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2010-07-12 07:02 The Language Guy
Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Interview with Polyglot Stuart Jay Raj - Part 2 for Womenlearnthai.com - Getting over the Mental Barriers of Language Learning
2010-04-07 13:42 The Language Guy

Interview with Polyglot Stuart Jay Raj - Part 2 for Womenlearnthai.com

This is the 2nd of 3 interviews I did with Cat from the Womenlearnthai.com site. In this interview Cat asked me about the common obstacles for people learning Thai and how I help them get around them. We also touch a bit on my Mindcraft series.

Interview with polyglot Stu Jay Raj…

Heads-up everyone: This post is a continuation of Stuart (Stu) Jay Raj: Interview Part One.

Stu, with Cracking Thai Fundamentals and now Mindcraft, you’ve taught the Thai language to expats for some time. In your experience, which learning difficulties are the most common?

The writing system always stands as one of the biggest mental barriers for learners of Thai. Many people say ‘I just want to learn to speak Thai, I don’t need to learn to read or write’. I really believe that embarking on learning Thai with this attitude is shooting yourself in the foot before you’ve even started. The Thai writing system is based on a very logical system that’s actually a map of the human mouth. People shouldn’t count consonants and vowels and use that as a measuring stick for how hard a language is to learn.

The first thing you learn when you learn Mandarin is Hanyu Pinyin – the Romanized sound system. Luckily for Mandarin, Hanyu Pinyin was put together by linguists who knew what they were doing and can be used very accurately to produce the sounds in Mandarin.

Unfortunately for Thai, although there are many transliteration systems, the best ones I have seen are based on the IPA phonetic symbols. I notice with other Roman systems, unless you’re a linguist, learners’ mother tongue’s interpretations of roman letters filter the sounds when they’re reading the Thai words. The result, confused looks on Thai people’s faces and frustration from the learner when they think they’re saying the right thing but aren’t understood.

Investing a little bit of time getting a solid foundation when it comes to pronunciation and the sound system – and the writing system as an extension of that, will help you avoid hitting that ‘glass ceiling’ that many learners of Thai hit when they realize that they need to ‘unlearn’ a whole lot of language that has now already been embedded into their muscle memory.

How do you address these learning difficulties?

I tried to develop a system that enabled learners to spend a short time in learning the sound system and writing system in a fun way and kept it in the long term memory. That’s where Cracking Thai Fundamentals came from. You can see some examples of how I’ve done this in my blog, or on my youtube channel. Here’s an example:

With these two clips, most people can learn most of the Thai vowels in around 20mins to half an hour.

Many expats struggle with learning Thai. What advice do you have?

Don’t compare apples with oranges. Thai is not English… However, just because it looks different, doesn’t mean that there aren’t similarities. Up to 60% of Modern Thai has roots in Sanskrit. Sanskrit is an Indo-European language as is English. There are some amazing similarities that are ‘masked’ through the ‘different look’ of the language. Once you start to scratch the surface a little you’ll realize that the things that you thought were difficult – writing, tones etc, aren’t that difficult at all. They’re just different.

Don’t be put off learning Thai just because you’ve had a bad experience with Thai teachers. Just like many native speakers of English, many Thais don’t have a deep understanding of their own language.

When learners of Thai ask a question like:

‘Why are there 3 consonant classes?’
or
‘Why does the high tone actually rise?’

the response is normally something like:

‘There are 3 consonant classes – High, Middle and Low. The High class has ‘x’ number of letters, the middle class has ‘x’ number of letters etc etc.
Or,
‘you are a Farang, you don’t need to know that’.

The fact is that for most of them, they’ve never learned ‘why’ themselves.

One good formula is to have several different people that you learn from. Learn something ‘advanced’ from one of them. Something that a normal learner wouldn’t normally know. After that, go and try it out by just dropping it into a conversation with another Thai that you consult with. They will be impressed and think that your level is higher than what it really is. Then ask them to teach you something new. Keep rotating around your ‘Thai Consultants’ with new terms, new words and slang until your proficiency catches up with their perceived proficiency for you. It’s a great way to get past the ‘farang’ Thai that farang get taught and sound more native-like, not to mention keep motivated and positive about learning after each positive impression you make.

If you could pick five books from your librarything to help learners of the Thai language, what would they be, and why?

That only has a small portion of my books.

I would recommend:

• A Dictionary of English Thai Idioms – Ted Strehlow
• From Ancient Languages to Modern Dialects – Marvin J Brown
• Any one of Andrew Biggs’ books – written in Thai, are a great starting point to reading Thai. The stories he speaks about are normally easily understood by ‘farang’, so will carry you through language you don’t know. Start with a couple of lines. Move on to a paragraph. Within a couple of weeks, your reading speed will really start to pick up.
• Teach Yourself Thai – David Smyth
• ทะลึ่ง – ‘Thaleung’ – Series of books covering Thai risqué jokes and short stories. Most stories are only a paragraph or two and in most cases, the picture tells it all. Reading through it, you will start to appreciate Thai humour, see a lot of idioms and slang being used and get out of the normal ‘farang’ vocabulary that Thais think that farang have to use – as opposed to what’s really used.

What other books should beginner to intermediate learners of the Thai language read?

Everything and anything. There are some really great books and many extremely crappy ones. I’m yet to find a book that I can’t learn something from.

More than just reading books, I highly recommend learning to type in Thai from the get-go and get into blogs, web boards, MSN, facebook and anything else online that lets you interact with Thais in ‘everyday’ Thai language. The best thing about Thai on the internet is that it’s phonetic and is written to represent the way it’s really pronounced. You can ‘read’ someone’s mood / accent by how they’ve written.

Your Cracking Thai Fundamentals course is hilarious fun. Could we please get an overview?

Here is the blurb taken from one of the brochures:

This course is suited to anyone who has just arrived in Thailand and wants to start off on the right foot or for anyone who has lived in Thailand for a long time but their knowledge of Thai sounds like a clumsy shoe falling down the stairs.

