded', 'has no logical rhyme or reason' and a bunch of other baseless claims.
Last week I heard a bunch of these same, tired, false anecdotes about Thai again when someone was convincing themselves of why they shouldn't learn Thai (living here), that I thought I would put a response video together to this clip to debunk the key erroneous points that he brought up in his clip.
Turns out a lot of caca calls for a lot of responses, and so my response video took longer than anticipated - so I've broken it into two parts.
There might be a silver lining to Xidnaf posting his original clip - as now it's given me an opportunity to crystallise the entire writing system, tones, consonants, vowels etc into one (well two) compact(ish) clips. I hope that my response video here can be a tool for people learning Thai - and hopefully inspire people to dive head-first into learning Thai - AND the Thai script as it's a beautiful, logical, symmetrical system that fits the Thai language like a glove.
#Thailanguage #Thai #CrackingThaiFundamentals
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In this clip I refer to a few links -
My Clip on Hangul / Phags-pa / Sanskrit
• The Korean Han-gul Ind...
My TEDx talk on Chinese in Kuala Lumpur- linking the same system
• Stu Jay Raj TEDx ‘Leve...
'The King's Letters' - Korean movie on Hangul Script and links to Sanskrit
• Video
The original clip 'The World's Most Complicated Writing System' that I am responding to in this video :
• World's Most Complicat...
Thai has been a challenging language for me, but once I got past reading the alphabet, it opened up a floodgate of knowledge for me. My goal was to learn 3 new words per day, but I realistically learn more like 10-20. I casually practice 2 hours per day. My pronunciation is far from perfect at times, but as with all things, repetition and practice makes things better.
When I started learning to read and write Thai I was actually surprised that I found it easier than I thought I would! And I love it!
Im teaching myself Thai now, and I've learned many more writing systems previously in my life: many versions of Latin, Greek, Cyrillic (several variants as well), Hebrew, Arabic, Devanagari, Georgian, and a few others. None of them have challenged me as much as Thai!
I am thai คนไทยจ้าาาาา
Even i am thai i have to lern like 13 year to become standart not expert yet
It should be noted that in a later video, Xidnaf thoroughly corrected this video and basically said he was very uneducated on the Thai language when he made it
He puts "corrections" in the info box, but you can't correct sth. which is rotten to begin w.
@@riton349 Lol he just put out his opinion and people used it for the purpose not intended, and you guys think that it's not complicated and beautiful, and you put out your opinion. Is him putting his opinion out rotten? Then what you're doing is also rotten
@@theplutonimus Having an opinion is nice and great! But not when the opinion is phrased as if it's something that he researched and is educated enough on the topic, shared on a platform where people around the world, who might want to learn the language, get put off by it. His “opinion” isn't the rotten thing, the way he presents his lack of knowledge is
@@ikkue Based and true, Sorry for my lack of knowledge
Congrats on getting your voice back to such a good level. I'm pleased for you. I'm looking forward to part II.
Thanks Jim - I think for Part two I will rerecord some stuff. I didn't think the glitchy video from the camera would render through to the final clip. I'll have to swap cameras out and redo it.
same here
@@StuartJayRaj how did you get your voice back in the end?
Thanks for making this video! I remember seeing the one you did the commentary on a few years ago when I was researching conlangs. With Khmer being my second language, what he was saying didn't quite make sense, but it was scary enough that I put off learning Thai until I just started watching your material. Keep up the great work!
The stoicism shown in your last video about your vocal cord damage was truly inspirational, with the way you decided to view this as a positive and an exciting "linguistic challenge". I am so glad and amazed to hear the results of your efforts, and frankly your voice sounds perfect. Your vocal cords are my pick for 8th wonder of the world.
Ryan - thank you. It killed me not having my voice. Someone on Linked in (stranger) suggested I tried something called water therapy where water helps reduce pressure on my vocal cords while i strengthen them again with vocal exercises minimising damage. It seems to have worked.
Very happy to see you back, and the voice sounds good. Looking forward to part2. You and your book "Cracking Thai Fundamentals" really got me starting (and have more understanding) on Thai language. And I thank you for that. 👍🙏💙🇹🇭
Thanks Eric - part two is up.
ส่วนตัวคิดว่า ขึ้นอยู่กับว่า คนที่อธิบายมีความรู้หรือประสบการณ์(ของยูทปเบอร์)แต่ละคนเป็นแบบไหน มากน้อยแตกต่างกันไป เพราะคนที่มีพื้นฐานทางสัทศาสตร์ ย่อมรู้เข้าใจในภาษาต่างๆ ดีกว่าคนทั่วไปอยู่แล้วครับ ซึ่งคนที่คุณพูดถึง เขาพูดในประสบการณ์และตามความรู้ของเขา และเราก็ไม่แน่ใจว่าเขามีความชอบหรือถนัดทางภาษาแค่ไหนด้วยครับ
What is it about Thai language and culture that attracts such a community of students? I am 77 years old and have studied Thai since the age of 25. That is 52 years. Why do I study this language a couple of hours a day? What do I get from it? I did get to go to Thailand for a month to teach a manual skill (horseshoeing and blacksmithing) in That and had no difficulty communicating to my students. We travelled all over southern Thailand for a month shoeing horses and improving my Thai language. I was able to communicate in Thai language and teach my non English speaking students with no difficulty. There is a girl named New here on TH-cam who is teaching Thai language. She is the best teacher of ANY language I have ever seen. Anyway, happy studying to all of you Thai language enthusiasts.
