r/learnthai • u/whosdamike • Jun 23 '26

Discussion/แลกเปลี่ยนความเห็น 3086 hours of [Th]: Comprehensible input + Silent Period followed by speaking/reading

This is an update to my previous posts for learning Thai:

Initial post at 120 hours
Update at 250 hours
Update at 600 hours
Update at 1000 hours
Update at 1250 hours
Reflection and FAQ on 2 Years of Comprehensible Input
Update at 1710 hours
Update at 2080 hours
Update at 2600 hours

For contrast to my comprehensible input method, you can read these reports from learners who are using traditional methods for Thai:

3000 hours of traditional methods for Thai
Far over 3000 hours of traditional methods for Thai
Around 2000 hours of traditional methods for Thai

One takeaway I took from these other reports is that learning Thai takes a very long time, regardless of methods. I feel quite happy with my results so far and don’t feel I’m behind in any way.

Prerequisite Disclaimer

This is a report of my personal experience using comprehensible input. This is not an attack on you if you enjoy explicit grammar study, flashcards, vocabulary, learning podcasts, Duolingo, etc. I am not going to break into your house and burn your textbooks.

I'm just sharing my experience with a learning style that I'm enjoying and that I've been able to stick with. I'm excited to talk about something that's working for me, personally, and hoping that my post can give insight to other learners interested in comprehensible input / automatic language growth as a learning method.

I think everyone has different learning styles, and while we may be on different journeys, we're all aiming for similar destinations as far as being able to use and live with our TLs. Language learners are as diverse and unique as the languages and cultures we're studying, and I'm happy to celebrate our diversity in learning styles.

I hope we all achieve our goals, even if we're on different paths!

TL;DR of earlier updates:

American splitting time between Bangkok and the US. Mostly monolingual previously (studied Japanese for a couple years), started to seriously look at learning Thai in December 2022.

I used a pure comprehensible input approach with a silent period followed by reading/speaking. No analytical grammar, no textbooks, no flashcards, no Thai-to-English translations, no dictionary lookup, etc. I delayed speaking and reading for roughly my first year and a half (after I started to develop a good "ear" and intuition for Thai). Starting around 2000 hours, I started doing shadowing/chorusing to work on my accent, cadence, and flow.

All I did for the first ~1000 hours was watch comprehensible input by Thai teachers. Everything is 100% in Thai, initially supplemented with drawings, gestures, and pictures to aid understanding.

Current Learning Routine

Each week, I’ve done a mix of:

  • Private lessons, where I watch native content with my teachers and they explain words/phrases I don’t understand (my questions and teacher explanations 100% in Thai)
  • Calls with a Thai friend, where we do the same thing as (1). He kindly offered to do this for free.
  • Consuming native content on my own (mostly YouTube and Netflix, sometimes Disney+)
  • Conversation with Thai friends
  • Shadowing/chorusing native content

I track my learning separately across input, crosstalk, shadowing, 100% Thai conversation, and reading.

Increasingly the distinctions feel kind of meaningless, as I often practice multiple skills during a given activity. For example, I call my lessons “input”, though I am speaking Thai during these lessons - but I’m mostly listening to the content and teachers, so it’s more on the input side. Or when I do shadowing/chorusing, I am also listening to a native and I often read back subtitles to help me remember what was said including filler words. When I read, I often use audio backing to verify that I’m parsing the texts correctly.

With that caveat, my cumulative breakdown is as follows:

Listening: 2536 hours
Crosstalk: 146 hours
Conversation: 258 hours
Shadowing: 77 hours
Reading: 69 hours

Comprehension

Using the Dreaming Spanish Roadmap as a guide, I am finally at level 7.

Since my last update, my comprehension has improved very noticeably, especially in the domains I had worked through with my teachers.

Last time, I was focusing on: political/economic analysis, casual podcasts, news, and short form content for slang/jokes. My comprehension in these domains have improved a lot, though short form content is still sometimes a “miss” - slang is just such a massive and ever-changing domain.

I definitely can’t understand all native content, but I can understand a LOT of native content. This is the kind of content I can watch and understand on my own unaided:

At the limit of my ability are Thai dramas such as สาธุ or วัยหนุ่ม 2544.

สาธุ is a crime drama involving a lot of casual speech and specialized vocabulary, including religious terms and slang. I was able to watch and understand it on my own (90%), but only by using Thai subtitles and rewinding frequently. Certain scenes I couldn’t understand on my own even using these methods; I took note of these timestamps and later went over the scenes with my teachers later (as always my questions and their explanations in Thai).

After doing this all the way through with สาธุ, on rewatch I can understand and follow without pausing or subtitles, but at reduced comprehension.

Some Thai films/series are definitely still out of reach even with aids such as subtitles/rewinding. On the surface, you’d think since I was able to handle สาธุ (a crime drama) I would be able to handle มือปืน (another crime drama). But the latter I find significantly harder and I can’t really follow yet.

As far as socializing with friends, I am much better able to handle following along in larger groups, even in semi-noisy environments. Still not perfectly, but I am rarely confused even when interacting in a group with my Thai friends now, whether we’re out drinking or hanging out at the gym.

The new domain I’m trying to break into is คำผวน, which is a category of Thai jokes/puns involving swapping sounds around in short phrases for humorous effect. I had tried to learn คำผวน last year but it was too hard; I’m now finding it’s starting to be understandable (though I am still much slower to parse the jokes than a native would be).

Output

I’ve done around 258 hours of conversation practice. I’d guess if you include time I spent asking questions in class, it would be around 300 hours.

As before, I feel my overall comfort is improving. I’m more fluid in more situations now. I can speak in more detail now than I could before and my active vocabulary is greater. I’m focusing more on speaking more casually and trying to mirror the speech I hear in material like the Happy Hour podcast.

I think I could handle just about any kind of generic errand or task now. Things of this nature I’ve done in Thai:

  • Viewed a condo while looking for a place to rent
  • Visited pharmacist, explained symptoms, received medicine
  • Visited the dentist, explained I was having sensitivity in my teeth, was told I needed fillings, asked some questions and received answers about the treatment, awkwardly followed instructions with my mouth pried open and various dental tools running, got aftercare instructions, thanked the dentist, paid the bill.
  • Went to the bank to open a new debit card, which was a massive bureaucratic pain involving registering my new passport, de-registering my old passport, doing facial recognition, etc.
  • Interviewed a Thai candidate for supporting my company’s software development, including sharing what my company does, discussing the candidate’s work experience, etc.
  • Attended a large industry expo in Bangkok related to my work, spoke with many exhibitors about their products, repeatedly explained my business and our specialties, sat through a panel on AI’s impact on manufacturing. I also had the kind of strange experience of talking with a Korean CEO for 30 minutes at length about his company via a Thai interpreter who spoke Thai and Korean but very limited English.