Stuart Jay Raj has built up a reputation in Thailand for teaching the Thai language and culture to the expatriate community since 2000. When it comes to languages, take our word for it…this guy knows what he is talking about in any of the 13 different languages he can fluently speak, listen, read and write!

Aside developing conversational skills in Thai, other topics the course covers include:

• Memory techniques and building
• Building cognitive fluency when speaking Thai – training ourselves to react in Thai without thinking
• Motivating in the Thai workplace and eliciting the information we really need
• Using language to build a cross cultural rapport in the workplace
• Street Thai vs. Formal Thai / what to say, when to say it and who to say it with
• Expressing yourself in Thai to get the right reaction
• Understanding and Using Thai humor to reach to the heart.

Learning with Stuart Raj

Language is an exciting, living, changing and flexible creature that lets us get into the minds of the people who speak it. As expatriates, the value that learning to understand and communicate clearly with locals is priceless – especially in the workplace!

Over 4 x 3 hour sessions you will achieve the following objectives:

• Develop instinctive natural responses when conversing in Thai without passing through another language
• Overcome the psychological barrier of learning a tonal language
• Mastered the entire Thai Consonant System (including tonal classes) – Ideal for People who have learned previously but still have problems remembering symbols and classes – (Using imagery, mnemonics, sign language and 3-D spatial recognition)
• Learned the entire Thai Vowel System – (using unique handsigns that directly relate to the vowel shapes in the Thai script)
• Learned the Thai Tonal Rule System – (Using mind-mapping, imagery and story telling)
• Learned new language learning techniques, including how to recognize and analyze many Sanskrit and Chinese based elements in Thai.

What will attendees learn in your Mndcraft seminars?

Mnidcraft empowers anyone with a will to succeed to develop the same aptitude for languages and communication as what Stuart Jay Raj possesses based on powerful NLP modeling principles. 

NLP Modeling

NLP modeling is the practice of isolating essential patterns that makes someone successful and duplicating them into others in a way that they are practiced unconsciously.

 Stuart has carefully designed activities where you will not only learn the secrets that have crafted his aptitude for language, but will also have these skills, habits and knowledge embedded within you, breathing new life into your relationship with language!


More than just the ability to learn languages

, developing an aptitude for language is actually just a side effect of the Mnidcraft series. You will also tap into new abilities:



• Super Memory

• Perfect Pitch

• Touch-type in multiple languages including Thai, Sanskrit and Korean

• Be ‘funny’ across cultures
• Increase self-esteem in yourself and others
• Mimic sounds, body language and mannerisms
• Build instant rapport with people you’ve just met
• Master tones in Tonal Languages including Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese

• Solve the Rubik’s Cube
• Use an Abacus

• Circular Breathing
• Morse Code / Sign Language alphabets
• Speed Reading

• Simultaneous Interpreting
• XML and programming fundamentals

What are your tips for learning and retaining new vocabulary?

Think LOUD … full of colours, sounds, emotions. Make crazy associations and then link them with a system that you can recall.

Know what ‘pushes your buttons’ then wrap the language up in whatever that is.

Excitement is the best memory technique.

What other advice do you give to students of the Thai language?

Have FUN with the language – learn as much as you can about the language as you learn to speak the language.

Listen and observe – don’t use Thai as a vehicle to ‘say what you want to say’ to Thai people. Learn the stuff that they want to talk about and use the language to learn about them.

Stuart (Stu) Jay Raj
Behind the Curtain | stujaystujay’s YouTube Channel

The final section of this three part interview is: Successful Thai Language Learners: Stuart (Stu) Jay Raj.

Interview with Stuart Jay Raj - Part 1 - from 'Womenlearnthai.com' site
2010-04-06 13:14 The Language Guy

This is a cross post of an interview with Cat from the 'Womenlearnthai.com'site.

This is the first installation of a 3 part interview.

Interview with polyglot Stu Jay Raj…

When I moved to Bangkok I was fortunate to discover Stu Jay Raj’s Cracking Thai Fundamentals course located at that time on Suk Soi 1. Once a week for eight weeks I’d jump on the MRT to travel into the bowels of Bangkok for an hour of hilarious fun. Fun, because Stu is not only a knowledgeable teacher of the Thai language, but a fabulous entertainer too. And ever since then, I’ve followed Stu’s climbing career.

Stu’s interview on WLT has been a long time coming. Due to his varied background, the interview will be in three installments (and I could have easily asked enough questions for a fourth or even a fifth).

Stu Jay Raj: Accredited Dale Carnegie consultant and trainer; regional advisor, trainer, and lecturer in cross cultural communication; IT developer; simultaneous interpreter, translator and editor; television and audio composer; TV presenter; and polyglot.

Stu, when I first met you, you were fluent in: Speaking, listening, reading and writing with over 13 modern languages; Chinese dialects, Spanish, Indonesian, Thai, Danish and Sign language; plus a working knowledge of more than 15 additionaly languages, modern and ancient. Have you added any more languages to your repertoire?

I don’t really like counting languages. Languages are songs.

It’s like being a musician and being asked “How many songs do you know?”

There are some songs you ‘know’ – you’ve rehearsed them every day for the past 20 years, you’ve played them in front of packed houses, you can improvise, you know how to pick a dead crowd up with it, you know what parts of the song to listen out for especially when you’re playing with new musicians and you can interpret what other musicians are doing with it. Those kinds of songs become just like another extension of your body.

Then there are the ones that you ‘know’, but you’d probably need to have the chord chart handy just in case.

Then there are the songs you ‘know’ – like when you hear them, you know who the composer was, what key it’s in and you could probably get away sitting in on a gig with another band playing it if you had the charts and were watching for the cues.

The ones I like are the songs you ‘don’t know’ – BUT … you can predict what they’re going to sound like. For example, most ballads you hear playing on the radio or a Karaoke bar deep in the Sois of Sukhumvit will probably fall into one of a handful of ‘formulas’ with some variations here and there. I don’t know how many sappy songs there are out there where the bridge uses the chords ‘IV – V/IV – IIImin7 – Vimin7 – IImin7 – V7 – I’ or some variation of it.