Thank u actually!! I have been so afraid to start to learn thai because I saw that video a long time ago and that stuck in my mind that it would be super difficult. I am studying japanese and chinese now but I am always getting back with my desire to learn thai. I am still getting the hang of chinese going to intermediate right now and as soon I feel more comfortable with chinese, I think I will start learning the thai script slowly to put thai in my language learning routine in 2022!!
This video was SO enlightening... I was super discouraged after watching that video but you really manage to motivate learners. Pls upload more on Thai!!
Stu, you're amazing. I'm going to buy your Cracking Thai Fundamentals.
Do I need both the online and the book version ?
They both serve different purposes. The book is something you can keep going back to.
Ajarn. Jay, now I am listening to the excerpt of your VDO, talking about King Ram Khamhaeng (Pho Khun Ram Khamhaeng for Thais). I really respect you for your truly understand Tai Thai, and Thai culture. Love you.
Hey Stu! So glad your voice is so much better! Kept fingers crossed for you! I am buying your book and soon I will sign up for the online course.
Brilliant. If there's anything you'd like me to cover, let me know.
@@StuartJayRaj I think your courses and book covers everything. However the farang thai and real thai comparisons are always fun. How to speak like real Thai, and not with the common farang errors or farang Thai. What those common errors are. I think also the traditional "old" Thai, let's say 50-80 years back was more clearly (stronger) pronounced compared to the modern one. Btw I know your student from the Thai challenge video. Richard 😉. We are from the same country. He recommended you. ☺️ boy he was right. Ur a genius.
I don't know man, your explanations actually make me feel that the writing system is more complicated than it should be.
If you're a Vietnamese speaker - maybe this will simplify it th-cam.com/video/WUoJ6cyzYBo/w-d-xo.html
i learnt thai aksorn for more than 3 months, and honestly when you learn something it WILL OBVIOUSLY be hard.
but overtime, the more i learn thai starting to be reaaaaaally easy. i love learning thai!
Yeah - once you get it, you get it.
The Thai alphabetical system is pretty close to that of Javanese. You’re Indonesian, I guess.
I dunno……I’ve been speaking, reading, and writing Thai all my life and have had formal Thai classes for >14 years and haven’t really mastered it. There are so many nuances and exceptions in addition to being an incredibly tonal and honorific-oriented. But you know, learners need to start somewhere and it’s never a good idea to start out being intimidated. It’s awesome that people want to learn but be prepared that it could take a lifetime for someone to be proficient in Thai and to not give up.
Sound like an excuse to me. People grew up not caring about honorifics all the time.
@@wjameszzz Honorifics, the awareness of the relationship between speakers, and the level of politeness are some of the most fundamental elements of conversational Thai though. It is so hardwired into our brains when growing up speaking Thai so sometimes we forget that we have these critical mechanisms built into our brains and those are parts of what makes a native speaker sounds like they actually grew up speaking Thai.
@@peerah I'm sorry dude but this speak a lot about your upper middle-class social circle than the language itself. Especially the last two points you've mentioned. I used to live in rural Southern Thailand and the way they speak to someone "higher ups" (especially in their dialect) is considered "harsh" by Bangkok standards.
@@wjameszzz Good point. Of course the socioeconomic status plays a role in how people speak a language especially when it comes to regional dialects. I guess if someone were to learn to speak a language as a second language most people would probably want to start with the so-called "standard" or Central Thai which would probably resemble the Thai that we native speaker kids had to learn in school.
Has it occured to you that perhaps you are problem and not teaching...a bit slow between the ears.
I really like how you teach how to think about the language before learning it. My Spanish is permanently stunted because I learned it in a traditional way where it's like you have an idea in English, you apply the Spanish "function" to it, and get a Spanish sentence. Except it isn't really Spanish even if it is grammatical, it is Spanglish. I wish I had gone into learning Spanish with a better understanding of the characteristics of the Romance languages and how to think as though I am latino.
Conversely, you teach a framework for understanding how to think about a language, over which we can hang vocabulary and grammar atop. To me this is a much superior approach.
Glad to see that your voice is back!
Thanks pablo! - I'm so happy it's back too.
Excellent video! I'm excited for part 2
Part two is up
I literally watched that clip like a month ago but it somehow made want to learn Thai more. "Why?" you may ask. Simple, coz i love that challenge.
But i am still holding of on learning to write and read Thai, cause I already have my hands full with Kanji.
Me too. I am a big fan of Xidnaf and he doesn't deserve this much hate. I get that this guy is offended because Xidnaf says how crazy the Thai writing system is. But it's a linguistics channel dammit! And in linguistics we love all extremes. Super easy, super difficult, super normal. We love it all. Having your language/writing system being mentioned on a linguistics TH-cam channel is always amazing. Whatever the maker's opinion! People who watch those video's will always get more intrested in the language. And if they get turned off? Please, you wouldn't want those people in your class in the first place.
That's the reason Xidnaf ended with this: A language can be beautiful because of how easy it is, but it can also be beautiful in how complex it is.
