Learning Language. Its all Thai to me.

Learning Thai is not easy.  I mean, it’s not Mandarin Chinese, but it’s not Spanish, either.  By that sentence, I mean that it’s not as hard as Chinese but it’s not as easy as Spanish.  To learn to read, write, and speak Chinese well, you’d need years to memorize literally thousands of characters just to be able to read a newspaper (according to Peter Hessler in his great book, Rivertown).  To learn to speak, read, and write Spanish well, you’d need about 2 weeks in a Mexican restaurant with a Spanish phrasebook, along with a willingness to attempt conversation with your server. 

Thai is tonal.  Thai is based on a completely different script.  Thai is somewhere in between the difficulty of Mandarin Chinese and the easiness of Spanish.  Pray for us as we learn this very different language.  Next month, I begin a pretty intensive conversation module with my long-time friend Dtoi (pronounce the 'Dt' together...there's an introduction to learning Thai for all you farang, which means 'foreigner'), which should be very helpful and a lot of fun as well.  Personally, I need a very focused, highly-interactive and conversational approach to learning language, and Dtoi is just the man for the job.
Here he is, by the way, in all his teaching-Thai splendor...