If I was sitting in on a gig and didn’t even know the song, as soon as I heard the first couple of chords starting to sound like that formula, I could probably follow through being pretty certain that what I play is going to be a decent fit.

So to make a short answer even longer, and carrying on the analogy of ‘language’ = ‘song’, I’m always learning new songs and even those songs that I’ve played for years and feel like they’re part of me – I always find ways of making them new for me. At home I have thousands of ‘song’ books and everyday am buzzed to go to my collection and learn something new, sometimes about songs that I already know, sometimes about songs by the same composer, sometimes about songs in the same genre and sometimes I try out genres I’ve never really touched before.

Since doing my TV show last year, I have been traveling all over the place, so I’ve been getting into languages like Tagalog, Turkish, Burmese and Vietnamese.

Your grandfather must be an amazing man. Not only is he a linguist with an extensive passion for history, but he took the time to share his love for languages with his young grandson. Did he use any language learning methods with you?

I can remember when I was about 4 and had the mumps. My grandfather sat with me and would read a book each day with me ‘Italian through pictures’. The book was made up with stick figure pictures and slowly building up functional vocabulary and structures. That book became part of me. Later on, if we were ever out, he would stand and point up at the birds just like the pictures. I would say just like in the book – “Gli uccelli sono là” (The birds are over there).

He also had sets of Japanese Kanji cards that we used to go through. He taught me all the different components of characters – the radicals and the other meaningful particles and we would have compete to see who could find them in the Kanji dictionary first.

He taught me all different memory techniques and we would use them to remember wordlists in English and other languages, memorize lists of numbers, calculate what day of the week any given date was, convert decimal to binary to hex, send messages to each other in Morse-code, build electric circuits from schematics, listen to shortwave radio broadcasts, taught me to touch-type at the age of around four and many other things that stimulated and bridged the senses.

He would play with words with me and we would make new meanings up by making ‘nonsense words’ with roots and affixes that only we knew what they meant.

I believe that all of these things had an impact on my ability to learn languages.

The combination of multiple language skills and training with the Dale Carnegie method must pack a punch when it comes to cross cultural communication. What is your advice for anyone going the same route?

Falling into Dale Carnegie was one of those unintentional happenings of fate. It was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Many of the things learned in Dale Carnegie were similar to what my grandfather had taught me and there were many other things that NO-ONE had ever taught me … but I needed to learn. The great thing about Dale Carnegie is that it teaches you to focus and build on the positive.

It took years just to be accredited to train a single programme. Being in training rooms day in day out during that time and learning under some amazing master trainers was an amazing experience.

The one main thing that my time with Dale Carnegie taught me was the value of ‘people’. You might have a slew of letters after your name, but if you’re not good with people, the benefit you bring to an organization is very limited and can even be a liability. If you’re not a people person, you better be pretty damn good at what you do.

When I came out of Dale Carnegie and started my own consultancy, I realized a potency of the synergies that language, cultural understanding and people skills brought. Companies, governments, UN agencies and NGO’s have also realized the potency of this and over the past ten years, many of them have trained me up to a level of competency in their industries and send me out to work with their people and be a conduit between local team members in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, India and other countries in Asia and executive management.

Advice for people taking the same route? Language + Hard-skills + People Skills = Higher ROI than just Language + People Skills.

After interviewing Miss Indonesia 2005 (Artika Sari Dewi), you landed the envious job of linguist for the yearly Miss Universe pageants. Has it changed the direction of your life in any way?

Being part of the official Miss Universe interpreting team since 2005 has been one of the most amazing and life changing experiences. Each year I have the pleasure to travel to some of the most amazing places on the planet (this last year we were at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas) and rub shoulders with some of the world’s most amazing, influential and gorgeous people. Most of all, I get to spend time with one of the most amazing, talented group of linguistically inclined people on the planet. Most of the interpreting team are polyglots and all have amazing life stories. Some are of royal stock, some have become extremely successful after escaping war and hardship in their home countries. In 2008 when we were in Nha Trang, the Vietnamese interpreter went back to her home village in Nha Trang for the first time since escaping from there almost 40 years ago.

It was that Vietnam event that we first met Lady Gaga. Most of us were wondering who she was. When she performed though, it became apparent that she would be the next ‘big thing’. Within months, she was topping the charts all over the world.

Miss Universe is an amazing cosmos to learn from. People who think it’s just about looks and ‘world peace’ are missing the bigger picture. It’s business. It’s marketing. It’s people.

It’s taught me once again that the ability to understand and build a rapport with ‘people’ is one of the most valuable assets anyone can have. With each pageant comes a whole new set of friends each year – from production crew to event organizers and contestants. After all these years we’re still close and I have had the opportunity to meet up with them again on my travels.


When I saw your new TV show, Nuea Chan Phan Plaek’ เหนือชั้น1000 แปลก, I couldn’t think of any other theme that would be as tailor-made for your linguistic talents. How did it come about? Did you put forward a proposal, or did they come to you?

A couple of years back I was asked to be a guest on the Thai talk-show ‘เจาะใจ’ (Joh Jai) to speak about languages. I had a blast doing the show and when the clips hit youtube, they ended up getting 100’s of 1,000’s of hits. I started to receive emails everyday from people all over the world who said that it inspired them to learn languages and aspire to become a polyglot.

In 2009 one of the producers from JSL called me in and asked me to do a short test-shoot for a new programme that they were looking at producing.

Things went well and I landed one of the best jobs I’ve ever had in my life. I was paid to fly around the world and hunt down stories on the most amazing, extraordinary and bizarre people, places and things on the planet.

On a Thai language note, the title of the show is interesting. It was originally going to be called เหนือชั้น ขั้นเทพ ‘Neua Chan Khan Thep’ – ขั้นเทพ is a popular idiom that’s been in my opinion overused over the past couple of years in Thailand especially by the younger generation meaning ‘ guru’ or ‘master’. I think they were worried that using that word set the expectations bar too high for the show, so changed it to a play on words – ‘เหนือชั้น 1000 แปลก’. Here’s a breakdown of what it means:

เหนือ – ‘above’
ชั้น – ‘standard’ ‘class’ ‘level’
เหนือชั้น – ‘Above par’ or ‘extraordinary’

1000 แปลก is a play on words in that the number ‘1000’ is pronounced พัน ‘phan’. This is the same pronunciation as the Sanskrit based word for ‘species’ – พันธ์. So when you hear the words 1000 แปลก, it could be interpreted as ‘1000’s of weird / strange things’ OR ‘strange species’.