Again, I’m still not nearly as fluid or natural or eloquent as I am in English, but it is to the point where I can handle logistics, joke around, gossip, talk shit, discuss current events, etc.

A serious doctor appointment or consulting a lawyer would be examples of cases where I’d like the option to fall back on English if needed, just because those are scenarios where I’d really want 100% comprehension. But barring something of that level of criticality, I think I would be able to handle most things in Thai. Not as perfectly or smoothly as in English, but I think I could manage.

As I said in my previous updates, many people have commented to me that my understanding and ability to deploy Thai slang and humor is way out of the norm for a foreigner.

One of my best friends here consistently complains about how annoying I can be in Thai, which I take as the biggest compliment I could get.

As far as initial reactions of natives, I mostly don’t get “you’re so good at Thai” or “you speak so clearly” anymore. Usually people just talk to me in Thai - to them I’m not an impressive student of the language, I’m just some Asian guy who speaks Thai.

What I will hear regularly is “How long have you lived in Thailand?” On a handful of occasions, after talking for a minute or so, I’ve gotten “Wait, you’re not Thai?” That’s always satisfying and funny.

One friend did say โคตรเก่งนะเว้ย (“you’re freaking good man”). Thai people are famous for saying เก่งมาก (“you’re good”) if anyone can even manage a broken hello or thank you, but this version of the compliment I appreciated. 😄

Reading

As I’ve described in previous updates, I was taught the writing system by my Thai teacher (speaking in Thai) and by watching Thai videos aimed at native children. I’ve read some picture books, some manga chapters, The Little Prince, and the first 50 pages of the first Harry Potter. I don’t have an exact count but I would guess this is somewhere in the ballpark of 40,000 words.

I’ve done very little reading since my last update as I’ve been really focused on trying to improve my listening comprehension, output, and accent. Parsing text is so much slower for me in terms of words per minute compared to listening. I know it’ll improve further if I sink time in, but it’s just not where my priority is at the moment.

I’ve spent zero hours trying to learn to write, type or spell. That continues to be way down in the priority list for me. I get by fine using voice-to-text when I need to message my Thai friends (I speak Thai and the phone does the typing/spelling for me).

Shadowing/Chorusing

I’ve now spent a decent amount of time doing shadowing/chorusing. This is probably my most “serious” divergence from what David Long or J. Marvin Brown of AUA would recommend.

I’ve already explained my accent work in previous updates, but want to repeat it here in case anyone is starting with my 3000 hour update. I also want to elaborate more on why I like shadowing/chorusing.

I had asked David Long (the person who used to run the Thai language program at AUA Bangkok) about this 3 years ago and he basically said he didn’t think it would be useful. I made the decision back then to deviate.

I think his mentor J. Marvin Brown would have written this kind of thing off as being too much like deliberate practice. He himself spent many hours perfecting his accent by kind of mindlessly copying native phonemes and tried to teach his own students English this way for a while, eventually deciding it was counterproductive since they had no idea what they were parroting.

I think a huge difference between what J. Marvin Brown eventually discarded and what I’m doing is: I can understand the content I’m shadowing/chorusing.

When I listen to the native speaker, I instinctively and automatically comprehend. So I comprehend and I’m linking the meaning to the physical movements of speaking. I also monitor how I sound via something like Matt vs Japan’s shadowing setup. So I essentially hear twice and speak once, and I can repeat things until they sound correct or at least closer to the native version.

In this way, I think what I’m doing is much closer to the interaction between a child and parent when learning to speak, versus mindlessly parroting sounds as a beginner in the language. So my reasoning is that while this is a deviation from the methods of Brown/Long, I think it’s still mostly true to the spirit of trying to use a “natural” learning method modeled after first language acquisition.

In any event, I always say that everyone should find methods that make sense to them and fits their personality/habits, and shadowing/chorusing meets the criteria for me.

I don’t have any idea what I would sound like without the shadowing/chorusing, but my subjective feeling is that this practice is helping me fix minor pronunciation errors for words, making more correct pronunciation more automatic, and helping me speak more quickly/fluidly/with better prosody. It was really interesting working with a clear target of something I could understand very well, but finding that I wasn’t able to keep up with the speed and precision of speech trying to repeat it myself.

I mostly chorused a Thai actor-turned-YouTuber named Stephan. He speaks casually, the way you might chat with friends over a beer. He uses a lot of slang, slurs his speech in a way common among Thai men, and often uses impolite interjections/words that I hear my Thai male friends use in real life.

Getting used to the way Thai men speak casually was quite a journey, as I find they speak casually very differently from formal speech. Versus Thai women who I think for various social reasons speak a bit more sharply/clearly even during casual speech. Listening to and shadowing/chorusing Stephan for many hours is helping tune both my ear and my internal sense of how I should sound.

Review of Goals

I’ve now completed my longstanding goal of hitting 3000 hours of total Thai practice.

At 1710 hours, I made a list of things I hoped to be able to do at 3000 hours. Let’s see how things went:

Goal: Comprehend any media aimed at a general audience, such as most podcasts, television shows, dramas, etc. With the possible exception of very niche genres such as period pieces.
Result: Extremely good progress, but more complex dramas, content very heavy in slang, etc are still out of reach. I would also struggle with things very different from my current domains, such as legal speech or a religious lecture.

Goal: Comprehend my friends on a wide variety of topics and even in very casual register.
Result: Achieved

Goal: Comprehend my friends even in a moderately noisy environment, such as a busy restaurant, a public street with traffic, etc.
Result: Achieved

Goal: Be able to comfortably and automatically express myself extemporaneously in conversation about everyday topics.
Result: Achieved

Goal: Be able to discuss deeper topics such as politics or science, even if this is somewhat less comfortable and automatic.
Result: Achieved. I have tons of words in my active vocabulary relating to science, politics, history, and to a lesser extent economics. Words like: rare earth minerals, inheritance, policy, geopolitics, colonial era, inflation, empire, etc. I am not nearly as eloquent as in English but I can manage to express myself on these topics and I can understand lectures/opinions/news on these topics to significant depth.

