Stuart Analyzes Pablo's Thai: How Good Is He?

What's up, grinders? Welcome back to the channel.

Now, in this video right here, how is Pablo using ALG to learn Chinese? I did a random shout out to another YouTuber, and I said, "Hey, Stuart," this is the YouTuber in question, "How good is his Thai?" Because obviously he learned Thai via ALG, the automatic language growth method. And I was kind of curious to know because, well, you know, he's a he's a big influencer in the space for ALG. And well, Stuart, my man, dropped a video 22 hours ago. And look at that godamn thumbnail. Bro, I look like the type of person who's looking down into the well saying it puts the lotion on the skin. So, we're going to watch this and see uh how good his tie actually is. It's 33 minutes long. This is going to be a long one. I hope you guys are ready for some deep linguistic analysis. Does ALG really work when it comes to language learning?

Now, for those of you who don't know ALG, this is the automatic language growth system that was developed by a linguist. He was actually originally a physicist, Marvin Brown.

If any of you are watching this and curious why I would care about this method and why I care about Pablo and stuff, just uh I have an entire series on my channel where I'm learning Spanish using this method and the service I'm using, Dreaming Spanish was actually uh I guess founded, invented, set up by Pablo, like he was the guy who set it up. So, and he credits his tire abilities to ALG and that's why, you know, he pushes ALG. So, I am curious to see where his tire is at because there is not many examples. In fact, there's there's hardly any I'm aware of of people who have learned a language purely by ALG, not using any type of traditional method as in using flashcards, not using grammar books. they just they just did the full pure ALG approach. So this is going to be interesting to see you know how good his accent is, how good his languages overall, you know, grammar, word selection, etc.

So Marvin Brown, I have been hugely inspired by Marvin Brown, his PhD thesis on >> Marvin Brown's the guy who invented ALG, >> Thai linguistics, T AI, and this book from ancient Thai to modern dialects. that changed the way that I thought about language and sound and phenology. And even in my book up there, Cracking Thai Fundamentals, you will see heavily inspired by Marvin Brown. If you don't have a copy and you're learning Thai, get one. Click on the link below. Otherwise, you can order it via Amazon if you're not in Thailand. But that's not what we're here today for.

So, let me just turn that off. So Marvin Brown developed this ALG automatic language road system in Thailand because he noticed no matter how he tried if he learned the formal ways and he'd learned through the military from what I understand and different formal ways also trained linguistically he couldn't help but analyze language and he couldn't help but notice that his language never really sounded natural. And so with testing and trying different things back and forth in 1984 he came up with this system launched with the AUA uh learning institute where they would do this ALG automatic learning growth system where people would listen for 800 to a,000 hours not speaking the idea is that you just hear Thai naturally for hundreds of hours just like a kid would and you won't be trying to translate things rather you'll just have so much >> obviously I've spoken about my disagreements with how kids do things regarding ALG in many videos before. I I literally have a series called, you know, my disagreements uh with ALG. So, you can go watch that if you want to hear that. Um, one of them is the whole kids thing >> comprehensible input uh going into you that you have absorbed the sounds, you've absorbed the language structures, you've absorbed the phenology of the language and it will start coming out naturally.

So, if you watch my clips over the past couple of weeks, you would see the pros and cons. And I've talked about whether or not I use this system of just getting huge input in the beginning or I speak straight out. And this has almost gotten to a cultlike status with some language learners, some schools of thought when it comes to language learning. And then you've got people like Evil Dean. For those who don't know what ALG is, automatic language growth. I'm basically testing uh that methodology via Spanish via my dreaming Spanish series. Now, I am curious about his level in different languages because well, I know that he learned English in a traditional way. He learned Japanese by using um I think like flashcards and stuff and then went to Japan and then kind of did like an Ajat method style. So it wasn't ALG. Uh and the only ones he's used ALG with from my understanding is Thai deer has been learning Spanish. He's up to 1,50 hours now through a site called Dreaming Spanish. And that site was brought about by founded by Pablo who you see here. Now Pablo is an amazing guy. I think we have a lot of common friends. He speaks fluent Thai, speaks Japanese. an evil deer made a call out to me.