Xidnaf may not have done enough research on Thai. But the maker of this video clearly doesn't know the vibe of linguistics video's. And now he is making people hate Xidnaf. Even though we, amateur-linguists, are ranting about how stupid our own language is all the time!
He's doing what he hates about Xidnaf and it makes me very sad because THIS GUY is putting people off from watching TH-cam channels like Xidnaf and Nativlang who did a similar video about Tibetan showing that language is even more extreme (al though he also made some video's talking about Japanese, highly recommend those for you ;) ). This guy is making people less enthusiastic in linguistics. :(
Concluding my little rant, we, amateur-linguistics, are joking about how stupid languages can be all the time but also have great respect for everyone because we know all about all these obscure languages. Because the less known ones are actually usually the coolest.
@@TikoVerhelst Nice rant
I honestly can't agree more, and I would comment where his aggressive (and completely unnecessary) retaliation comes from but I'd rather not.
It's Videos like the one that this guy made, that cause a lot of linguistics TH-camrs to abstain from the internet. In fact, I'm pretty sure that this video contributed massively towards Xidnaf not posting that many videos lately.
It's easy for people to think "hahaha, debunked", but that's just missing the point of the video, and more importantly the intent behind it. If indeed someone is so easily dissuaded from learn Thai by a video like that of Xidnaf's, then obviously there true interest was not in learning Thai but simply in learning an easy language. So it is indeed best that they were dissuade.
By the way, I can't help but notice how German your surname sounds. Bist du Deutsche?
I just watched that video and it made my "hmm maybe I should learn Thai" go to "THIS IS AMAZING! I WANNA LEARN THIS!" And has me very fascinated in learning more about the history of the Thai writing system
Selfishly, I am happy your voice has returned. congratulations and keep up your great work that benefits us all.
Thank you!
@@StuartJayRaj please can you tell me if you did vocal exercises?
How did you get your voice back? Amazing
Maybe it's symmetrical, logical and uncomplicated for linguists who understand its patterns, history, and intricacies in depth.
I, for myself, am finding it difficult to find the patterns and logic. I'm no stranger to language learning, having learned to read, write, and speak Chinese and Japanese, among others. Still, I find Thai perplexing. Not saying this to disparage the video (I quite liked it and it did open my eyes to some new ideas) or the language, just saying that for a new learner of the language there is a lot to keep track of and it hasn't exactly clicked as nicely as I imagined it would. Still, gonna keep at it! Thanks for sharing the excellent information.
I feel like it is the most complicated though, I've learned japanese, Russian, chinese, and korean and recently started learning thai and thai is definitely on another level completely. I can read the letters, but it took me almost a full month just to get there. But I didn't let myself get discouraged, I want to practice muay thai there next year 👊
oh my god you actually just saved my life with the way you explained abugidas
wait wait wait.... are you saying Thai writing is a 2 dimensional representation of 3 dimensional writing?!!
glad to hear you have recovered your voice, congrats
Thank you! It feels so good to have it back ... though there are a few gaps in it, for all intents and purposes, it's back.
This idea of frames of vowels for these types of languages *really* helped.
Complicated? I guess he hasn’t seen the Mongolian script which is vertically written. The Japanese various scripts combined to form sentences. Then there’s the Chữ Nôm which is Chinese script but with Vietnamese language rules. All these scripts are beautiful but are complex in their own right. Now Thai I have to admit it was totally complicated on day 1 but after a few days I was able to recognize the patterns and identifying vowels tones as those were very foreign to me. Now almost a month later, I don’t find it that complicated. Don’t get me wrong it is a challenge. That guy probably is accustom to a certain type of language rule that doesn’t align with the Thai language structure. Thanks for commenting on his video, it was insightful. 👍🏽🙏🏼
Whoever said 'Thai is the World's Most Complicated Writing System' obviously don't know the existence of Japanese script.
Or Tibetan
Basic to build word. 1leader 2voweler 3speller (sometime none)
Example 1ย 2า 3ก =ยาก (hard)
1and 3 are consonant and add tone more
I am utterly fascinated with your channel. I am studying Chinese (simplified characters) at the moment and I like to have you as an access and beyond into the world of southeast asian languages.
I love learning scripts as well. I learned devanagari and Tamil for example. The exact same way that you are pissed about the depiction this guys makes about the Thai abugida, that's how I despise the statement that Tamil has 247 letters or so. I shit you not 😂
I really don't think the 3D modeling makes it any cheaper. It's not conceptually complicated to start with the consonant then find the vowel and tone marker (then keep going right to any end consonant). The difficulty is in getting your brain to recognize syllables in something other than a straight horizontal left-to-right block of letters.
I've learned various scripts just for fun. I noticed a key difference when trying to learn to read any system that creates syllable blocks. Korean's Hanguel, ror example.
If you are a Latin alphabet native user, learning another alphabet (say Cryrllic) is like getting a new car from a different manfacturer. But going from languages that use alphabets to abugidas or alpha-syllaberies is a bit more like getting out of your car and learning to drive a motorcycle.
I loved this, thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it
The thing that's off-putting is the number of letters where the Roman version, and for all I can tell the sound, is the same. How many Ks do we have? And the number of times the Thais will represent a sound as K or G, D or T, depending (it seems) on how the mood takes them.
my jaw HIT the floor when he said the kings name like that. the arrogance is insane!!
i am in awe truly..