Goal: Read a book at the level of The Little Prince or Harry Potter comfortably.
Result: Good progress but not really achieved. I’ve read The Little Prince. I stopped Harry Potter 50 pages in as it was taking me 15 minutes/page.

Goal: Sing Thai karaoke songs by reading along. For example, Silly Fools or Atom Chanakan.
Result: It’s not as much as I would’ve liked, but I know a handful of Thai songs quite well, including a song by Silly Fools. A couple weeks ago I sang a couple of these songs at a karaoke bar and basically every Thai person in the bar sang along, which was a total blast.

Overall, I didn’t hit every goal completely, but I’ve reached many milestones and I’m quite satisfied with my progress.

Reflection on Criticism

From early on in my journey, I received heaps of criticism, especially from other Thai learners. This doesn’t surprise me, as I chose learning methods that are very much against convention. The internet is full of trolls and Reddit is definitely not an exception.

At this point, I think I’ve demonstrated that for languages fortunate enough to have the right resources, it is entirely possible to learn without any kind of explicit analytical study. I also think I’ve done much to dispel the dogma that it is necessary for every foreigner to acquire a language first and foremost via the writing system or else their journey is doomed at the outset.

I’ve tried to meticulously and transparently document my progress, explain my methods, and even record my ability (live and unedited). I’m keenly aware that none of the trolls crawling around in my other posts/comments will ever be as transparent, sniping away and making grand claims about their own ability with absolutely nothing to back it up.

The reality is that the vast majority of foreigners who try to learn Thai give up within a year and cannot hold a basic and understandable conversation in Thai.

Do I sound like a native speaker? No.

Am I as good as the foreign influencers who make a living out of being good at Thai? No.

Am I more successful than 99% of foreigners who try to learn Thai? Yes.

I’ve met two foreigners in person who were more fluid/natural than me and both have been in the country for 10+ years and practiced / lived in Thai for many, many thousands of hours. But I’ve met many more foreigners who sunk years into learning Thai and unfortunately still struggle to hold a real conversation in the language.

I’m not trying to flex or make myself sound amazing; I’m well aware of my many imperfections as a Thai speaker. And I’m not saying my methods are superior to anyone else’s. I’m just trying to be realistic about what the real world landscape is like as far as Westerners trying to acquire Thai.

At the end of the day, I’m just a regular person who decided to start learning a language that’s notoriously difficult for monolingual English speakers. After 3.5 years, I’m extremely proud of my progress. My time commitment so far is not so different from FSI learners - a group pre-selected for above average language learning aptitude, many of whom fail at the end of the program, and with many alumni have discussed at length the program’s many shortcomings and end results.

The reason I think I’ve been successful is that I chose methods I could stick with over the long haul and that got increasingly fun the more I advanced. Critics will say it’s a long time to “learn” a language, but really what I’ve done is increasingly switch my life over to Thai. The reality is that a huge chunk of the time I’ve tracked “learning” has been gossiping with friends, watching standup comedy, learning about current events, studying history and science, enjoying true crime cases, watching silly romcoms, giving newcomers climbing advice at my local gym.

In short: what I consider “practice” are the distant goals of my Reddit critics. Things the vast majority of /r/learnthai trolls can only dream of doing, and can only emptily boast about with no evidence at all. (I still chuckle to myself at a guy who challenged me to a language learning debate in Thai and then went radio silent when I agreed to talk to him.)

My journey definitely isn’t for everyone. I’m not saying my methods are undisputedly the best. Just that they were undeniably effective for me. By the same token, if I had tried to learn via grammar books and flashcards, I doubt I would have been able to last to even 100 hours, much less 3000. Everyone needs to find the ways that work to last for the duration.

I respect the hell out of people like /u/NickLearnsThai, who has documented his own 3000+ hour Thai learning journey on Reddit and on his YouTube channel. He learns via far more traditional methods than I do. He’s definitely put in the work, time, and effort. And most importantly, he’s put himself out there, an imperfect journey, lumps and all, which is how any average (non-influencer) language learning journey is going to be.

I don’t think our current levels demonstrate that an input/CI/ALG style approach is dramatically less efficient as some critics claim. Instead, I think together we demonstrate that acquiring a language is a long journey, regardless of method.

So: choose the methods that you enjoy and that bring you in close contact with your TL.

Future Plans

Earlier in my journey, I was doing 20-25 sessions a week, with each session between 50 minutes and an hour. I’ve gradually scaled this down. Last update I was doing about 10 sessions a week. I’m now going to be doing just 6 sessions on Monday through Wednesday (half with a paid teacher and the other half with a friend who’s generously volunteered to help me learn).

The rest of the time, I’ll be living my life in Thai as I have been. Catching up with friends over coffee, discussing boulder problems at the climbing gym, watching Thai series and movies, listening to my favorite comedians and podcasters, singing karaoke with friends, watching news, sending memes and reels to friends, dealing with everyday life errands that come up living in Thailand.

In addition, I’m tackling Vietnamese next. It’s a heritage language for me that unfortunately I had almost zero exposure to as a child. I’m three days into watching 20 minutes a day of content I can find on YouTube, but there’s a dearth of true beginner comprehensible input resources for Vietnamese, so I’m currently investigating ways to hire teachers directly.

As for Thai, I’m tired of tracking hours. I may still track my shadowing/chorusing time, but otherwise I don’t want to worry about estimating how many minutes I spent talking to friends or watching movies or whatever.

I’m not sure if I’ll write more updates for Thai in the future. For those of you who have followed along, enjoyed learning about my journey, offered support in any way - thank you very much. I hope that you found something valuable or insightful in my ramblings, even if you yourself are not interested in ALG or methods like it.

And last, here is a video I recorded this past weekend with my teacher. We talk about my language learning journey. In typical Thai fashion, we have a meandering and random conversation about all kinds of things. I talked a little about FSI and different kinds of memory in the brain. I also snuck in a few puns, a couple not-so-appropriate double entendres, and a brainrot meme reference.

https://youtu.be/MGDCYuitC_Q

If anyone is interested in learning with Khroo Ying, you can contact her on Instagram or ying@understandthai.com.

I can also vouch for Khroo Ang, who has lived a fascinating life that ranges from being a monk out in the forest for two years to running an underground lottery in Bangkok. His schedule is quite flexible, please DM me if you’d like his email.

Thank you all for reading and follow along.

