Returned Missionary Having Trouble Speaking English?

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by BigFatMeanie

Thai has five tones. Mandarin Chinese has four plus a non-tone type thing (I don't know the technical term for it). I don't know what Cantonese has. One thing that makes learning Thai easier than learning, say, Chinese is that Thai is alphabetic - 44 consonants and 32 vowel sounds. Unlike English, each vowel sound has it's own glyph (or distinct glyph combination). Thus, you can learn to read Thai fairly easily. The ability to read is a huge asset in building a vocabulary.

Tagalog was much more difficult for me to learn. I suppose part of the reason is that I didn't get to learn it in the MTC. Another reason is the complex grammar. Tagalog has the most complex conjugations of any language I've ever studied. Thai has exceedingly easy conjugation (basically none). The other factor that made learning Tagalog so difficult is the ability of most high-school educated Filipinos to speak reasonably decent English (English is one of the official national languages of the Philippines). It was always so easy to use the English word when the Tagalog word wasn't handy.

Mandarin has four and one half tones, with the half tone being a dead tone.

Cantonese has a seven and one half tones, or so some books say. They can't even agree on that.