Watching the original video, I didn't think much of it, but now looking back, it was actually a factor in me not trying to learn Thai. At the time I was trying to learn to read Lao, and it wasn't too difficult imo, if I had to describe it, it's like a vowel "wearing" (clothes)consonants. (It's been awhile, I might have that backwards.) but I'm pretty sure Lao and Thai reading is similar.
We kndia raed lkie taht arelday atcaluly, the placement doesn't matter as much as the first/last symbols and the whole.
Edit: grammar
Actually, now I'm learning akson Thai, how surprised I am, since I'm Javanese, we have similar way to pronounce the consonant either in Javanese or in Thai.
Glad you're doing better!
Thanks Sean.
you know
i speak thai and write in thai for all my life
still cannot recite all 44 alphabets...
maybe skill issue...
10:45 ....In Tamil, one of the Indian languages, Consonents and Vovels are literally called "flesh letters" and "life letters"....accurate lol
อุรารานร้าวแยก ยลสยบ
เอนพระองค์ลงทบ ท่าวดิ้น
ซอนซบคาคอคช สังเวช
วายชีวาวาตม์สุดสิ้น สู่ฟ้า เสวยสวรรค์
This is the most beautiful text to depict a man has been slashed to be death ever.(King Naresuan the Great defeat King of Burmese kingdom in the elephant duel)
ภาษาเขียนของไทยคือมหาโคตรของความยากและท้าทายของจริง5555
Thank you Mr. Raj for finally destroying that awful video! I had to really see what was so difficult about reading/writing Thai but it is surprisingly easy, especially if you read Khmer or Lao.
I never actually thought about the writing systems in 3-D mapping of sounds to consonants in abugidas that’s so cool. You ought to make a video to expand that teaching concept! It just made me realize the shape of vowels were not random.
You’re being much too hard on Xidnaf, no matter how factually wrong he is about the writing system. The only one I see speaking with arrogance and hubris here is you. His video did not deter me from learning, but yours certainly has. Consider your goals next time you want to be pompous online
😂 Thank you - said with such passion. If what I said deterred you from learning the language, I suspect you wouldn't have probably learnt it anyway.
"Don't fear Thai, my friend!"
- NativLang
The idea that one Chinese character is one word has been a particularly frustrating one. Many students get months into learning before realizing their ideas on how hanzi/kanji work don’t line up. The fact that 90% of Chinese characters are 形聲字 (partially phonetic element based) shows that.
I’m in a Taiwanese Uni. We had a semester of Thai in university taught in Chinese by a Thai teacher. I had a terrible experience with this class - the teacher had us memorize paragraphs but we hadn’t learned the words or elements in it. It was a class where we had to rely on asking Thai classmates from other classes to explain and answer questions. Naturally, they aren’t our teachers but classmates and that frustrated both parties. Is Thai the hardest language or hardest writing system? I don’t know, that’s hyperbolic to say I would think. But damn, that was the worst language experience I have had.
Hopefully more teachers of Thai are fantastic and not like my teacher. :)
Awesome, Thank you!
😀
hello I am seeing a thai lady and her name has 2 silent letters after the final ma ma (to thahan and ra rua) at the end of his surname. According to her those need to be pronounced too but all silently yet they still make a difference. So reading out words can be tricky sometimes.
The general rule is no consonant clusters - so the first final consonant usually wins - the rest silent. There are exceptions (with logical explanations why they're exceptions). Would have to see the actual spelling.
@@StuartJayRajbecause I know that thai surnames are mostly unique and therefore easily trackeable I will share the name only without the first syllable: มินทร์
Claiming that a writing system is nice and logical and then using 3D models to justify the claim is just on a completely different level of irony😂
What do you thing IS the most complex system? I heard some claims for Tibetan being the one. As for Chinese, that dude in the original video probably doesn't know about 多音字，with the character 和 having 6 readings if I'm not mistaken, also I heard Japanese is even more complex in this aspect. One big routine in language learning Chinese students have to do in school is precisely figuring out the rare pronunciation of certain characters, one example that comes to mind is 窗明几净，where character 几 is nowadays only used to mean "a few" with the reading of ji3, while in this expression it means "table" with the pronunciation ji1. Again, this is a BIG part in any language test at school.
As a korean, I will say that it's unique for being able to combine consonants and vowels to form syllables. But it's a well known fact that the king and his scholars were combining and comparing different writing systems derived from sanskrit. The thing that makes it unique is the fact that we are the only version that isn't a syllabary, we are consonants and vowels that need to be combined. This allows us to spell out pretty much anything that isn't korean and still get really close to the actual sound. And we use this fact to spread hangul to villages that doesn't have their own writing system. It's way more accurate than romanized spelling and we don't need dumb accent marks. That's what I think makes hangul unique.
I love hangeul but combining consonants and vowels to combine syllables is the very definition of the alphabetic principle. Making syllables out of consonants and vowels in true alphabetic fashion has been going on since Ancient Greek. It is not unique to hangeul. Of course Ancient Greek writing also stands on the shoulders of earlier scripts such as Phoenician.