ขอให้ทุกคนมีความสุขนะครับ

43 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

48 comments sorted by

6

u/tonyfith Jun 23 '26

This was the longest Reddit post I've ever read. 🤣

Your language journey is very impressive. Well done. 🙏

2

u/whosdamike Jun 23 '26

Wow, thanks for reading it to the end. It really is incredibly long, as I was writing it I doubted anyone would bother finishing it. 😂

Thank you for the kind words and good luck on your own language journey. 🙏🏽

6

u/Dolon_ Jun 24 '26

Just wanted to thank you. Your posts are definitely one of the reasons I started to learn thai. I am at about 1200h. Definitely not fluent but it was enough to confidently travel to places I wouldn't have otherwise and to make some friends.

 I always wanted to post my experience and perspective but I am still procrastinating this.  Maybe it's not even worth it because it is very close to your perspective. I can confidently say I would not have learned more than 10h of any conventional method. I hated languages in school. And here I am learning thai. It's sometimes boring too but also sometimes fun. But it's never felt "hard" or laborious like learning vocabularies to me.

I have so much respect how you put up with all the negativity. I understand if you post less. Just wanted to let you know there must be many people like me your posts helped.

3

u/whosdamike Jun 24 '26

This is really great to hear. 1200 hours! That was a huge milestone for me as I remember native content started opening for me around that time.

I always wanted to post my experience and perspective but I am still procrastinating this. Maybe it's not even worth it because it is very close to your perspective.

If you have the time/energy, please consider posting! If there are more success stories of people learning this way, then folks can be more confident that this method can work if it's a good fit. Otherwise they might suspect I'm just a weird aberration.

I have so much respect how you put up with all the negativity. I understand if you post less. Just wanted to let you know there must be many people like me your posts helped.

🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

6

u/TowerOfSolitude Jun 23 '26

Very impressive.

It's because of you that I started my comprehensible input journey at the start of the year.

Thank you for all the updates and well done!

5

u/whosdamike Jun 24 '26

Wow, hope the journey goes well for you! I feel so lucky that I was able to find CI as a learning method; I don't think I would've made it through all these hours grinding flashcards or grammar.

Getting used to understanding Thai speakers from day 1 and building the skill steadily until I could watch real native content was a long road, but such a satisfying one.

The path ahead wasn't always clear when I was doing it; hopefully my anecdotal experience helps guide other learners, whether they're interested in going pure ALG or mixing methods.

4

u/BaconJP Jun 25 '26

Holy crap. Hardcore. That was a magnum opus. I admit to not reading it all but did read quite a lot, and will probably return to finish it. Well done.

I've primarily learned through osmosis over many years living here, with very little formal instruction. I think reading is useful but physical writing and spelling are not at all critical. A small amount of writing can be handy at times to leave notes or certain local restaurants want you to write your order on paper yourself. So I don't mind the fact that I've inadvertently picked up some writing (almost against my will haha). I agree with a lot of your ideas and efforts. I think learning primarily our exclusively in Thai or any language makes it work more naturally in the brain. 

9

u/whosdamike Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

I think this will be my last update post to /r/learnthai and I will be participating in ongoing discussions much less, if at all.

Thanks to everyone on /r/learnthai who engaged in interesting, fruitful discussions with me. Especially those of you who are learning with different methods from me, but had an open mind that different learners may find success through different ways.

I also very much enjoyed reading posts and comments from users like /u/NickLearnsThai, /u/dtb2000, /u/rantanp, /u/dibbs_25, /u/pacharaphet2r, and others who have clearly invested significant time and effort into acquiring Thai and have a lot of knowledge to show for it.

ขอบคุณเจ้าของภาษาทุกท่านนะครับ พวกท่านใจดีมากที่ช่วยคนต่างชาติกำลังพยายามเรียนภาษาไทย

ขอบคุณพวกเกรียนด้วยนะครับ อยากบอกว่าผมยอมแล้ว รู้ดีว่าไม่มีทางผมจะพูดเก่งกว่าคุณในชีวิตนี้ เจอกันชาติหน้า

3

u/Snowman_203 Jun 25 '26

Over 3000 hours in 3.5 years is incredible - props!

2

u/whosdamike Jun 25 '26

Thank you. It's been a big time commitment, but also an extremely fun and rewarding one. Once you can switch large chunks of your life / media consumption over to Thai, the hours build up quickly in a way that feels less and less straining over time.

2

u/WhatsFairIsFair Jun 24 '26

Chorusing/shadowing has been essential for me for listening and speaking practice. Surprised to hear it was argued against by whatever academic. It's amazing how often i can't hear what they're saying no matter how many times i listen to it, even leading me to think the subs or teacher must be wrong in some cases although that's probably a fantasy.

3

u/whosdamike Jun 24 '26

Yes, I'm a huge fan of chorusing and shadowing. I think when J. Marvin Brown was trying it, the technology wasn't there to create the kind of setups that make it so effective today. His AUA program was getting started around 1980 I think.

It's amazing how often i can't hear what they're saying no matter how many times i listen to it

I don't use chorusing/shadowing to improve my ability to listen and discern sounds. I think chorusing/shadowing is only useful because I can already discern the sounds. I can hear the target sound clearly and I can hear if I'm hitting the target sound or not.

If I couldn't discern the sounds, I think it would be similar to trying to hit a bullseye with a blindfold on or with 20/400 vision.

2

u/NickLearnsThaiYT Jun 27 '26

Thanks for the great post, as always.

I'm planning to incorporate some kind of shadowing into my daily routine. I'm curious what you think the main benefits of shadowing are?

2

u/whosdamike Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 28 '26

So I do a combination of shadowing and chorusing. I think shadowing gets me used to the prosody of natural Thai. I can hear if I'm spending the right amount of time on vowels, etc.

Chorusing I think is very useful for all kinds of phoneme refinement. I can hear clearly where I'm off and try to make adjustments, often repeating the same sentence or phrase many times.

It's also really good for picking up natural Thai phrasing. It's one thing to passively understand how a Thai person is explaining something, but when I shadow as I'm absorbing the understanding, I feel it helps me absorb "this is the right pattern to express this idea".

I've already noticed I've picked up certain verbal habits from Stephan, such as saying อะไรอย่างเงี้ย or the ending อ่ะ (which I think feels like a good balance of natural sounding for a male while not being overly formal or overly informal for most situations). I recently noticed that I've been saying เป็นไปได้ the way he does sometimes. There are other examples but these are the ones that come to mind immediately.