>> Tai is the only one where I know he actually learned to like a a fluent level. So, I'm actually kind of curious how good is his Tai. In fact, Stuart um cuz I've been doing a lot of reactions with Stuart recently. Uh if you guys don't know him, let me let me pull up his uh YouTube channel. Here he is. Here's Stuart's channel. Now, I actually understand that Stuart uh is a fluent Thai speaker and he does breakdowns of people's abilities. So, Stuart, if you're watching this video, do a breakdown of Pablo's Thai. Let us know if you can hear anything strange about if it's like if it's it's just [ __ ] flawless. Let us know because I would love to know what level he got to in Thai because he actually went to the original ALG school.

>> And so today in response to a call out made by Evil Deer for the sake of truly evaluating the system because people have been saying things this and that about Evil Deer's progress or lack thereof, lack of ability to speak at all even though he's just passed that 1,00 hour threshold in SP.

>> It is very interesting the comments I get. I get like lots of encouraging comments, people saying, "Wow, I'm doing really good. I'm doing better than them." And then there'll be those comments who are like, "Oh my god, you're so bad. I was way ahead of you at this point." And it's like I always go into this type of thing of okay, we those comments don't really mean too much unless I know your background and how you approach this. Like unless you did exactly what I do, I can't really do a comparison whether I am ahead or whether I am behind. Anish people are wanting to see okay so how does somebody who really speaks fluently who has learned with the ALG method sound does it live up to expectations I think that Pablo is doing great stuff a lot of people use his site they love his site and it's working for them I just want to evaluate this against his Thai language cuz people have been saying okay so how's Pablo's tie this is one specimen that we can say from what we understand he's learned through ALG so let's see has it worked so again today I've got it up here in Audition with a specttoraph and you see these colors down here the more yellow it is. That's these are these vocal folds vibrating. So your voice box vibrating. The more it's vibrating, the more voice and the darker bits are when the voice is switched off. The lower it is down here is the lower part of your voice and the higher is the higher part of your voice. So in doing this, we can actually really see what's going on in Pablo's voice and see whether or not some of these native Thai traits in the voice have rubbed off on him naturally as he's developed the Thai language.

Sounded nice. Okay, so this is something interesting. He said, >> okay, so this >> that's not really what you would say in English and maybe in Spanish like thank you for being here to talk to me today. It's nothing. You wouldn't say that in Thai. you would just probably say, "You're welcome." I get the feeling that he is translated directly from Spanish than either subconsciously and maybe that's sort of linked and come out. If you're really doing algae, isn't that something that should have been shortcircuited then or or cut out? Not sure. Anyway, let's continue.

So my thoughts with ALG is that when you start speaking, your brain just jumps to whatever language is probably mostly related to the language that you're you're learning and just reskins that language. So for me with Spanish, I I know for a fact it's reskinning Espiranto in many ways. There are certain structures that are coming out which are purely Spanish because they're small, they're set. I've heard them so many times over and over, but anything that's got any form of complexity, it just seems to revert to a reskinned version of Espirano. And that's pretty much what you do with any other language realistically when you're learning. You kind of like most people obviously they go based on their native language, English. So I'm guessing Spanish for whatever reason was the one he kind of in some ways started to reskin and which is why he probably used a structure which a Thai person wouldn't use. there in my series where I reacted to the videos from David Long, the guy who was uh he taught via um the ALG method for years. He specifically said that with ALG you're you're building a separate brain for that language that's completely independent from the other languages you know. But my experience is that is totally not the case. Like it's obviously you every word is independent of every other word in some way, but they're also all interlin. Okay. But conceptually, it's just when you actually start speaking, it's not like you're you're opening up a new house, as they would show in their little diagrams. It's not like you're you're walking through a new door. No, you you're you're picking up the pieces of the language, you know, you're grabbing the words you've hear and you're just shoving them on top. And then as you get corrected, that's when you start building out new structures. So, you do start with whatever conceptual like understanding of that language you have from your native language. It's I My that's my experience >> about her Thai. I would say that she is being overly precise with her pronunciation. These in normal Thai speech originally in Thai there was no these were synthetically artificially brought into the standard version of Thai because this R is thought to be as a high prestige sound and you hear it in Sanskrit. Originally, if you listen to anyone from say central Thai, you will hear basically, it's kind of like a cross between an L and a taping. And for now, I used to be a TV presenter and I had coaching on the way that I spoke. They would teach you to when you were presenting, but it's so unnatural as you present that sometimes you end up your L's as well. So, it sounds like she's really sort of intentionally over her R. maybe because she's speaking to students and she wants them to develop pro tie. But I I don't I don't know if I agree with fully doing it like this because it's giving students uh an artificial version of the language that's not really used on the street. But that's her call and she's presenting Roman. My name is It's pretty standard. Sounds pretty good. You could say my name is again saying it sounds a bit more like a school kid saying it. But anyway, let's continue.