You are probably referring to the way hangeul delineates where syllables supposedly start and stop and does this in a striking visual way. I also think that this is an awesome feature, but the place where the "syllables" start and stop in theory is often not actually the place where they start and stop during speech. Once the "syllables" combine to form spoken syllables in speech their beginnings and endings are in differentplaces. When I say 갈 the ㄹ sound is actually not the same as the ㄹ sound in 갈아앉다 or 가라. The second two are alveolar taps whereas the first one is not an alveolar tap. If I say the ㄹ at the end of the 갈 in 갈아앉다 the way I would say the ㄹ in the 갈 in 갈 놈은 가라, I'm sure this would sound strange to Koreans. If anything, The fact that 갈아 (from 갈아앉다) and 가라앉다 are written with ㄹ appearing to belong to the first syllable in the first example when it in fact belongs to the second syllable demonstrates my example.
From a purely phonetic/phonemic point of view, I don't believe that hangeul is superior to a purely alphabetic system that doesn't falsely claim to delineate syllables unless we change the spelling of words like 갈아앉다 to 가라앉다 (not to mention the 앉다 bit...). Of course I'm talking about well applied examples of the alphabetic principle (not the alphabet as applied to English).
To me the real beauty of hangeul is that we can combine vowels and phonemes to form one visual unit that corresponds exactly to an individual Chinese character. 조선 = 朝鮮。Perhaps this could be the real reason Sejong and his scholars really wanted to show "syllables. " Korea in mixed script (hanja + hangeul together) works very well.
As for using hangeul to writing another language such as the language of some people in Indonesia, I would think it's a very bad idea unless you modify the hangeul somewhat to suit that language. At that point it would no longer be hangeul. 웬 아이 라이트 잉글리시 인 코리안, 이트 다즈 넛 사운드 더 세임.
@@skipinkoreaable ok, i agree with it not being unique in the way there are consonants and vowels. but as a system derived from sanskrit, it's unique because it is written the way it is. we don't need "hush strokes" to not sound the vowel and we use the same concept as other systems that shows us where in our mouths we get the sound from. i agree with the ㄹ thing you mentioned but that sort of proves my point that we can still sound pretty much everything. but we tend to forget that we can make sounds that we don't use in our daily conversations. if we were to bring back older spelling, you will see that ㄹ+ㅇ is rhotic R and ㄹ+ㄹ is L. we also have an AU sound (c"au"tion) with 아래아 (ㆍ), ㅂ+ㅇ is F or PH, soft h with 여린히읗(ㆆ), hard H or HH or -GH with ㅎ+ㅎ, ㅃ+ㅇ is V, ng in the beginning can use 옛이응 (ㆁhas a stroke on top of the circle), Z is 반시옷 (ㅿ). so you can't just write "웬 아이 라이트 잉글리시 인 코리안, 이트 다즈 넛 사운드 더 세임" to prove your point. you can't just write 이트 for "it", you need to use a more logical way of spelling it and not how they teach it. 이트 would be 잍 or 잇 for "it" and 트 just adds an unnecessary vowel to the word. you wouldn't say "iteu" or "itu" in english. to differentiate "it" from "eat" i would use 잇 or 잍 and 이잇 or 이잍. you see what i mean? this is exactly why koreans struggle to learn english in the beginning. and if you start to use the lost spelling and letters, it's actually more useful than you think it is. i didn't list every sound you can make but all of them exist in 한글. to be more accurate, let's say they exist in 훈민정음 which is where 한글 originates from. we also had 방점 which are dots next to the syllable to show tones. yes, we used to use tones and in fact, we can still hear them in 경상도. all of these facts combined, i will say that 한글 is way better suited for us to spell pretty much anything. and just because it's used in a different country, doesn't make it no longer 한글, it's simply no longer 한국어. that's like saying because we use latin alphabets in vietnam, it's no longer, written in latin letters. there's something very wrong with that statement. i don't want people to get the wrong impression of my previous comment. this is to emphasize what i am saying.
@@skipinkoreaable i think sejong would be proud that we were able to share our writing system to save languages that are endangered. after all, he made it for us to be able to express our thoughts in writing. and we have ways of modifying the writing within our writing from the past. why not use them the way they were meant to be used? in my opinion, our current 한국어 lost so many things that were once common. so we forgot we had ways to make those sounds and we no longer use them in 한글. bringing them back would only improve the way we speak.
@@maxkim7937 Thanks for giving me a sincere and well-considered reply. I will read that again later and try to give it a worthy response.
@@skipinkoreaable just curious, where are you from? i couldn't figure it out from your name. i want to know where korean is reaching nowadays.
How do you pronounce the Vietnam name NYUGEN
Do you mean nguyen
I would consider Tibetian as most complicated writings system. Thai is pretty logical, i think there is really a 1:1 mapping from written to sound. At least when pinthu is used, also longer words are unambiguous.
I find Tibetan similar to Burmese in that the actual phonology isn't directly apparent from the traditional letter sounds. Once the patterns are learnt though - like say learning French for an Italian speaker, the the sound / orthography is fairly consistent.