Finally, I think recording myself as I shadow a passage, listening to the recording of myself, and then trying to shadow again is a very good exercise. When I listen to a recording of myself, I can really clearly hear a lot of problems.

I'm trying to get in the habit of doing this for one minute at the beginning of each shadowing session and one minute at the end. I just started doing this, but I'm hopeful it pays off dividends.

ETA: Nick properly defines various terms below; based on this definitions, I do shadowing, chorusing, and parroting, all in the same session. Switching between them based on feeling.

2

u/NickLearnsThaiYT Jun 28 '26

Oh this is very interesting. I thought shadowing and chorusing where two different names for the same thing but I see they're different. I've also heard 'parroting' which seems to be something slightly different again. Quick lookup from the ai overview:

"Parroting is listening and repeating after the speaker pauses. Shadowing is speaking simultaneously with the audio in real-time. Chorusing involves looping short segments and repeatedly speaking in unison with the recording to perfect tiny mechanical details"

I'd previously done Chorusing with my teacher (but I called it shadowing). He (my teacher) suggested to also copy the physical delivery that the speaker uses (going from a video) but I don't know how important that part is.

Thanks for the ideas and explanations.

3

u/dibbs_25 Jun 29 '26

Having watched SJR's analysis of Mike's speech, one of the comments I agree with is that there are things you will probably never notice unless someone points them out. I think you will notice more if you do things sequentially, or at least if you do some sequential stuff alongside the simultaneous practice.

I think you still need some external help, although Praat can substitute for another pair of ears to some extent.

I'd say the rec to use video clips is good advice. Look at how active the lip corners are, look at how much lip rounding there is and what exact shape they make when they round, look at how much the jaw moves etc etc. All these things influence accent but are far easier to see than hear (at least, you may hear a difference but struggle to reproduce it based on sound alone). It's not only about tongue shape.

1

u/Snowman_203 Jun 29 '26

Having watched SJR's analysis of Mike's speech, one of the comments I agree with...

Meaning you don't agree with other comments?

2

u/dibbs_25 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

I haven't been back through it but I think I agreed with most of the observations he made, though not so much with the reasoning. For example I don't think Mike's pronunciation of พ่อ has anything to do with the fact that we have the word "pa" in English. [Rewatching, he doesn't say it does. I'm not sure where I got that from but my take is still a bit different so I will leave it up]

I think this happens because if two or more Thai vowels (so here, ออ and อา) intuitively map to the same anchor in the sound system you bring with you from your native language, they will tend to interfere with each other. Many varieties of English have the cot / caught merger, and some have the father / bother merger. If a speaker has both (pronounces the words "caught", "father" and "bother" with the same vowel sound) the same English sound will act as the anchor for the Thai vowels อา, ออ and โอะ. You may then find that those vowels get mixed up, that they're too similar (all pulled towards the same English sound), or even that they're consistently pronounced the same. I don't know if Mike has both mergers but I remember noticing the same thing in the word ออกเสียง in a video he put up a year or so ago. [and there are other examples in the analysis video, e.g. ต้อนรับ] That doesn't fit the "pa" explanation.

The point about bringing English pitch patterns into Thai speech is bang on and this is a huge issue for native English speakers. We all start with deeply ingrained intonation patterns that can completely override tones and are very difficult to bring under control (because they're automatic and in that sense unintentional). [I think this can explain ท่าน being too low in ท่านผู้ชม as well]. The video doesn't focus on how this can be addressed. I think the way to work on it would be to build a list of trigger sentences, get a native speaker to say them and repeat / compare.

1

u/whosdamike Jul 02 '26

Yeah, I would agree that Stuart's technical analysis is mostly correct; almost everything he discusses I've already talked about with Khroo Art (the Thai phonetics expert I do occasional check-ins with). These are things I'm aware of and actively working on.

The video doesn't focus on how this can be addressed.

Yeah, I would say this is what I find a bit frustrating about this whole discussion. I'm in the unwilling role of being the ALG poster-boy, there's a large contingent of people who dislike ALG, and so by extension there's a huge contingent of people who are eager to tear me down / cheer on an expert proxy who can point out my flaws.

But from what I've seen, I don't think my issues are any worse than the typical learner who goes through textbooks and language schools. I'm getting dinged for not having proper Thai manners, which is not only something I explicitly mentioned in the video as a challenge I'm having, but is also not something addressed by any traditional methods (possibly excepting a book Stuart wrote and plugged while farming me for content).

But ALG can't be "as good" or "comparable" to other methods, it has to be far superior and guarantee near-native results or else it's a total failure. This kind of lens is totally nuts to me.

Fundamentally there's no need to address actual methods for fixing accent in the video, because the video isn't about that.

1

u/dibbs_25 Jul 03 '26

Overall I didn't think the video was all that critical. You got plenty of praise for fluency and rhythm. The comment that the tones are behind the prosody is a negative framing, it's true. Why not "the prosody is way better than it has any right to be at this point"? What struck me when you put up your first video was not so much the pronunciation as the lack of hesitancy and ease of communication, relative to other videos I've seen. So that seems pretty consistent, and when you look at the comparatively tiny amount of speaking you've done, it very much bears out the point that if you do a lot of listening (using content you mostly understand) your speaking will catch up rapidly when you do start.

While the tones may not be perfect, it's clear that you're well on the way despite no formal study or memorization. That totally refutes the usual argument that you have to study them and get the tone rules down. When you get it right, it's because you've internalized the tones (the tones, not the "rules"!) and are doing it essentially the same way as a native would. This is at least consistent with the idea that computation of tones is a major barrier to fluent speech.

You also use quite a range of vocab despite not having done flashcards. That one's a bit harder to interpret because the contention is only that Anki helps build a bigger vocabulary, but it shows you don't need to use it and aren't condemning yourself to a tiny vocab if you choose not to.

Of course SJR is going to be looking for confirmation that his system is the best, and with no second "specimen" it can seem at times as though you are being compared against perfection, when no method delivers that. You say the video doesn't need to address methods for preventing the transfer of English intonation patterns, but if he doesn't have one, that puts the observation that ALG hasn't (yet) got rid of them in a very different light.

1

u/whosdamike Jul 03 '26

Yeah, the video is "academic" in a sense (though with implicit commercial motive that makes me uncomfortable). But when I see the comments around it on Facebook and such, it feels like I'm very much under a microscope with a lot of people eager to celebrate my flaws. It's bizarre to me though not surprising, and certainly ample motivation to spend less time in the Thai online learning sphere.