>> That's an interesting observation. More like a school kid saying it. Could it be because the type of material he watched early on was like created by teachers who were almost talking to them like kids and that's the the structure he adopted. Don't know.

>> Okay. Wow. Look, that's interesting. Have a look at this. See this here? He said it's actually Let me show you something. Now, here's my trusty consonant compass that many of you have seen many times. Have a listen to the difference between this. So, this is the letter >> Can you hear that? It's got aspiration. The throat is open and you've got this air puffing over. And in Thai, they're originally a C and a C. Right now, it's sort of a combination. So, it's C. You really hear the C there. Okay. As opposed to >> Okay, that would be g. So, this letter here, which is the correct one, >> by the way, that's from the word guru. You know, you hear the word guru, we use it in English, guru. Because in Thai this voicing of this letter from Sanskrit got lost. So guru versus >> and you can even see it here. You can see that basically there's no real aspiration. The voice starts instantly that that's the voice. If we get a chance later on to hear her pronounce a you'll see the voice not activating until you get this puff of air then the voice.

So my takeaway from that is he has not adopted the actual sounds of Thai and he's kind of probably used something from a language he knows or Spanish and then used that in place of whatever the Thai sound is which means he hasn't acquired that sound fully. Or maybe this is just one mistake but I guess we'll see. But I've already seen comments in my Spanish videos where people are like, "Oh, okay. So, evil deer." And like it's pretty hard to avoid these comments because like they're everywhere. But like people saying like, "My tea is aspired when it shouldn't be." And I'm like, "Oh, okay. Wasn't like I didn't even know that Spanish did that differently." And I've listened to a thousand hours. Like, you know, am I going to try change it now? Well, in all honesty, I'm not the greatest with sounds. So, I could probably try if I wanted to, but I'm not going to try because that's not part of ALG. But the point being is like I listen to over a thousand hours of it. I didn't just automatically start pronouncing those sounds correctly because people already pointing out the sound mistakes I'm making. But maybe in a couple hundred hours, I'll just automatically readjust and everything will sound correct. Can I just say like in general his voice his speech is very fluent and you totally understand what he's saying and still does have a very heavy Spanish accent on it. Um but he does have fluency.

>> Okay. So obviously he didn't develop the native accent. And the reason I bring that up is because early on I'm going to say like with the hardcore a AG side of things they would talk about the fact that you could develop a native like accent. Obviously, Pablo didn't. He's got a Spanish accent in Thai.

>> Okay. So, even maybe from in English because we'd say course. He seems to have this unaspirated even happening over the word course.

>> Ben course. You can hear it here.