@@StuartJayRaj That was my impression with Tibetan too, though I didn't get far. Apparently Lhasa (Ü-Tsang) Tibetan's phonology has changed radically but the spelling is very conservative. I once had a friend from Qinghai who told me that the writing is much closer spoken Amdo Tibetan. Polish is another example like French where the spelling is confusing if you don't know it and compare it to your own language but is actually very consistent and logical when you learn it, if you can (-:
@@StuartJayRaj They came from Tibeto Burman language family. Difference might be on the script. Spelling is also a challenge to Tibetan language and other language that uses the same script(Bhutanese, Ladakhi for example).
I already bought your book!
Thank you!
Ajarn Jay, You are the creator of spatial linguistics. 🙏🙏🙏
What a brilliant video! I can't stand those types of videos whose aim is to show "how complex / confusing" a new language can be, to the point of making them seem impenetrable, which puts a lot of people off learning and discovering a new language. What's worse, as you've thoroughly demonstrated, is that they are usually based on very little fact or first hand experience with the language.
Great content man! Recently found your channel and really enjoying your videos! :D
Before you bad mouth Xidnaf you should consider watching his video first instead of twating about about something you don't know kak about or have any context for
😂😂😂
@@nduduzoblose4355 Why do you keep coming back to this clip? I saw that you commented here 2 and 1 years ago and this one is just 10 hours ago. I also followed Xidnaf when he was still active. His clips was fun to watch but I thought his content wasn't very accurate, not only the Thai clip, but also other clips on Chinese, Abugida, etc, for example.
I love how you commented on the Chinese / Japanese Han characters..... As someone dealing with Japanese, I will straight up say... From a Japanese writing system experience. Japanese has three sounds on average for one kanji, with two concepts.
What really destroys the desire is the expectation that a Thai person would help you to learn the language.
So Stuart from 1 to 10 how complicated is thai writing?
8
I think around a 3 to 4
Its not difficult really.. 2 hours a day and within a month you'll be able to write out basic sentences..
Velkommen tilbage!! 😄👍
Tusind tak! Det føles rigtig godt at komme tilbage
Stuart is so mad that he wouldn't even bother making a high FPS video
I've been trying to find out forever why the made-in-Thailand (or perhaps Cambodia) ต, ฏ are often used to write Indic words with original unaspirated plosives, rather than the original Indic graph equivalents ด, ฎ. Still no completely satisfactory answer despite reading a lot of the literature (Ferlus, Gedney, ...)
I follow from the video pronouncing the Thai city names which is, by the way, amazing. But this video, somehow, you tried to attack the mentioned video and you described it in your point of view, ex. the mentioned video made a comparison between Thai alphabets and Chinese alphabets, 5.47 he just pointed it out that one character is one word and it's true, of course, it may require 2 characters for another word but only 1 character it has its own meaning even the Korean or Japanese can guess that meaning of that 1 character, but it doesn't work like that for Thai, we have to combine the alphabet with a vowel and another alphabet(for many words) which we called "ตัวสะกด" and for this point, it is very clear to make people see the differences.
And for 7.27 you said that he made people confused about the display of the Thai alphabet and it's harder to learn, so I have to tell you that every Thai learned the alphabet from the left side, not the right side that you tried to categorize them. In your perspective it may be easier to learn that way, I don't know, but for Thais, we learned from the left way.
For the 3D part, I got lost, I tried to catch up but I see no point in the 3D system that you illustrated. Personally, I don't think normal people, anyone, would learn a language by digging too deep for the 3D of one word. Normal people will lose their faith in learning since day 1, if I try to explain this system to them.
For 17.34, The "ไม้ไต่คู้" part is ok, it's a vowel, it's not what we call them "วรรณยุกต์" which indicated the tone of each word but the context he tried to explain was correct. But I have to point it out that "ไม้ไต่คู้" is not a vowel shortener that turns long sound to short sound from เอ to เอะ or something like that. It's just a vowel. There's nowhere in Thai that indicates that you can use this symbol to substitute with another vowel. If you want to use เอม it has to be เอ only, and เอะ has to be เอะ not เอ็=เอะ something like that and we use for a specific word such as เป็น as you described for เปน itself has no meaning unless it attaches with another part i.e. สเปน so, in this case, it becomes Spain, still it has no involvement with your shorten sound rule.
For 18.24 I don't think any Thai would think that he made fun or disrespect พ่อขุนราม because we understand that foreigners cannot pronounce the Thai word clearly, it happens every day. You are able to pronounce the word correctly, it doesn't mean that people who cannot pronounce the word correctly like you do, they have the intention of being disrespectful or making fun. I cannot pronounce so many English words, do I disrespect the English also? No, of course not, it's because it's very hard to pronounce it. And for that PH sound we do have a lot in Thai which I try to teach my student to use it but they just never listen to me, however, it can happen for foreigners to mispronounce the word, right?
And the rest is just like that.
So in summary, I'd like to say that language is just a communication device. The purpose of language is to use it to communicate with people. So don't use it as a weapon to attack anyone.
You may know things more than someone, but it doesn't make you superior to someone or anyone.
I suspect you've totally missed the point of this video and suggest you rewatch it after having watched my latest video ความมหัศจรรย์ของภาษาไท
It's ok. If you think that I missed the point, it's obvious that you just ignore my opinion. I apologize for intruding into your space then.
@@MinhoNichkhun on the contrary. I read very carefully everything that you mentioned and I think that the clip I just put out goes a long way to answer many of the questions or points you discussed. With that as a backdrop then coming back to watch this clip, this clip will make even more sense.