The season finished at the end of the year, but I’m looking forward to doing more production work in 2010 hopefully targeted at the English speaking world this time.

Are you still performing with the ROL Jazz Trio in Bangkok?

Sadly not anymore. Since our bassist Kenro Oshidari was posted to Sudan a couple of years back, the ROL trio had to go on hiatus. Kenro is back in Bangkok now and all of us are keen to play, but now I have just moved my family to Australia. I fly back and forth, but aren’t in town enough to commit to playing.

Playing jazz is an amazing outlet to maintain one’s sanity. You really notice the difference not playing each week. One thing I loved about our trio was that we would rehearse every week at Kenro’s place and in the 8 or so years that we played together, never had one fight or serious disagreement. For musicians, this is an amazing feat! We would record most weeks we played and listen to what we did in each gig to try and work out what we could build on and what needed to improve. I think this is a great principle to take through life.

What are you up to these days?

Just a couple of weeks ago, I moved my family over to Australia so that my kids could learn English and have a chance at a ‘non-Thai’ education over there.

I still travel back and forth in the region, but at the moment I’m trying to give some time back to the kids after having traveled up to 20 days out of each month for most of last year.

I am looking at partnering with an outfit working in the region in a few months and continue to provide solutions to the Oil and Gas industry. I’m also working on several production projects that will be airing in Asia and beyond.

What can we expect from you in the future?

I want to be the person that helped make ‘language’ and ‘using your brain’ sexy. Doing what I do combining multiple languages and cross cultural communication / training is a terrible business model in that you can’t cookie cut it that easily.

Leveraging through being in the media is one solution that I want to invest more time in over the next year. I’ll continue to build on my brand and continue to affiliate myself with organizations and people that support the same vision.

Stuart (Stu) Jay Raj
Behind the Curtain | stujaystujay’s YouTube Channel

Stay tuned for Stuart (Stu) Jay Raj: Interview Part Two.

Enjoy…

Stuart Jay Raj TV Show เหนือชั้น 1000แปลก Taiwan 臺灣 Sexy Betel Nut Girls 檳榔西施 English Subs
2009-09-19 13:16 The Language Guy

Languages: Thai ไทย, Mandarin Chinese中文 (漢語)

เหนือชั้น1000แปลก - สาวสวยขายหมาก

เหนือชั้นรอบโลก ที่ประเทศไต้หวัน สจวท เจ ราช พาไปพบ สาวๆ แต่งตัวเซ็กซี่แต่ขายหมาก??

Subtitles: English – available via the Youtube desktop player. If subtitles don’t appear straight away, click in the far bottom right hand corner subtitle box and select ‘English’.

In this episode we go and meet the sexily clad ladies in Taipei and Taizhong that tout customers on the side of the road. For those in Thailand, such images might lead you to think of another trade, but these girls aren’t selling sexual services. At first when we went into try and get some footage of some of the Betel Nut stalls, none of the girls we approached would let us film in fear of what the repercussions would be from their ‘bosses’. It’s a cut throat business there.

Trying to take another tack, I asked one of the girls where her boss lived. She pointed his house out and I went and knocked on the door and introduced myself to him in Chinese and explained a little about what we were doing. He was very hospitable and went out of his way to take care of us. His wife was suffering from cancer, so along with the Betel Nuts, he also produced some of the freshest organic Watermelon Juice you could find in the city.

The main girl in the clip – Yaya – is 19 years old and had been working there for around 2 years now. From speaking to her candidly, she seemed to earnestly be happy with her job and only had nice words to say about her boss.

Perhaps a new face to an old trade in Thailand?

If you have any amazing, extraordinary people, places, animals or things that you think would be fitting for our show 'Neua Chan Phan Plaek', drop me a line on stujay@hotmail.com. You can follow along with the show and other language and mind-skills related stories on my blog - 'Behind the Curtain' at http://stujay.blogspot.com

Stuart Jay Raj - เหนือชั้น 1000 แปลก -Australian Outback Underground City - Coober Pedy
2009-09-18 19:39 The Language Guy

Languages: English, Strine, Kiwi, Thai

พบกับเมืองประหลาด Coober Pedy ความแปลกของเมืองนี้คือเป็นเมืองใต้ดินเพราะต้องหนีปัญหาอุณหภูมิที่สูง

Don't Miss เหนือชั้น 1000 แปลก - Neua Chan Phan Plaek - 'The Extraordinary, Amazing and Bizzare' each Tuesday night on Thai Channel 5 22:30 - 23:30

This is the first of two stories covered in the Australian outback town of Coober Pedy. The amazing thing about this city other than the fact that it’s the number one opal mining city in the world, is that a good portion of this city’s action happens underground. Not just the mines! Houses, churches, restaurants, hotels, you name it!

Part 1

Part 2

Subtitles are loaded in the Youtube player in English. If you liked this, or are into languages, culture and communication, be sure to swing by Stuart Jay Raj’s language, mindskills… and now Amazing World Stories Blog at http://stujay.blogspot.com

Stuart Jay Raj - เหนือชั้น 1000 แปลก - Episode - Bali Trunyan Corpses - Full English Subs Completed
2009-09-18 14:23 The Language Guy

Just a quick note to let you all know that the 2nd clip (2 of 2) now has English subtitles. I've just prepared another four episodes that have gone to air over the past couple of months for subtitles. You should see them in the next few days. Here's are both clips now with full English subs for the Un-Smelly corpses of the Terunyan village in Bali.

Part 1 of 2

Part 2 of 2

More Amazing Stories

Again - if you have any other amazing stories you think would be worth covering, drop me an email at stujay@hotmail.com!