>> And you see I knew instantly which letter it was just looking at it. Course >> course. And again in Thai we wouldn't use the word course really. would use the word laken lak but okay course most ties would know what the word course is but again it's it's not the normal word a tie would use lak

>> that's an interesting one because he was like Pablo did a year at the school you would assume they' use the correct word for course whatever it was there like even in dreaming Spanish I must have heard the word course many many times um I can't say it right now but like maybe they were using the English word for it for whatever reason I don't know Okay. Video call. You kind of get what he means. There might be an easier way to articulate it, but he's he's sort of picking how you would describe something quite complex through a non-traditional way of learning with teachers.

>> I'm not sure what Stuart means with that learning.

>> Okay. So she has used the word ensu s I get the feeling the way he's responded and the way he's reacting maybe he doesn't fully understand what she means by sue here is this generic term for medium of communication and you can say this course only uses Thai as the method of communication but you could also say it's just communication material or it's way it's talking about the actual media. Um maybe maybe he he got it, but looking at the way he's sort of trying to put it together, maybe it wasn't apparent immediately.

>> Learning media to my heart.

>> Sometimes that does happen uh with ALG. I'm assuming just with like standard language learning methods where you hear something, you don't quite understand it, then they add a few more words in a sentence later and then you're like, "Oh, that's what they meant." And then you pull the conversation back around it. It's like you just need that little bit of extra more information to narrow in on it.

>> I noticed this earlier. I wanted to leave it to see if I heard it again and I did. So, I'll show you what I mean.

>> Learning media to my >> Okay. Tai tai. Have a listen to that.

>> Yeah. To my t.

>> Okay. Why is this an issue? In the Thai language, we do not have the word yes. A lot of foreigners learn that yes is Thai. This is not correct. Uh, this sounds like it's going to be very similar to Mandarin Chinese. You do kind of have a word for yes. You got like do but then you've got that's not the general way you would respond to like questions and stuff or like just in in I guess in general you would basically um you know respond with the verb and if you want to say no you would add you know a bull or male in front of it type of thing. Uh, so it's like it doesn't quite line up for English. And sometimes like you'll get learners who will be like they'll be like do like just constantly which just sounds unnatural or they'll do things like I do which is should which is kind of another way. Um, but also not quite right either like in like some instances where I deploy it's not right. It's a very hard thing to move away from when a language doesn't just have a generic word for just yes. Um, and it's usually because one, they're trying to translate one from one for what they have in their mother tongue. So, no, yes, no. And one of the first questions they'll ask a Thai or they'll look in a book, how do you say yes? Because they're told that there's no such word. What literally means, and I've got a clip from years back if you want to go and see it. Thai literally means it is it is not. So, for example, if I said um This is a cup or it's actually it's like a flask but but this is a glass ch is it or is it not I'm giving this yes no this is a glass is it is it like this this is it at the end ch then the active verb is chai so I'm saying chai it is may or is it not so there the response could be chai because chai is the actual verb being used the general rule is to say Yes. Equivalent, which is basically an affirmation of what they're saying. You use the verb that they use. If you want to negate it, you put the word may not before it. So may it is not >> even similar to Mandarin Chinese because you put may or may.

>> But you could not say if I said do you want a cup of tea? You could not say chai, do you want a cup of tea? Oh, it is. That does not compute because Tai is saying basically it it is if I ask the question in Thai would you receive tea or to want in this context would you want tea will you receive tea will you drink tea you could say then I would like it but I wouldn't say ch I'd say use the verb not and so here if I said, "Would you like a cup of tea?" And you just said, "Would you like a cup of tea?" It is it is what I will receive it. Or you could just say is affirming. What is it? It means may I receive what you have said in the affirmative. There is no word for yes in Thai. But it seems that that habit, the need for a yes has been permanently embedded in here. I'm sorry I'm spending so much time on this. If you were doing ALG and you listened to that much Thai, you would not hear Chay used like that. So, I'm wondering where this has come from.

>> To my heart.

>> Yeah. It makes me wonder if he took some type of like Thai short course before he went to ALG or something or if literally it's, you know, like my Spanish experience. Once you start speaking, you just start reskinning another language. There's even a joke in Thai like when when people are writing they'll write it even with a sometimes just to be funny but you wouldn't say you'd say because that's correct which in English you could translate as yes but you're actually saying correct

>> okay so she's just said because you can see everybody you have to be careful when ties compliment like this in almost an endearing manner.