I totally agree - as a teacher in Thailand learning Thai in written form seriously helped my learning - was it easy - no because I had a western view of language- first thing to learn it’s not a western language and yes it’s different, it’s not English and the sounds are different but like anything if you want to learn it you can. Don’t give up, your Thai will be far more natural and the Thai people want to help you. Open your mouth speak Thai and enjoy this beautiful language.
I learned the Thai "alphabet" by brute force when I was living on Khao San Road after my wallet had been stolen and I was living on credit in the cheapest hotel there. (highly recommended). Then I was like- "let's write some words now- oh darn, I don't know any vowels...
ผมว่าระบบอักษรไทยก็ยากตามที่คลิปบอกจริงๆนั้นเเหละครับ ผมว่าคนไทยส่วนใหญ่ไม่ได้สนใจหรอก ใครอยากเรียนก็เรียน ใครไม่อยากเรียนก็ไม่ต้องเรียน คนไทยไม่ได้สนใจอยู่เเล้ว เรียนภาษาอังกฤษเป็นสิ่งที่ดีที่สุดเเล้วเพราะสื่อสารกันได้ทั่วโลก
Stuart, this is a great presentation, but I have to admit being confused by your comment that Chinese contains tone markings and is easy to learn (you mention pinyin but I think we both know that it was invented precisely because pronunciation is not carried well by 字 and it requires many many more hours of learning for Chinese kids)
Thai is undoubtedly complicated but once I got it down Thai was so much easier plus it’s a gorgeous writing system, country and language that isn’t accessible in the same way without knowing it. Just learn it in the correct order and it’ll be fine. Also, I disagree that it’s the most complicated script. Just seeing the scripts of Thais neighbors Burmese and Khmer then trying to learn a little, they are much harder in my opinion. Then I’m sure other offshoots of Sanskrit in India have very complicated scripts too. They’re all learnable but in my opinion Thai is not the most difficult among them.
Hello from Thailand!
Ok, but what is the hardest writing system for you? At least nativlang laid out his own candidate for hardest writing system.
This is the correct way to learn Thai. So many Thai people (nowaday) don't know this.
Thai letters move, I'm legitimately dyslexic in Thai. I have no problem with Mandarin(lots of symbols), Dutch(most dyslexic language in the world), English(my native language), heck even Uriovakiro isn't hard to read. But Thai looks like it's running off the page, the letters always look to small even at size 72 font.
Thai glitches my brain I don't care what you say. It takes me 30 seconds to read a single word and I could easily tell you each symbol letter-by-letter. I hate it.
Ajarn Jay, you are not poly polyglot but you are also poly-linguist. 👍👍👍👍👍👍😀😀😀
What's up with the video framing so hard?
I read that most adult Chinese have trouble writing without computerised help as they cant remember every stroke of a character. Its a huge problem as many Chinese are forgetting how to write. Its inaccurate to say a small child has no problem with the alphabet. The Chinese writing system It puts immense pressure on children to learn the 4,500 characters they are expected to memorise by the end of high school. Also the Vietnamese alphabet was adopted across the country because for that very reason it was easier to learn and it improved literacy in the country. I get your point about the Thai language but your getting carried away with your explanation.
that's just not true. The immense pressure you mention is not there. It's a very natural learning process that has resulted in extremely high literacy rates. character recognition is extremely high. the issue that you mentioned here is actually more to do with the fact that these days we use mobile devices and input devices to type characters using pinion so while people will know the exact character that they need the muscle memory isn't really there. it's not an issue of not knowing the characters though. the whole system is a very different paradigm from the English or european writing systems and can't really be compared. I'm not sure what you mean at the end. I think I give a very concise description.
@@StuartJayRajDo mean you mean an alphabet paradigm or Latin alphabet paradigm. I'm assuming you mean Latin based writing system as opposed to European. Not all European use Latin alphabet and not only Europeans use Latin writing system. About 70% of the world use the Latin alphabet.
@@StuartJayRaj I don't know, my ex wife and all my Chinese friends have told something completely different about their experience learning Chinese in mainland China. Far from being a natural process and more rigorous continuous memorisation drills. Literacy rates are also very misleading. You only need to know around 900 characters to considered literate, but is far from making you fully functioning. You need to know at least 3,000 characters to read a newspaper and read government information and material.
sono contento che ti sia tornata la voce 😉
Grazie!
Hangeul is easy, but not as easy as people think. There are many batchim rules that dont follow the spelling. Besidess that, there also many words dont follow the spelling, but just based on custom. Such as Hangukmal is pronounced as Hangungmal. Kamsahabnida, is pronounced as Kamsahamnida...
None of those sound like issues with Hangul as a writing system, but rather issues with the orthography of the Korean language. It's natural that languages change over time and that eventually the pronunciation of words will deviate from their spelling. This is true in every language. That doesn't mean Hangul isn't the easiest writing system. It is.