Youtube Subtitles in English for Stuart Jay Raj's TV Show เหนือชั้น 1000 แปลก
2009-09-16 19:58 The Language Guy

I've just realised how easy it is to drop SRT subtitle files into youtube videos. I just did a trial one here. If you can't see the English subtitles straight away, you might have to click the square in the far bottom right corner of the player and choose 'English'. I've only done it for this one video - more to follow (time permitting!)

Stuart Jay Raj เหนือชั้น 1000 Plaek - Thai TV Show - Ep 3 - Taiwan - Theme Restaurants - Sexy Nurses, Flight Attendants to Hello Kitty
2009-09-15 19:33 The Language Guy

Languages: Thai, Mandarin Chinese

พาไปชมร้านอาหารแปลกๆ อาทิเช่น ร้านอาหารที่นำเนื้องูมาทำเป็นอาหาร ร้านสไตล์เครื่องบิน ร้านสไตล์โรงพยาบาล ร้านสไตล์ Hello Kitty

Direct Link: http://www.manytv.com/videos/10464-_1000_.php

In this episode, we're back in Taiwan! Theme restaurants are popping up like mushrooms across the country.

Here we take a look at 4 places to dine. The first is Snake Alley - look at snakes and other crawly goodies.

The second is the A380 restaurant. This is a theme restaurant where the whole experience - from the check-in, flight attendant hosts / hostesses, food and decor is all done up to make you feel like you're really on board an aeroplane.

The next is the DS Hospital restaurant. Here, all the wait staff are dressed up as sexy doctors and nurses. The drinks are served via an intravenous drip like rig and the floor show is ... well, there's no way the Thai cultural ministry would allow it to go to air. Let's just say that the nurses perform a strip show - but they don't strip themselves! That is left to an unwitting couple of members of the crowd. The show finishes up with a bucket of ice tipped down into the patrons underwear cum G-string. Glad I wasn't in the firing line!

The final restaurant is the Hello Kitty restaurant. A little to 'pink' for my liking - the franchise concept was great though. Everything... and I mean EVERYTHING was Hello Kitty themed. The burger bread, fries, cakes, frosting on top of drinks, glasses, wait staff, seats, tables, wall hangings, bathrooms ... The food was ... well, it was presented very well. I can imagine such a restaurant doing well in Bangkok in a place like Siam Paragon or Siam Square.

Stuart Jay Raj เหนือชั้น 1000 Plaek - Thai TV Show - Ep 1 Taiwan Sexy Betel Nut Girls
2009-09-15 18:56 The Language Guy
Languages: Thai, Mandarin Chinese

เหนือชั้นรอบโลก ที่ประเทศไต้หวัน สจวท เจ ราช พาไปพบ สาวๆ แต่งตัวเซ็กซี่แต่ขายหมาก??

Direct URL: http://www.manytv.com/videos/10446-_1000_.php

We shot this story between Taipei and Tai Chung in Taiwan. There are a few reasons why we chose this story:

1. The women in many of the stalls were HOT ... always a good thing for TV
2. Many Thais when seeing the picture (ok - maybe not just Thais) when they see skimpily clad young maidens touting cars to stop and buy something, something other than Betel Nuts comes to mind
3. In Thailand, the practice of chewing on Betel nuts is relegated to the old grannies and granpas up country - conjures up pictures of old black / toothless ladies and men. In Taiwan, even young people still chew the nuts.

There are more stories coming from Taiwan - Stay Tuned!

Stuart Jay Raj เหนือชั้น 1000 Plaek - Thai TV Show - Ep 2 Bali Indonesia - Trunyan Dead Bodies - No Smell
2009-09-15 18:55 The Language Guy

Languages: Thai, Balinese, Bahasa Indonesia

สจวท เจ ราชพาไป บาหลี ประเทศอินโดนีเซีย ไปพบกับต้นไม้ประหลาดและความเชื่อแปลกๆของคนบนเกาะบาหลี

Direct link: http://www.manytv.com/videos/10461-_1000_.php

This is the first in a series of clips from Bali, Indonesia. Bali is different to the rest of Indonesia in that it is predominantly Hindu. The Trunyan village (from Taruh - Place / Menyan - Corpse) is renowned for the strange practice of placing dead bodies to decompose next to a special tree that is said to absorb the smell of the rotting corpses into the tree! While I was there, there were 11 corpses decomposing, but no smell! ... believe it? .. take a look at the clip and judge for yourself :) (Shame there's no such thing as smellovision!)

The trip there was interesting. At first, our guide refused to - there are rumours of people being robbed and even murdered going out there. In the end, it was an issue of $$$MONEY$$$. We paid 'security' money to the right people and the hospitality there was fantastic. If you're planning a trip there, make sure you have a few rupiah spare for 'extra costs' that suddenly appear once you arrive ... and again when you try to leave!.

The Trunyan village is deep up into the lake between the volcanoes Gunung Batur / Gunung Agung.