>> Yeah, you get this in Chinese and you get it in Japanese as well. Any learner would be well aware of this where they're like, "Wow, your Chinese is so great when all you say is hello."

>> Sometimes it's just to encourage the speech. It It's not necessarily saying it's really good or not. And he says, which really? And I guess he knows that ties do this as well. Um, you could even drag that longer there.

>> And she's saying, "Oh, it's true because she probably knows also that this is something that ties will say to anybody that even says like you speak Tai so well."

>> Okay, so there we are. You know how I mentioned about if the the K sound, this aspirated K were pronounced by a native Thai, what it would sound like. Have a look at this. You can actually see it here. So remember um Kablo said and it sounded like have a listen to this

>> hot hot hot

>> and have a I'm just going to isolate this bit here. Hear that air that is the aspiration

>> here the throat is wide open then the voice activates for whatever the vow is. But you can see here the voice isn't activated here at all. If you had an activation, I've got this symbol here to sort of show the animation of the activation of the voice.

>> But here, there's no voice action.

>> It's just air. Nothing but air.

>> Have a listen to this. This is not natural in normal spoken Thai. This om emphasis I think is a combination of one presenting on YouTube, two needing to speak the official formal version of Thai but not actually the tie that is spoken between ties when they're talking together. So just realize that that there is an extra

>> It makes me really wonder if at this school when they were teaching ALG there cuz obviously they're they're not anymore. Actually you guys probably don't know this but they they don't actually teach using ALG there anymore. But I wonder if the teachers were actually speaking this kind of like formalized TV style tie to the students because that would just that would defeat the whole purpose of it. I'm assuming they didn't. I'm assuming they didn't. But like it is an interesting question to ask.

>> Uh precise version of Thai that's being used. I anticipate because she's expecting students to be listening to this.

>> That was very natural um for him to say that. That's a pretty Thai way of saying a fairly long time.

>> That's very natural. Sounds natural of Pablo.

>> So he'd been learning for six years at this point. He did one year at the school or was it two? I can't remember. He did one year at the school for sure though. Okay. Okay. You'll see.

>> Okay. So, you will CP. So,

>> okay.

>> You will see.

>> You will see when he's thinking and maybe sometimes not consciously the tones aren't kicking in to everything, but in general, it's okay.

>> That's an interesting observation. If you haven't learned a tonal language, you guys won't be aware of this, but like what happens for those who come from languages who don't have tones, such as, you know, myself, when learning Mandarin Chinese, when you're first starting out, you've got the sounds and you got the tones, and they're almost conceptually two different things. And when you get like stressed or you get into like uh some type of, I don't know, heated debate or something, you can drop the tones, but keep the sounds because I don't know why. It's just it just they seem to be conceptually two different things and tones are just harder and I'm assuming what's happening here is once the conversation moves away from you know what he's comfortable doing. It's the same with me and Mandarin Chinese. Uh your tones start to drop which means that you haven't just acquired the tones as part of the words or maybe those are words that he's learned in maybe an even more traditional way. You know, maybe he read them in a book and then like in some in I can't even say that. Like I feel like if you had actually acquired the words with their tonal component, you would not have this effect where you drop tones when speaking because I feel like that only comes from when you learn a word and then you've also learning the tone at the same time, but conceptually they're seen as two different things. And I also see it with like Chinese speakers when they speak English when they get like really excited or like really angry or something. Uh they can start introducing tones you know into words where obviously in English we don't have tones. Okay. And it becomes very that's where you get the whole chinglish thing from. So it it's interesting to me that all these words that should have been acquired are having these issues that a manual learner as the ALG speakers would say also suffering from the same problem because like If you think about it, no no person who speaks like Chinese or something, they just they randomly drop a tone on a word. What I have seen native Chinese people do is that because for a lot of them they learn pona, the standard Mandarin Chinese almost as a secondary language. They will sometimes mess up the tones in Mandarin Chinese, but they're not actually messing them up. They're just reverting to their local dialects version of it. Because like for example where my wife comes from Wayiong um there the tones a lot of the time are just completely reversed compared to you know standard Mandarin.