I dont know anything about thai but you do seem to make it less scary
this man is so delusional. he thinks calling a writung system hard is some sort of propaganda. he also pretends everything is so much more simpler than it is. no sorting consonants into a grid doesn't make thai easy, i might male it easier but it still has the complexities of most writing systems. and no, as i can confirm from people who can write abugidas, glyphs aren't writen in 3d. devinagari is a beuatiful script and abugida that can be read but with relative ease and that is not the problem xidnaf and most people draw from thai. it is instaid that fact that because of so many sound changes it can be very hard to fully determine pronounciation from how it is writen.
in my oppinion, the main people learn thai is because of its alphebet and i would bet xidnafs video has inspired many more people to learn thai than it had discouraged.
aditionaly, i may add, that his way of thinking of vowels has being in front of the consonant actualy more so reflects a western nature to always consider the vowel as following the consoant and his constant need to want to reinvent how people learn thai almost presents as a white saviour complex
The “X” is pronounced like a Z
y'all ran Xid off yt
oh yes i love seeing the TRUE linguistic ppl arguing
the 5:07 is so relatable lmaoo 🤣🤣
Thank you for speaking out for the Thai writing system, your passion and love for the language really shows. I agree with you, the Thai writing system is really fascinating and beautiful. I've actually never learnt a language written in abugida although I now understand the concept, I think abugida is fun, it trains the brain to think differently. Good illustration there! Everyone is entitled to think of a language being easy or difficult for them but they have no right to destroy a language's reputation and discourage others from learning it just because the language doesn't follow their native language patterns.
If I have to pick an abugida scripted language, Thai would definitely be my choice since it's been in my mind for awhile. It also helps me understand how the Tamil alphabet/abugida works too.
I like to think of the consonant-vowel formation as different individuals with their kids or companion with them, all in one place, some have it to the right, some have it to the left some have it in front (like a kid in escorting a kid) and some above (kid a parent raises a kid up) and some have it left and right (like parent with two or more kids). That's like a beautiful picture of parent-kid relationship. Alphabets are just every man to himself and everyone facing only one direction.
In a way, it's like an abjad with diacritics since I speak Hebrew, except abjads don't have diacritics before consonants, and since I'm Chinese, I love to picture pictures in writing systems.
17:16
this confused me so much
i have thought my whole life that that was a tone marker for some reason
อารายคับ เ นี ย ร์ :{ ????
I love your videos and find them extremely helpful, even the one on how to date a Thai woman lol. I agree that Thai is an amazing language that I find fascinating and beautiful. Challenging yes, but well worth it and very satisfying as I learn more and more. And you're right, the system makes total sense once you learn what's going on. Could you please do a video an the aw-ang placeholder versus the sara awww vowel. I think a lot of us beginners find this a little strange, especially when trying to read. Thank you so much for everything, Mark
First five (5) seconds of hearing that dude talk explained everything lol ;)
I learned Thai. It is not complicated, only a fair bit more extensive than English!
Your face in the intro really lags,also I’m Thai and I know they’re really hard even though I’m Thai I failed Thai exam so Thai is hard for me too💁🏻♀️
Tibetan joined the chat
complicate เพราะ โครงสร้างประโยคไทยดั้งเดิมเป็นแบบจ้วง แต่รับอิทธิพลภาษา เขมร มอญ อินเดีย หลังๆก็ตะวันตกเข้ามาอีก
That style of camp fast-talking has got to be compensating for something.
:)
Of all the people in the world, if you don't know how to pronounce this posters name then no one can 🤣
Seriously. I had the same beliefs about the difficulty of the Thai language before I embarked on learning it. I am sure I developed this belief from social media & farangs who were too lazy or afraid to put the effort into learning the language, so it is easier to justify this failing by simply classifying it as the most difficult to learn.
So.... What's the World's Most Complicated Writing System????
Many experts agree that it's Japanese because along with thousands of characters there are two syllabaries which means more than one way to write words, coupled with a lot more homonyms than in most languages and each kanji having at least two unrelated pronunciations.
But some extinct writing systems like Mayan and Egyptian hieroglyphs are complicated, and some lost ones influenced by but not related to Chinese, such as Khitan, are complicated and not yet understood.
I would agree
NativLang did a video on this in his channel. The most complicated script seems to be Tibetan. Which I agreed his points.
Your style of teaching is unique, and this focus on sounds and mouth shapes obviously really works for some people. For me though it just makes everything way more confusing. It’s interesting academically, but doesn’t help me with learning the language, personally.
This clip in particular was responding to the notion that Thai is a complicated writing system. The system has a direct correlation to the mouth and sounds.. and to es etc, so was what I focused on here. For me successful language learning is about developing prosody. Ultimately,that's all about sound and rhythm
The dude is entitled to his opinion, but I understand Stuart's frustration and annoyance. However, let's step back and not forget how difficult and what F@cked up languauge English is: The many rules and exceptions, and how do you say or pronounce Bow? or Blessed? Each languauge can take a lifetime to really master and each one has it's beauty.
Funny how actually Xidnaf's video made me want to LEARN thai before I had ever even considered it.
You say it is hard? Bet!
Same thing why i plays Draven as AD Carry in League
Hi Stuart,your right..this kind of negative people you have in any event,just concentrate on the positive people,you are doing great... i am dutch,life in the Netherlands and learning my Thai from you,and other positive people,also can read and write (with many mistakes) Thai and love to see a positive guy like Paddy,..ok maybe hi language is not 100 % but he is rediating positivity.....thanks for your efforts !!
Yes! I've watched that video and have always hated it.