Teach Yourself Thai Language & Have Fun Learning It!
Certain subjects require a level of seriousness to learn, but when it comes to Teaching Yourself Thai it is the fun factor that matters most. The vast majority of adult language learners quit after a few weeks or months out of boredom or because they find the language too difficult. This is not the case though when Thai language learners supplement their study with LivingHour.org. Having fun is where our easy Thai language books outshine all others. Our Learning Thai e-books and books are filled with material that you will have fun learning from and enjoy using. Fun isn’t the only reason why our Thai language books are so...
Easy Thai-English Cognate Dictionary: Learn Thai Fast!
The Original Thai-English Language Cognate Dictionary & Learning Tool is loaded with entertaining easy Thai sample sentences and figurative + literal English translations that will quickly get you speaking the Thai language more like a native speaker and less like a tourist. Available now in paperback, eBook, and a workbook version for Thailand residents. There are a lot of Thai Dictionaries and phrasebooks for sale for foreigners. Some are quite good; others not so good. But the drawback that most Thai-English dictionaries share is that they do not have sample sentences, thus they are not really good as tools for learning Thai. In...
Carpe Diem, My Captain?
Oh, Captain, My Captain! The film The Dead Poet’s Society inspired a generation of young creatives with its refrain of “Carpe Diem” (seize the day). Robin Williams (aka Professor John Keating) urged his students to make your lives extraordinary while standing memorably before a school photograph of alumni who had long become “worm’s meat”. Yet most of us live decidedly unextraordinary lives, while licking the wounds of our would-be greatness. Why does this happen? Well, it’s because life is not the brass ring at a merry-go-round. It can’t be seized and pulled to our breast, to have and to...
Follow Your Bliss?
Thanks to Bill Moyer’s excellent 1988 documentary of Joseph Campbell, called The Power of Myth (likely available at your local library), the scholar Campbell became a myth-guru famous for his dictum that we should “follow our bliss”: If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. On the surface this sounds like good advice. Indeed, many people have adopted Campbell’s words...
Easy Colloquial Thai – Thai Slang Dictionary – Idioms
LivingHour.org is pleased to announce the publication of Learn Thai Language: Generation Next (Slang & Colloquial Talk). This fun and useful bi-lingual book is for all students who are learning the Thai language and wish to better understand and communicate with Thailand’s younger generation. Not a dry Thai textbook or simple dictionary of terms, this is one easy Thai language book that you will enjoy reading and using. If you are a Thai language student looking for the latest Thai idioms and slang; a tourist looking for a Thai language book that’s not filled with the same old stuff; or an English teacher struggling to...
Al Franken & Daily Affirmations
Back in the late 1980s, the comedian (now U.S. Senator) Al Franken created the memorable character of Stuart Smalley, a mock self-help guru with a show called Daily Affirmations. Franken lampooned the self-help craze and affirmation trend of the ’80s and early ’90s with such classic lines as “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” The problem that Franken saw with affirmations was that they are, in a sense, a kind of brainwashing. It just may be that right now you are not smart enough, or good enough, or likable enough to achieve your goals. That doesn’t mean you can’t...
M. Scott Peck’s Road Less Traveled – Life is Difficult
The late M. Scott Peck begins his wildly successful bestseller The Road Less Traveled with the following pronouncement: Life is difficult. This is the great truth, one of the greatest truths–it is a great truth because once we see this truth, we transcend it. Peck’s train of thought finds its lineage in the Buddha’s 4 Noble Truths, the first of which is: all life is suffering. Although Jesus and Buddha share much common ground, on this issue they diverge. Jesus’s gospel does not teach that “life is difficult” but rather “we MAKE life difficult” both for ourselves and others. Jesus praises...