汉字 or not 汉字? It is a question. Do We Really Need to Learn Chinese Characters?

I can't read or write Thai, but I can speak and understand most of what people say to me for life needs. This happened from 2012 to 2017 while I was living in Bangkok, Thailand. Sounds too good to be true, eh? To make this post most pragmatic, in the following sections, I will share how I learned listening and speaking Thai, and in what circumstances we do need to learn reading and writing. 

Section One: How I Learned Thai without Learning Reading or Writing 

I started learning Thai by mimicking how my friends spoke. In the first week when I moved to this country, I had a chat with one of my neighbors. She is a wonderful person who showed me the local groceries and took me to the downtown area. During those trips, it was hard to ignore how she communicated with people, especially for very functional purposes (e.g., telling the taxi driver where to stop and asking about prices in night markets). I always have a habit to carry a small pad with me, so I started to jot down some single words she said. Sometimes I even asked her how to express certain ideas in simple phrases. This is an example of my Thai learning notes:

 

During this stage, I couldn't speak sentences. My Thai was on a single-word or short-phrase level. For tones, as you can see from the image above, I used "curly arrows" to indicate the pitch and if there is a dot under a word, that means this is a "short sound". 

I knew that I was a beginner and Thai people are extremely friendly and encouraging when they see that you are trying to learn their language. That was why I was not aiming to achieve the perfect pronunciation or accent. Actually, I was happy when people pointed out the error I made or places I could improve. 

During the second month I arrived Bangkok, I found a private tutoring job teaching Chinese. When I look back to this experience, I realized how much this incident has boosted my Thai. As my student is a 6-year old who does not really speak any Chinese (but a lot of Thai, of course!), we had to figure out ways to communicate. Beside of our formal study, my student definitely taught me a lot of new Thai words and was very passionate about teaching me some fun ways to speak. Kids can really make best teachers. Till today, I can still recall a lot of the things she taught me (especially the "Chang (elephant) " song where she repeated at least 20 times). I realize that I started to form some slightly longer sentences. 

Deliberately creating conversations with people was absolutely helpful. For example, I knew that I was going to buy some vegetables, so I would use Google translator to give me the vegetables I want to buy in Thai. I would click the audio button a few times and jot down how to say these vegetables on my pad using the note system I created. When I arrive Big-C, I will go to a staff and ask "ko to na ka pi! sa-pa-roo yuu nai ka? (excuse me older sister/brother, where is pineapple?)" Another useful way to practice is to ask people to confirm my understanding. For example, when I see a scarf in a shop, after I check the price tag, I would ask the shop owner: "ko to na ka pi, an nii keu 200 baht, chai mai ka?" (Excuse me older brother/ sister, this is 200 baht, right?). Among all of the deliberate practices, the most useful one is always ask "ko to na ka, nii pa sa thai keu arai ka?"(excuse me, this in Thai is what?). 

So far, we have addressed vocabulary and pronunciation. For grammar, I mostly just put phrases together to form longer sentences. I feel very thankful that different from a lot of languages where the verb conjugation is absolutely a pain in the neck, Thai does not have that. It uses particles to sign time. For example, if you want to say I will go to the school, it goes as "chan yak baii rong rien" (I will go school). "yak" is the time particle that means "will". And if you notice, there is no article needed because giving the context, we know which school I will go to. If the listener is confused about that matter, they can always follow up with "rong rien nay?" (school which?). I especially feel thankful that there is no need to determine masculine or feminine to the words. Finally, most of the sentences I spoke follow the subject+verb+object structure. 

To be honest with you, simply by doing what I said above for a year, my Thai was sufficient to carry out most of the life tasks. After I made more local friends, especially after having a full-time job, I was exposed to more complex contexts. I did ask my Thai friends to teach me some longer sentences, but I never really felt lacking reading and writing made my life greatly inconvenient. 

Section Two: When Reading and Writing Become Necessary 

If you are traveling with an agency in China, well, I would assume you don't have to worry about buying a train ticket by yourself on the Chinese National Train Ticket App or recognizing what is written on the menu in a local Chinese restaurant. If you are doing some DIY traveling, the translator apps on phones are powerful enough to help you express essential needs. 

Living will be quite a different story. I'm not saying life will be absolutely miserable without knowing Chinese characters, but it will be inconvenient and more expensive. Here are a few examples, as far as I noticed, major car apps (except Didi) don't really have English surface, and it is the same to restaurant rating apps and local food delivery apps. If you travel to non-major cities or rural areas, you definitely need to read menu and road signs only printed in Chinese. Meanwhile, there are some companies who are particularly targeting foreigners as their customers. I have seen apps for food delivery and traveling agencies who can help you get train tickets do use English as the media for communication, but that also means you will pay more money for the service. 

You may question that, isn't my experience in Thailand contradicting my argument above? If I (me) lived without knowing Thai characters for 5 years, why can't someone do the same in China? Well, this is a completely different premise. To attract more travelers, most of the essential apps and services in Thailand apply English alongside with Thai. Even some very local restaurants have quadruple language menu (Thai, English, Russian and Chinese). 

I understand that many people are hindered by the idea of "Chinese characters look complicated". But there are tactics that actually can help you find patterns in the words and those patterns repeat a lot. I would definitely write a "crash course" in a post for it. 

Conclusion?

Quick recap, it will definitely save you more money if you are able to at least recognize Chinese characters.

Have fun learning!