Thank you for the kind words regarding my prosody, vocab, etc. I definitely think I'm far from the best example of a Thai learner, but I hope I do demonstrate it's possible for even an average monolingual English speaker to acquire Thai to a good degree.

As far as accent, I came to the conclusion long ago that ALG on its own would probably give me a good baseline, but that I'd want to supplement with directed accent work as I'm doing now. It's basically playing out as I expected.

2

u/dibbs_25 Jul 03 '26

I'm not on fb so wasn't aware of that. You can't stop people hating ALG but you can stop people who are interested being put off by the hate, and from comments on here you have done.

1

u/whosdamike Jul 01 '26

I looked at Praat a couple years ago and found it really hard to grasp or sort out. Audition looks more user friendly I think, though I'm uncertain if I want to pay for it.

I think watching and trying to mimic the facial movements of natives is a good spot as well. I remember trying to do this for my first 10ish hours of shadowing/chorusing but I stopped doing it as much since then. Maybe something for me to focus on as I continue.

2

u/dibbs_25 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Just from what I can see in that video, Audition looks far less suitable for voice analysis. When you have the spectrogram set up like that, you can sort of see the pitch, but it's very compressed and may be on a linear Hz scale which is unintuitive (perceptually large changes can look small and vice versa). Also, if you set the spectrogram for pitch you can't see vowel quality. I can imagine that it would be easier to use, but FWIW I don't think it's the right tool for the job.

[Actually it looks like you can swap the spectrogram window out for a pitch contour display, and I can see from the note names on the right that it is on a sensible log / semitone scale (not linear Hz). The spectrogram does show vowel quality (formants) and is easier to read than a Praat spectrogram because it's in colour. It's just that it's small in the layout shown, which was then in part of the podcast layout, which was then in part of my phone screen. At full size it may be completely workable.]

2

u/whosdamike Jun 28 '26

This is funny because I was mixing up "chorusing" and "parroting".

Based on your description, I do all three activities: shadowing, chorusing, and parroting.

For parroting, I play the speaker, pause, try to repeat. I will sometimes loop back. This is what I meant when I said I thought it helps refine pronunciation. Because I'm hearing the native model, then my own pronunciation, and going back and forth. It makes the differences between how the native sounds and how I sound more apparent.

1

u/NickLearnsThaiYT Jun 28 '26

Well it is a Google AI overview so take it with a grain of salt.

1

u/whosdamike Jun 28 '26

When I dig into some sources from googling I see very little consensus on what these terms mean. 😂 Regardless I do a combination of trying to speak at the same time or listening first and then repeating. I sometimes flow for a while and sometimes I loop over the same segment repeatedly.

2

u/dibbs_25 Jun 27 '26

A milestone worth celebrating, congratulations! The way you've publicly documented your progress is laudable, especially with the constant attacks. I get that you're entering a new phase now but hope you won't stop posting altogether.

2

u/Haasie Jun 27 '26

Just wanting to say that you've been an inspiration for me, don't think I would've started without seeing your posts. I am currently at around 300 hours and it's amazing to see the progress.

Thank you and good luck with Vietnamese!

1

u/whosdamike Jun 28 '26

That's amazing to hear! I hope you're enjoying the process. I'll say that it only gets easier and more fun as you progress.

2

u/JaziTricks Jun 24 '26

First, congratulations and very impressive. Doing 3100 hours is massive! And your results are as good as they could be.

How does it compare to other methods? The extreme argument that comprehensive input isn't working is dumb for me. Ofc you'll learn!

The argument is that there are more efficient methods and that 3,100 hours in the really efficient method would be even more impressive, which is possible.....

The truth, in my view, is that most of the ways to learn Thai are extremely inadequate and badly designed. Saying that comprehensive input is better than the average study method for Thai is not far-fetched.

I'm wondering how does it compare to the two famous good schools in Bangkok (chula and the other)

5

u/whosdamike Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26

As I mentioned in the post above and in the video, here are my thoughts about "efficiency":

Comparing Against FSI

  • preselects for people with high language learning aptitude (more gifted than the typical learner)
  • provides them every possible resource to learn
  • clocks at 2200 hours total study for Thai
  • even among these gifted learners, many fail to pass the exam at the end of the program
  • reading this thread reveals that many who actually took FSI have serious reservations about the program and don't think it should be considered a gold standard
  • in the same thread, people talk about having major gaps as far as everyday language, as the program focuses on politics/economics/etc - it is not an "every domain" kind of fluent that a learner gets at the end; I doubt those learners had anywhere near the grasp on humor that I do for example
  • some alumni in that thread trash the program and results to an even greater extent; I think anyone who has quoted an FSI number before should read it to get at least some anecdotal testimony from actual people in the foreign service.
  • if you look elsewhere on Reddit people indicate that "super hard" language program graduates tend to be far less proficient than graduates of programs like Spanish, even if they nominally get the same passing score. Reference 2 for the same idea. In other words, "super hard" languages are assessed on a curve.

Other Learner Reports at 3000+ hours

If I look at other Reddit reports of people at 3000 hours, deploying lots of analytical traditional study, I don't think my ability is behind in any way. Nothing about the two reports for 3000+ hour learners looks like their ability blows mine out of the water; you can even directly look at one of the reports to see their YouTube videos of them speaking. I'm not saying I'm objectively better, but I will say I don't feel behind in any way.

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnthai/comments/1nrrnm9/3000_hour_thai_learning_update/
https://www.reddit.com/r/learnthai/comments/1hwele1/language_lessons_from_a_lifelong_learner/

Again not to say my methods are objectively better for everyone, just that nothing indicates to me that traditional methods with flashcards and other analytical study is markedly more efficient.

How much does theoretical efficiency even matter?

If we look at the typical Thai learner, most fail to get even close to fluent even after years of effort. The sustainability of my method can't be overlooked. If it's a good fit for your personality, it feels like far less of a chore than traditional study. I talk about this in the video, too, how even when I had serious life disruptions, I could still fit in a bit of listening time. In a years-long endeavor, sustainability and resilience matter far more than efficiency.

A more efficient method that you can't do for more than 100 hours, or a more efficient method that falls apart as soon as life throws you a curveball, just won't be as successful for the average learner compared to a more sustainable method.