>> In Thai there are different ways of saying when like when are you going when I went back to Spain when I was a kid. If you're pinpointing a spot back in time you could say or when I went back to Spain the first time. And it's kind of a different feel and and in general by native speakers of Thai when I go back to Spain, meaning like for the times that I go back to Spain, I like to eat Spanish food or whatever it is, it's this regular sort of thing or a habitual thing, but when I went back to Spain that that time. You could use them interchangeably. There's some like if you do a ven diagram of when you use them, but his usage of it here probably wouldn't be what a Thai would use saying the same thing

>> again. Tai, okay, here in general for foreigners using the word Thai. The less you use it, the more natural you'll probably sound in Thai. Maybe that's just a see if you can get through a day without using Tai and rather choose other verbs and you'll find that you will probably start sounding more natural in Thai.

>> Okay, have a look at this. So we have these two words here. Okay, is a special word and it's pronounced like this. So you can see my algorithms. Oh my god, I wrote 3,000 lines of code just to be able to achieve this. But G is an outlier. So I had to have a special section of the algorithm just for this one word.

>> Sorry, I just had a good laugh then because I'm a programmer and sometimes you just spend ridiculous amounts of effort and energy on something that anyone else just looks at and just assumes nothing. just they're just like eh whatever.

>> But here we go. Say this with me. Actually, I'm going to enrich with AI so you can see what the meanings of these and you can see the um romanization. So, so it's naturally for when you see this may egg, your throat's going to be ramped down and is always going to be starting higher. Now, have a listen to this.

>> You might be saying, I'm nitpicking. If you are listening to that much natural input from native Thai speakers and these tones are locking into you, you shouldn't be making little errors like this with your tones for really really common connector words.

>> Now, an ALG proponent might come back and say, "Well, he probably started speaking too soon." That that would be the the common comeback. And I don't know if that's the case with Pablo. Like, I don't know when he started speaking. Oh, it's it's just going to be something that sits in your muscles. And again, I know that Pablo has used other methods and more traditional methods for learning say Japanese and maybe Chinese and other languages he's learned. I maybe this is testament to that you can't purely use ALG. If you've learned languages before, other things are going to creep in. So, I would say that if ALG were the only method used for learning Thai, I don't see how these kinds of patterns could have formed. Again, if you haven't got a copy of Cracking Thai fundamentals, I have a whole section on the usage of hey in my thinking and meanings. Hey, it almost means like I was delivering my speech to her in English and then he's let's see. It's an interesting selection. Maybe a better selection of words would be or so she used Thai and I would respond in English or I will speak in English and then she would respond to me in Thai. If you said it like he said it,

>> you totally get what he means, but it's not the natural selection of words that a native Thai would use if they were explaining what he's explaining. fan.

>> So if this was truly a separate like you had a separate language brain for this language that wouldn't happen essentially because like you would you couldn't create a structure that you just weren't aware of existing type of thing. But if you were superimposing this over another language that's quite a common occurrence this type of thing and it takes time to iron these out and work through these types of things.

>> You you get what he means. It just it's not what a native Thai would say in this context.

>> See, I don't know what type of error that is because this could be like it's perfect perfectly grammatically correct and maybe Stuart will say down in the comment section. It could be perfectly grammatically correct, but that's just not what people say. It could be one of those instances which I don't know how ALG deals with that situation. Like cuz you got to go to the ALG style of thinking. They're like, "Oh, well, everything you're saying you've acquired in some way." So, how have you acquired this type of saying and this type of thinking if this is not how others speak and think in the language? It means that clearly your thinking is being superimposed from somewhere else.