Stuart Jay Raj's New TV Show - เหนือชั้น 1000 แปลก 'Neua Chan Phan Plaek' - 'The Amazing, The Extraordinary and the Downright Weird!' Thai Ch.5
2009-09-15 18:15 The Language Guy
You might have noticed that I've been pretty slack in updating my blog recently. I wish I've could have updated more - but I have evidence here to prove that I haven't been sitting idle doing nothing! Since shooting my new TV show 'Nuea Chan Phan Plaek' เหนือชั้น 1000 แปลก (Extraordinary / Amazing (Things / People / Places)), I've been blessed to have been able to travel to so many different places around the world to cover some of the most amazing and extraordinary people, places and things on this planet. The team is made up of myself (Stuart Jay Raj - สจวท เจ ราช), Tin Chokmolkij (ทิน โชคกมลกิจ) and Apple (Ple.. pronounced /pɘn/ with a falling tone) Jariyadee Thammavit - เปิ้ล -จริยดี ธรรมวิทย์. Tin and Ple spend most of the time in the studio, while I have the burden of tripping around the countryside covering stories outside of Thailand. Ple has done a series of stories in Cambodia recently thought, and hopefully all three of us will be able to travel together for stories in the future. Over the past couple of months, the programme and other things have taken me between Thailand, Taiwan, China, Korea, USA, The Bahamas, Indonesia and Australia and covered stories including the sexy betel nut girls in Taiwan, the dead bodies of Trunyan village in Bali Indonesia and the mystical tree that sucks the smell of the corpses away, sand-dune surfing in Australia, out with Hump Back Whales, swimming with the dolphins, up in helicopters over crystal blue waters and shipwrecks, eating at theme restaurants - A380, Hello Kitty (seriously!), DS 'Hospital' restaurant where all the waitresses are dressed up as sexy doctors and nurses and serve drinks via a Drip! We had an epic adventure making it to the underground outback Aussie opal mining of Coober Pedy - where even a 5-star Sheraton hotel and a Serbian Orthodox church is build underground in the stone... not to mention the home of 'Crocodile Harry' - the nymphomaniac crocodile Hunter that the hit 80's movie Crocodile Dundee was based on. Some of Harry's claim to fame was to have a goal of sleeping with 1000 virgins and having them contribute to his mural in his 'dugout' with an artistic representation of their name and where they're from. A funny anecdote from Harry's longtime friend / roommate - Friend - "Harry - I suspect that many of these women weren't 'real' virgins'. Harry - "Hmmm.. that's ok, 'Almost virgin' is good enough for me! Harry also had Tina Turner's bra, left over from the shooting of Mad Max - Beyond Thunderdome, but it was stolen a couple of years ago. His house is a maze of fascinating art, womens underclothes hanging from the ceiling and a spectacular 'Shitatorium' in true Coober Pedy fashion.

The stories will be rolling out over the next few months every Tuesday evening - 22:30-23:30 on Thailand's Channel 5. This is available overseas via satellite on Ch 5's international service, or it can be streamed over the internet either live here, or you can click on the separate episodes via ManyTV here: I'll be posting more on our adventures soon. In the meantime, in the next couple of posts, I'll link through to the online versions of the stories I've done ... I would much prefer to have these streaming from youtube, but I 'personally' wouldn't know how to do it (nudge nudge wink wink). If anyone out there has any amazing stories / people / places / animals / things anywhere on the planet, let me know! I'll discuss it with the producers, and if it's deemed to be something to make Thai audiences go 'WOW', chances are I'll be over soon to cover it. For those people that were looking to have me run some of my workshops in their cities / countries, this might be a good way to kill two birds with one stone ^_^.

How to Be a Beauty Queen and Influence People ... Stuart Jay Raj on the Language of Miss Universe
2009-09-14 15:11 The Language Guy

Somebody's Gotta Do It …

The Miss Universe 2009 pageant has just wrapped up (not without controversy) at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. Another amazing year where I was fortunate to spend a lot of time meeting some wonderful people and rub shoulders with the gorgeous, the glamorous, the influential … and the not so influential (though many in this final category would probably have liked to have thought otherwise), surrounded by egos, hairspray, horrible overpriced American greasy food and two giant manta-rays, not to mention more languages than you could poke a stick at… all the ingredients for the perfect 'gig'!

My life started to be fatefully influenced by the Miss Universe pageant back in 2005 as a result of a series of seemingly random events stringing from the Tsunami in Thailand leading up to a chance encounter interviewing Miss Indonesia 2005 (Artika Sari Dewi) in Bangkok for an Indonesian television network. Since then, I've had the honour of working with one of the most amazing bunch of linguistically endowed people on the planet who wait all year for dinner conversations where sex, politics, syntax and the subjunctive can (and more often than not DO) all get rolled up into one sentence!

Putting the Odds in Your Favour at Miss Universe

Having been a qualified Dale Carnegie facilitator in a former life, I realized that the first 9 Dale Carnegie Human Relations principles could well be the key to success at Miss Universe. I see mistakes being made time and time again by contestants and their managers. If you're going to be competing in Miss Universe in the future, it mightn't hurt trying to implement some of the following suggestions.

Principle #1 – Don't criticize, condemn or complain.

IT'S ALL ABOUT BRANDING!

In my eyes, the Miss Universe Competition is not a beauty contest. It's a branding exercise where the right character / image for the Miss Universe brand is selected to represent the organisation for the next year.

Think of some of the top brands out there –

Whether you love them or hate them, the statistics (and bottom lines) show that strong brand names help generate higher returns, stability and growth for the organisations that they represent. In May of 2008, Coca-Cola's brand was valued at US$58.2 billion. This four-syllable piece of intellectual property is THE MOST VALUABLE asset that the company owns.

Miss Universe is a powerful brand that is associated with another powerful brand-name – Donald Trump. The person who is crowned 'Miss Universe' for the next year takes that mast-head position for the organization and will be just as important to the success of the Miss Universe Organization as the name, font, design and colours of the Coca Cola logo are for the Coca Cola organization.

In saying that, the process of coming down to that one person who is going to represent the brand and ensure that the organization has a future is more than just skin-deep.

Girls … You're on Stage 24/7! The Miss Universe Competition is a Psychological Game of Stamina

There are many physically beautiful women on this planet. I am blessed by living in Bangkok, Thailand where in my humble opinion I think that there is an inordinate ratio of stunningly gorgeous women mixed into the general population. The Miss Universe organisation needs something more than just a pretty face. If I were running the organisation and were to write a list of 6 of the most desirable traits that I would be looking for in Miss Universe, it might look something like this:

1. Physically Attractive - May not be so politically correct in this day and age – but hey, it's a beauty pageant… right?

2. Interesting – There is some degree of depth to their character that makes other people want to be around them. Some of the more interesting people there this year included:
   
   1. Miss Honduras (Bélgica Suárez) – a real life 'CSI' forensic scientist who was passionate about her work and had some amazing stories to tell about cadavers and other related things.
   
   2. Miss China (Wang Jingyao) was always in a good mood, and always appeared to be really interested in everyone she spoke to – and could tie something of herself into each person she met. Enthusiasm won out over any language barrier.
   3. Miss Egypt (Elham Wagdi) is a psychologist / marriage counsellor – extremely fascinating person.
   4. Miss Indonesia 'Zizi' (Zivana Letisha Siregar) was an amazing ambassador for Indonesia this year and captured the hearts of many.
   
