THAI LANGUAGE

Mandatory course of the B.A. program in Languages, Cultures and Societies of Asia and North Africa with India and Southeast Asia.

Learning goals within the area of language, culture and humanities.

Knowledge and understanding:

- Basics of Thai language, spoken and written
- Cultural notions that are useful to the study of Thai language

Applying knowledge and understanding:

- Engage in conversations at a basic level
- Write and read brief texts at a basic level
- Comply to cultural norms in conversations at a basic level
- Identify basic grammatical categories and their properties

Basic Level (A1) of the CEFR: “Can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type. Can introduce themselves and others and can ask and answer questions about personal details such as where they live, people they know and things they have. Can interact in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help.”

Interest in Thai language and culture.

This course develops basic grammar and communication skills that pertain to daily situations, such as greeting, introducing individuals, describing one's language abilities, shopping, expressing one's needs, ordering food, identifying countries and nationalities, describing individuals physically, and speaking about housing, family relations and professions.

The course also introduces the phonetic system, and the Thai writing system (the vowels, the diphthongs, the tone system, key consonants from the three classes, tone modifiers, ending consonants, live/dead syllables, and consonant clusters).

Course textbooks:

Yuphaphan Hoongchamlong. 2007. Thai Language and Culture for Beginners 1. Distrubuted by University of Hawai’i Press


Further readings:

Smyth, D. 2002. Thai: An Essential Grammar. London and New York: Routledge

Songkran Bunjarat e Sabattini, Mario. 2017. Grammatica essenziale della lingua thai. Venezia: Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina


The course teacher will provide other materials via Moodle.

The exam will involve a single test (written and oral) with first appeal in the May-June exam session. The written test will last one hour, immediately followed by the orals. The final mark will be determined by the average of written and oral results.

The exam is same for students of Thai as a first language (enrolled to the India and Southeast Asia curriculum) and for students of Thai as a second language (enrolled to other curricula).

Frontal teaching and exercises.

Italian

written and oral