>> Okay, listen. Listen to this. This anyone learning Thai there that video And you'll hear it in my clips too. I I exaggerate my in some of them, but in normal speech, you will not get that degree of rolling over the tongue. Just Okay. Just some of those key words haven't set into the muscles naturally. They're there, but they're not in the natural position. Okay. I want you to have a listen to just this bit.

>> Say it with me. Nipit. Nit. Nip. Notice how

>> I'm not going to try to say it. I'm just going to listen.

>> Nip. When I get to the end of this sound here, actually, I'll write it for you here. So, for those people who can't read Thai, and I'll just say enrich with AI. You can use all these tools for free, by the way. Come into cracking language.com. Uh, if you have an AI key in there, you'll be able to sort of inject it here. But look at this. Nipnoi. Nipoi. The voice stops. Nitnoi. You might think it's a little thing, but this is critical. This is tire. It's all in the throat. That's where the tones come from. That's where everything comes from. It's all control of the throat. Conscious, subconscious, it's there. Nitnai. Nitnai. Even if I'm saying it really fast, uh, You see that stop there? It stops. Now have a listen to this.

>> So what's h >> it does sound vastly different >> happening is this sound here. So this is the >> do this part of the throat in a native speaker. It starts it's a preglottilized sound d. And so at the end this glauus is closed. Nitnit it has to close otherwise it's not a doc if you say ninoi it's almost like you don't have that there for the Thai ear nitni but he's saying

>> nai

>> you might not think that is a big issue but in aggregate and I guess I'll finish up if the thesis is that through ALG you're learning like a kid you're being exposed to hundreds and then thousands of hours of comprehensible input you're not actively thinking of articulation, phenology, grammatical structures, but the idea is because you're hearing so much of this stuff from native speakers. When it finally comes out, it's going to come out naturally. I would contend, and it's what I said in my clip earlier, obviously, it hasn't fully worked here. Why do I say that? Pablo speaks Thai well. He speaks fluently. You understand 100% of what he's saying. If he needs to say something that's complex, he'll find the right words to communicate it or he'll find words to communicate it so that ties understand what he wants to communicate. However, the influence of his mother tongue is very very strong both in phenology, articulation, the muscles. We saw that over, you know, but he was saying because in Spanish you don't have this aspirated K in things like Ninoi because in this D in uh Spanish subconsciously is is a totally different sound to Thai in Thai. What a D actually is is a pre-lottalized N d. It's not even from the teeth in Spanish the there. It's it's almost like a the off the teeth with a tongue out here then this there. Okay. And so whether he is seeing a D pop up even before he could read Thai that mother tongue version of it and sometimes that it it just stays vocal and doesn't cut off the throat still after thousands and he is six years of speaking Thai with natives every day still hasn't got those glottle stops happening where a native speaker would just have it naturally. And