   5. Miss Israel (Yulia Liubianitzki) is a soldier, and had some fascinating perspectives on world politics.
3. Awareness and Empathy – have a keen understanding of the current social talking points and can take a stand on one side or the other, though understanding all sides of an issue – e.g. War, politics, economy, health issues, minority issues, environment etc. Even if they don't agree with something, they should be able to as we say in Dale Carnegie "Disagree in an Agreeable Manner"… and not just make groundless claims or use cliché garble statements (most infamous point in case – Miss South Carolina)
4. Understands the Business – she should realise that Miss Universe is a business and understand her own role and her impact on both the longevity of the organisation and the bottom line.

5. Has Style – needs to be a good cutting-edge image for the organisation whether attending a cocktail-party, or just woken up and called out for an urgent shoot. The right person needs to be able to compose themselves and broadcast a consistent image with consistent sound-bites. Luckily, she will have people like Lou during the pageant and Roston to help take care of this.
6. Presentation Skills - Whether speaking one on one, doing a photo-shoot, attending an orphanage, Guantanamo Bay or addressing a crowd of thousands at a sports meet, Miss Universe's entire life for the next year will involve presenting themselves and the organisation. More importantly, they need to be able to successfully and positively present their values and the values of the organisation based on solid arguments – not just claims. The non-physical side of presenting (owning your message, enthusiasm, knowing your audience, structuring your message) are just as important as the physical aspects (posture, voice, body language, grooming etc).

During the 3-4 weeks that the girls are living together running up to the final pageant, they are being assessed on how they measure up to the criteria for a successful 'Miss Universe'. The above criteria are my own assumptions – I'm sure Mr. Trump, Paula, Roston and the gang have their own personal wish-lists.

Back to The 3 C's …

Getting back to the 3 C's, 'Don't Criticize, Condemn or Complain' - Understand that if you do Criticize, Condemn or Complain, it will eventually more likely than not come back to bite you. It's not just a matter of trying to put on your happy face when you're on stage or out in public being watched. The fact is that eyes are on you the whole time. Who's eyes? Your minders, any of the hundreds of MU employees roaming the corridors of the event facility / hotel, hotel staff (house-keeping, restaurant staff, security etc), managers of other contestants that are chomping at the bit to find some mud to sling on the competition (NOTE: some of these people can be very influential in the blogosphere, social networks, print / broadcast media and beyond!), people viewing the video feeds from the TV cameras constantly rolling in the venue. There are literally thousands of eyes on you ALL THE TIME. All it takes is one nose to be put out of joint, one smart remark that was taken the wrong way to blow it for you. Speaking on your mobile phone or checking your Facebook page or email when you're supposed to be paying attention to someone 'important' and you could well have just cost you your position in the top 15 and subsequently any chance of winning the crown.

Blogs and Forums could Make You or Break You

Blogs, mobile phones and the organic communication channels that develop as a result of having so many people living in close quarters during the lead-up to the pageant can either work for you or against you. Communication is swift and rumors traverse at lightning speed.

What does this mean for you as a contestant?

Always be painfully aware of what effect you are having on your environment. It's always better to have a mentor that can be your eyes on yourself rather than assuming (filtering) through your own eyes that everything is rosy.

I have seen on many occasions where contestants have finished the pageant and gone back home in a delusional state that they were the bees knees, that they had done everything right and that there was some how some kind of conspiracy against them in the end to keep the crown away from them. Many of these people have been the ones that I've noticed during rehearsals to have been constantly not paying attention, talking on their mobile phones past the breaks and showing other anti-social behavior.

Principle #2 – Give honest, sincere appreciation.

Spend every day there with a confident attitude, but never let this turn to arrogance. Understand that when it all comes down to it, it's a privilege that you're even there – not your God given right.

Look Out for Other People's Strengths

As a contestant, look for the strengths in all of your peers and other people you come across in the organisation and try and be something that edifies them, builds them up and brings value to who they are. Each time you do this, by default you're bringing value to who you are.

Principle #3 – Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Everyone has their own agenda. Whether you're a salesperson, CEO, or a housewife, one important key to being successful on this planet is to be able to build a passion in other people about things that you're passionate about. To do this, you need to understand what's important to THEM first! …that means going back to Principle #1 and Principle#2.

One example where this can really come in handy is during the interview session. You might have a burning passion to let the world know your views on a certain topic. Before you go doing this though, make sure that you put things into perspective first. Ask yourself:

• Is there a chance in hell that the judges will be interested in this?
• Why do I want them to hear about this?
• Is telling them about this going to help the Miss Universe Organisation achieve its goals over the next year?
• Is this topic going to demonstrate a personal value / virtue that the judges would be looking at in a successful candidate?
• Is this something that is going to be important / interesting to the world at large, or might it only be interesting to my own countrymen?
• Can I deliver this message concisely and effectively in the restricted time that I have? (If they tell you you have 3 minutes – then you have 3 minutes!)

If you hesitate in answering 'yes' to any of these, I strongly suggest that you suspend your need to share and find something more middle of the road to talk about.

Principle #4 – Become genuinely interested in other people.

The time you spend there is going to be one of the most amazing networking experiences in your life with people for every inch of the globe and every walk of life imaginable. I highly recommend going in there with the attitude that you are a sponge that's going to absorb as much of every person you meet and every moment that you experience that you can. These people and experiences can't help but have an influence on your life and make you a richer person.

While you're there, spend more time learning about other people than you do telling them about yourself!

The questions that you pose and interest that you take in other people will already be telling the world a lot about who you are.

Principle #5 – SMILE

This is my favourite Dale Carnegie principle.

In Bangkok, there is an elevated walkway that spans between Siam BTS Skytrain station and Chidlom Station (with Central World linking in the middle). One of my favourite stress relieving exercises is to walk from one station to the other with my iPhone headphones in my ears – (people think you're listening to music or a funny podcast, but really, you don't need to have anything playing) and smile all the way along your journey. You will be amazed at how many people smile back at you and even go out of their way to say 'hi'. I have met many seemingly 'random' people via this exercise alone.