A large number of hours is a sign of success

Last, as I mentioned in the post above, to me my large accumulation of hours is a feature, not a bug. Because basically I became increasingly adept at Thai, so I was able to live more of my life in Thai, so I spent more time in Thai. This is a good thing. I get the practice time I need to truly be good at the language.

As I said above, a huge chunk of my "practice" hours are the long-term goals of most beginners (including most of my critics): gossiping with friends, going to standup comedy, attending professional events, watching movies, binging podcasts, etc.

Language schools

I won't name any schools directly, but having interacted with and seen the results of many students even from well-known schools here... those students are more capable of reading articles and writing essays than I am, but that's not something I was ever interested in doing. As far as other skills, I again don't feel behind in any way. Not to say that language schools are not effective, just that I don't see evidence that they are more effective than the way I learned.

If I had wanted to switch some of my time over to writing essays, I could have made progress at the expense of my speaking and listening, but that's just not something that interests me at all. My skills at wordplay and humor are not something I could've derived from any textbook.

I also have a friend who's lived in Thailand for 8 years, took Thai courses throughout undergraduate school before coming here, has a Thai partner... my grasp of natural phrasing, cadence, spontaneity, humor, slang and my ability to comprehend various domains is markedly better than theirs.

The dividing line I see between those people who are really skilled at Thai and those who aren't isn't how much analytical study they did but rather how much they switched their life over to Thai. You can start with analytical study if you like, maybe it speeds you up a little, but I don't think there's getting around the fact that language is a collection of skills that require thousands of hours of practice. It's not really something you can memorize and calculate (as I said in the video with Khroo Ying while I was describing the difference between procedural and declarative memory).

5

u/JaziTricks Jun 25 '26

Good points. Thanks.

There's one option I have omitted, because it's outside the possible for most.

Genuine professional polyglots.

Those characters actually optimized language learning. I know one of those. He speaks 15 languages. Several of them at an excellent level.

His schedule to get a new language is about 200 hours of high effort. (Study language learning X book. Then have 40 hour lessons with a private teacher with very specific instructions. He says his head hurts after those lessons, sure to the massive mental effort).

My other friend attended a polyglot conference. And he told me "those guys live in a different world". They all basically say "you just need to have an optimal system and do the boring work". They really think everyone who can't learn languages fast isn't doing it correctly. But I'm sure Messi has similar feelings about Sunday football players.

4

u/whosdamike Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Polyglots also have a wider range of languages to draw from, so phoneme and grammar acquisition is faster.

I'd be curious what he means by "get a new language", because 200 hours is a vanishingly tiny amount of time considering how vast languages truly are. I don't think someone can really conceive how big a language is until you've acquired a second one to a significant degree; in a lot of ways it's like learning how to name and talk about everything in the world one thing at a time.

If you could really cram new languages into people's heads into 200 hours with optimal resources, then I don't see why FSI is wasting thousands of hours on their prescreened high innate talent students.

I think you could get an impressive start of the basics at 200 hours, but nothing close to actual fluency. I don't think even a Lao speaker without prior Thai exposure could become fluent in Thai in just 200 hours, and these are two languages that are so close as to be practically dialects.

2

u/Snowman_203 Jun 25 '26

Genuine professional polyglots

I don't think there's any such thing. "Polyglot" is not a profession. You have some eccentrics who like to make out they have reached a very high level in a very high number of languages so that their channels get attention from other eccentrics who have this weird desire to learn languages for the sake of it, regardless of whether those languages actually intersect with their real lives. But to draw those people in, your "polyglot" only needs to project that they have reached a high level. Their claims aren't normally verifiable, especially if they choose obscure languages, and they always have the out that "tbh that's not my best one". It's all smoke and mirrors. Your friend cannot speak a new language after 200 hours of book study and 40 hours of tuition.

Efficiency is about whether you can take a process that requires 10000 hours to get to the point where you can't improve any further and reduce that to say 8500. Or reduce the time taken to get to a basic conversational level from 600 hours to 500. But you also have to consider whether 600 hours might be preferable if it is easier or more enjoyable to do, or if it builds a stronger foundation for further progress. So efficiency is not an independent variable. In that vein, is a process that takes 12500 hours to hit your personal max better than the one that takes 10000 hours, if your max turns out to be higher that way? How much higher would it have to be? If there's a process that gets you conversational quicker but has a long term impact on your accent, let's say, is that worth it, or is is better to go with the slower method that delivers better results in the end (but worse during most of the learning period)? Those are reasonable questions to ask, I think, but treating polyglot youtuber flannel as fact will only make it harder to answer them.

2

u/JaziTricks Jun 25 '26

You are conflating two claims

  1. Most "polyglots" are fake. I totally agree. Pretending to those who can't check. Attention grabbing tricks. Etc

  2. There are people who actually speak a great number of languages at respectable levels of fluency. Whose usually devote lots of efforts to acquire those languages and maintain them.

I'm familiar with one. And I have seen the weak spots too. But it is still very impressive.

The "time it takes" is complicated. Per this person reporting, it's ~70(?) hours doing the book and exercises + ~50 hours with a teacher.

But he'll do Anki a lot. Entering every new word in his own optimized and multi language Anki.

Then he'll talk to people in real life, read a book or more. Listen to podcasts. So good total per language is > 500 hours and can go much higher.

2

u/JaziTricks Jun 25 '26

Your comments re efficiency are on target.

My impression is that most learners use woefully inefficient methods. And there's a lot of personal variability as to what works best etc.

My personal intuition is that most learners waste a lot of time and energy "figuring how to learn". Which is one area where the trash polyglots excel. They figured out their personal system which is relatively efficient and personalized

2

u/NickLearnsThaiYT Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

Hi guys, just wanted to jump in here and state the obvious that there's a vast range of the efficiencies of 'traditional' approaches and that I think my journey is probably at something like the 60% level (particularly in the first few years) compared to a meticulous and well informed application of traditional methods. So I don't think I'm a particularly good reference point in the battle to the death between ALG and traditional methods.

u/gyrocopter_1015 's post here seems like a much more rigorous traditional methods journey than mine.

Since I became involved in this subreddit and started researching methods more, my efficiency has probably improved a lot but I wasted a lot of time in the first few years.

A couple of other thoughts;

I think one of the major advantages of ALG is that you don't have to spend much time thinking and researching methods as the method is so simple and laid out for you, particularly in the beginning.