>> you know there's some instances of this where I've kind of noticed this with my own Spanish. An example being is like I'll hear people say boss for like you know you but then also boss like a B sound. So it's like a V or a B. And like I don't know if it's somewhere halfway in between or if it's like a regionalization where some do actually pronounce it as a B and some pronounce it as a V. And it's the same with all the V sounds. Like I hear them some of them as like V sounds and some as B sounds. And I'm not sure if it's because my brain is literally unable to distinguish whatever that sound actually is or if it's just a regional difference. And I've found that I've just kind of defaulted to saying a B sound. Now I don't know if that's correct or not, but that that's what's happened. And maybe that happened with him. Maybe he couldn't quite distinguish that sound and then his brain just went and just settled on one sound that he knew that sounded close enough. Similar things happen every now and then with the tapped R and the L sound. I will sometimes not quite hear the tapped R because it's not in my native language. It is an Espirano, so I do pick it up most of the time, but it sometimes appears in Spanish in ways that I don't expect it to appear. And like there's even tapped R sounds, which I'm sure sound like rolled R sounds, but are too short to be a rolled R. So I'm like, uh, yeah, it's interesting. Then finally um syntactically or grammatically things like using Thai for the almost the the urge the need of westerners to have a word for yes and no where in Thai we don't have them. It's a totally different concept of how you answer in the affirmative or negative. Yet the natural gut reaction to respond is to have a yes no response and use the word chai. Sometimes it sounded more normal than others but in general you will hear tai a lot less because we just don't have a word for yes and no in Thai. I would contend that if you were listening to that much comprehensible input of native speakers, they would not be saying chai like that. So this is still being influenced from the subconscious of the mother tongue. Which comes back to the question that I answered in my clip the other day. Do I speak from day one? Yeah, I do. However, I think I have one this auditory intelligence that I've built up this skill set of being able to understand how the mouth and the muscles work even for sounds that are not in my language or any of the languages that I speak or my mother tongue where I'll actively try and train my muscles, check with native speakers if they still say, uh-uh, that's not it. And then come back and forth until I can work those in. And then I'll be analyzing structures. Oh, I would have said this like this. I would have said t cuz I thought yes. Oh, you don't have yes. Okay. And then I would be drilling myself to not use the word tai. But if you don't know, you don't know to do that. If you're not listening, you're not listening to do that. If you're being instructed, do not analyze this stuff. Well, then you're just sort of switching off to it. The result is is this is speaking fluently. But even after 6 years of speaking, it's not the holy grail of speaking native like. So ALG, it has developed a fluent Thai speaker. Has it lived up to the claims of what ALG says it does? I'll let you decide from my analysis just now. And

>> it sounds like no. No, because like the claims were if you watch David Long's speeches, the claims were basically that and it's that with ALG you will get further than a manual learner. That's what they said that they found in their program that it has a longer ramp up but in the end you will be more native than anyone else. um anyone else who's not using obviously ALG like more native like uh but and then you'll see other people take this to the extension of being oh you will be native like and I think the desire to be native like for so many people um pushes them down to the extremes of trying to do like these these types of methods because there's the promise at the end that you will get that and I have yet to see anyone come out of AG who apparently sounds native like So, I don't think ALG can make that claim in all honesty. I think that was just marketing from day one from the school who who basically they were just trying to attract students. And what better way to attract students than to say, "Look, you're going to spend more time, but you're going to sound better by the end of it."

>> Please correct me if I'm wrong if Pablo didn't learn fully from ALG if there was other study. And

>> that's also a good point. like if he didn't actually learn fully from ALG and he did like you know stuff before the high school or he did stuff afterwards then obviously that kind of discounts ALG like discounts it as being the fault of ALG.

>> Oh well then that would explain some stuff but let me know what you think. Let me know your experience. Have you developed native language or and native like Thai through only ALG? If so I'd really love to hear it because I want to hear some other specimens. I just don't know where to find them out there. So, if you would like to be part of this or have it analyzed like this, let me know and we can take a look and see whether or not it's worked for you.

>> No. So, the only one I know about is David Long himself, who was the the guy who ran the school for ages and was deemed to be the star student. Um, so I guess you could analyze his tie and that would be the extent of it. But yeah, anyway, that was that was fascinating and it kind of makes me feel that everything I'm experiencing is kind of expected. like I'm gonna walk away with an approximation of the Spanish language. Maybe eventually after six years a very good approximation. I don't know what um Pablo's tie level was in this like if he was like C1 or whatnot, but um basically you're going to invest a lot lot more hours for pretty much a similar outcome anyway. So if if the goal is to get native like, then you're probably better off actually doing what Stuart here is doing and analyzing the sounds to the core to get as close as possible. Um just sitting listening to content hoping is it's not the solution from what I can tell unless there's some other learners out there. Yeah, that's pretty much it. And also my freaking next Chinese update video is coming out in a few days. My Lingo Pi one, I have a lot of Chinese speaking with that one. Feel free, Stuart, to tear me apart linguistically to figure out, you know, where my sounds and everything are off. Um, and help me improve my Chinese overall. And I'll see you all in the next video. I don't know why I did it like that, but if you're not there, that's fine. I'm going to analyze every single noise you make while you're asleep and play it back to