Listening and Following...

[praglen]

Where on-line can I hear Thais speaking with English translations so I can follow along?

[Tod-Daniels]

Thai is spoken in a similar grammatical structure as English (S-V-O) but there is quite a bit of difference as well. Often the “word-4-word” translation of the Thai comes out as nonsense in English if you don't put the words into correct English sentence structure. This sometimes makes following along word-4-word with the English not all that valuable of a thing to do.

That's also why, when you watch the Thai newscasts here in Thailand which have English voice-overs; there's always a "lag" between what the newscaster says in Thai and what the translator says in English. It's because the English translator hasta hear the entire sentence, sometimes even two sentences in order to be able to back-translate (or re-sequence) the Thai words into understandable contextual English.

Even "real" movies in Thai with English subtitles often "miss the mark" between what was said in Thai and what they put for the English in the subtitle. Pirated DVD's are even worse, although some of the English subtitles are way more fun to read than watching the movie itself, as they massacre what a Thai said with some really hilarious English subtitles.

There are TONZ of videos on YouTube which you can watch which will help you're Thai listening skills. You gotta search around for some of the better ones but they're on there somewhere, lol.

Good luck
Tod Daniels

[RaeNam]

Yeahyeah.. Haha..

It's better if you take it a challenge, watch these movies and videos WITHOUT english subtitles...