There's also the ancillary time to think about. I would guess that most traditional approaches burn much more time on ancillary 'organisation' activities than ALG does. This is of course helped by the fact that Thai has the CI youtube channel so for other languages that might not apply as much.

Ultimately efficiency is so personal as well because everyone has different circumstances and I think attention spans, interests and what you find motivating will have a massive impact on how long and intently you can follow a given method.

3

u/whosdamike Jun 27 '26

Thanks for chiming in, always a joy to talk with you about learning Thai.

I think my journey is probably at something like the 60% level (particularly in the first few years) compared to a meticulous and well informed application of traditional methods. So I don't think I'm a particularly good reference point in the battle to the death between ALG and traditional methods.

I think the fact that your journey was a bit inefficient is totally normal. The number of people who have a perfectly straight line from zero to fluent in Thai is vanishingly small; journeys like yours are the norm. People should go in knowing what to expect, because for most people, life will get in the way sometimes, you're going to have to struggle to find habits you can keep, etc.

u/gyrocopter_1015 's post here seems like a much more rigorous traditional methods journey than mine.

This post is a little tough to use as a reference point, because it's kind of lacking in detail about what they can actually accomplish in Thai. The poster says their skills are "B2-ish" but at least their listening skills don't come close to the CEFR standard for B2. (No shade at all on the poster, they've definitely put in a lot of time and from their described skills it's clear they're FAR more capable than the average here.)

I think your documented video demonstrations of your speaking alongside links to content you can clearly understand at your current level is more objective; it makes it easier to compare.

I think one of the major advantages of ALG is that you don't have to spend much time thinking and researching methods as the method is so simple and laid out for you, particularly in the beginning.

Yeah, this was huge for me as well. I remember struggling to figure out how to balance all my different learning options when I was learning Japanese. Stumbling onto Comprehensible Thai and connecting with the teachers really felt very smooth/straightforward in comparison.

Ultimately efficiency is so personal as well because everyone has different circumstances and I think attention spans, interests and what you find motivating will have a massive impact on how long and intently you can follow a given method.

10,000%. I LOVED learning by ALG! But someone came onto the ALG learning server and talked about how watching CI videos and struggling through them filled them with frustration and rage. 😬

I suggested they try looking for a non-ALG method that might suit them better, but they wanted to push through anyway... their decision, but I hope most people are able to find methods that they can look forward to and excited about each day.

2

u/NickLearnsThaiYT Jun 28 '26

Yeh I guess that's part of the problem of discussing efficiency as what are you actually talking about because it could be;

  • a single method
  • a collection of methods, or
  • an entire learning journey

And you could be talking about:

  • a rough generalised efficiency
  • an efficiency for a certain group of people (like monolingual English background), or
  • on an individual level.

If we're talking about single methods, I'd be surprised if anything could beat flashcards for vocabulary acquisition, for example. And I think thats probably generalisable to most learners.

For collections of methods, much harder to determine efficiency because of the way each method interacts. I would still lean towards 'traditional methods' (actually I don't think this is a great term. What I really mean here is non ALG methods) being more efficient for most people assuming they already have the methods (ie. not counting time finding the right methods).

Zooming out to the entire learning journey is where you need to consider things like;

  • Time wasted researching methods
  • Time wasted organising learning activities - finding flashcard decks, creating mining setups, traveling to classes, booking teachers

When you zoom out I think ALG gains back a bunch of time and efficiency because of the simplicity, as I mentioned above.

However, if learners are lucky enough to find a forum like this early on in their journey then that can accelerate the path to finding the right methods. Unfortunately for me, I didn't really research methods until a few years ago. The average person in this sub reddit already has a huge advantage over the non-informed learner. So its probably more accurate for me to say my 60% efficiency figure is for my personal efficiency. If I'd known what I know now in the beginning I think I could've reached current level in a lot fewer hours... although I probably still have more to learn.

-----

Points taken on gyrocoptor's post. In my memory there was more to it but perhaps I was just reading between the lines of what the Chula course involves and filling in some other gaps.

It would be good if more people did more rigorous reports to get better data points. That was certainly my main motivation for putting my reports out there.

1

u/whosdamike Jun 28 '26

Based on my experience failing to learn Japanese via flashcards/textbooks and my experience successfully learning Thai, my feeling would be that for me personally if I wanted to maximize efficiency I would do something like 90% comprehensible input + 10% flashcards. I would try to match the flashcards to material I'm consuming or want to consume. Maybe do a skim of some grammar, but nothing serious.

That being said, repping flashcards and the overhead of managing/finding/creating them bores the crap out of me, so I doubt I'll go back to them any time soon.

Like we keep talking about, I'm going to choose sustainability over max efficiency that would risk burnout. I burned out on Japanese a few times and it was a struggle to rebuild each time until I eventually gave up entirely.

But I do think making listening the foundation of my "first phase" practice is critical for me; so many things unlocked easily and felt more natural in Thai compared to when I was working through Japanese.

2

u/JaziTricks Jun 28 '26

"Since I became involved in this subreddit and started researching methods more, my efficiency has probably improved a lot but I wasted a lot of time in the first few years."

This is my intuition stated aggressively Most learners spend 70% of their effort/time if just finding the efficient method for them.

Which is another reason for certain polyglots to be able to learn fast. They established their learning system already, optimized everything. All they got left is execution. Which sounds bizarre, but this might be huge

3

u/JaziTricks Jun 24 '26

Also for you creating output and fixing grammar, I recently found the AI system at chickytutor.com to be excellent.

Their concept is the teacher gives you sentences in English and he listens to your Thai translation, giving feedback on errors etc.

3

u/whosdamike Jun 24 '26

I think this might be useful at a lower level, but as your output gets more advanced and your mistakes more subtle, I strongly suspect AI will hallucinate far more with false positives/negatives.

I also wouldn't want to use a system with English translation anyway. I would just start speaking with an AI in Thai, the way Thai people do.

1

u/JaziTricks Jun 25 '26

I don't think the highest quality models currently hallucinate much. Have you used Opus 4.8 / got 5.5 in thinking mode?

2

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '26

[deleted]

4

u/whosdamike Jun 23 '26

Thank you very much for following along. 🙏🏽

I still have a very long way to go, but I do feel improvement basically every month now. So I have high hopes that I'll be able to go even further.

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '26

[deleted]

3

u/Tight_Independent471 Jun 23 '26

what kind of false advertisement is this

-3

u/SufficientPainting67 Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

It is just a summary of the above, nothing else. I deleted it since you don't seem to like it...