Thailand is often referred to as the 'Land of Smiles' … but I'll let you in on a secret. Out of 12 of the main 'smile' categories in Thai, only a handful of them are positive!

People can feel a genuine smile from the heart when they feel it. As a contestant, find something inside of you that will generate a genuine smile and keep that burning all the while you are there. You'll be amazed at what it might reap for you.

I understand that as the times and fashions go, it might not be 'hip' to smile when you're walking down the catwalk. I'll leave that to the experts – but as much as my two cents are worth, people with a sour look on their face (off the catwalk) day in day out don't tend to get too far.

Principle #6 – Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

Learn people's names and USE THEM.

There are normally over 80 contestants in each pageant. It's tough for most people to remember everyone's names, and so you just end up calling each of the girls by her 'country' rather than her name(e.g. "Hey Thailand!", "Can you pass the ketchup please Czech Republic?", "You're standing on my train Venezuela!") . While this is understandable, may I suggest that best practice would probably be to learn people's names and try and avoid calling them by their country. It will help build warmer relationships between all of you and once again, could reap benefits that you never imagined.

Knowing Who's WHO

On the topic of knowing names and who people are, I can't stress how important it is to know who exactly the key people are in the organisation. I was once speaking to a contestant one year that didn't know who Donald Trump was! Fatal.

Learn about all the key people in the organisation, influential people in the movement, the history of other pageants, relationships between people … basically any intel that you can get. All of this can help you achieve your goal … and avoid sticking your foot in your mouth (or being caught with your pants down!)

There are some very key (and cool) people that have made it a fine art of being inconspicuous during everything.

Principle #7 – Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.

This goes back to Principle# 1, Principle #2 and Principle#3.

Let me emphasize once more how important listening is during events and ESPECIALLY DURING THE REHEARSALS. This is the time where people's tempers reach boiling point, voices are raised, egos are shattered and relationships break down.

Michael, Lou, Ken and all the gang choreographing and coaching you are some of THE BEST money can buy. Pay attention to every word that comes out of their mouths and more importantly, observe everything that they do. Sometimes, some cultural / language issues might get in the way of everyone comprehending what's being communicated. Nevertheless, resist the urge to get distracted or even worse, start complaining. Getting negative during these times has no upside. Stay attentive, stay positive!

Principle #8 – Talk in terms of the other person's interests.

I've touched on this throughout this article, but touching on it once more won't hurt!

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

Whether it's a one on one conversation, a press conference, an interview with a panel of judges, or the final 'big' top-5 question, your goal is to understand what drives them and let them be certain that who you are will fit into their agenda. If what comes out of your mouth brings no value to the people you're speaking to, you'd probably be better off putting your soap-box into storage for a while and wait for a more suitable opportunity to come along once the pageant is over.

Principle #9 – Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.

Don't be fake.

When I was training to be a Dale Carnegie instructor, we would have to coach people and make comments about people's performance with the goal of telling them something constructive about themselves that they didn't already know – every time. That means you really have to look into each individual person, observe them, notice their strengths and bring value to them according to what you observe. Just saying "That was good" or "Great!" would result in us being asked to start again and find something meaningful to say. Just making a comment like "Great" without feeling or thought could backfire and leave the person thinking that you're fake and insincere.

I've been able to take this skill that was developed in Dale Carnegie and use it in every facet of my life. It's good, it works and you continuously grow as a result of doing it as you're always looking to learn from other people.

Building a Sustainable Brand for Yourself

Whether you win the crown or not, the experience of going through something like this shouldn't go to waste. In fact, I can think of many instances where people who didn't get the crown ended up better off in the long run than those that did. Just because you were Miss Universe for a year doesn't mean that you're going to be rich and famous for the rest of your life. People get older and good looks fade. You've had the opportunity to be coached by some of the most successful and amazing people in the business. Work out a strategy that will hone yourself into a successful, sustainable 'brand'. When you get back home, continue to build your brand and bring value to other people. For me personally, this mindset has been what has allowed me to live out my dreams every single day – and not have to wait until I'm retired at 60 years old to start 'enjoying' life.

As my grandfather used to tell me – "Do what you love doing, and people will pay you to do it". Ain't that the truth!

Cracking Thai Fundamentals Video Clips - Stuart Jay Raj’s Thai Vowel Hand-signs
2009-06-18 18:31 The Language Guy

I’m happy to announce the birth of my newly sprouted home video studio here in Bangkok. To take it for a test ride, I have just posted a 2 episode series covering the core Thai vowels.

Video Clips

About 10 years ago, as part of my Cracking Thai Fundamentals workshop, I developed a series of handsigns that I felt really aided learners of Thai understand the concepts of the Thai vowels, remember their shapes and link them in with the sounds of the vowels themselves.

Over the coming weeks, along with the new logo and branding that you can see in the clips, I will be giving my blog and www.kogneit.com website a facelift. At the moment I’m tossing up between Drupal and Joomla possibilities. The end result will be a portal where all the programmes and topics that I cover – from languages – Thai, Chinese, Indonesian, Spanish, Hindi, Sanskrit, Burmese and any other one I can think of, to mind skills – memory techniques, speed reading, thought decoupling and other topics that come under the heading of my Mnidcraft Programme.

I will have video clips, articles, books and forums about all these topics with the goal of really harnessing the energy of all of you out there who have supported me over the past couple of years, to see if we can start to break new ground in language learning and general usage of our grey matter.

As clips go up – even if they’re covering topics or languages that you haven’t previously been interested in, give them ago. You might tap into something new that will take your life on an entirely new path.

Please send any ideas for clips and articles to me at stujay@hotmail.com. I’ll try as best as I can to deliver!

Enjoy 

Stuart Jay Raj.

Mnidcraft Workshop This Sat 21-Sun 22 Feb 2009 @ Bangkok
2009-02-16 16:23 The Language Guy
I've just arrived home from traversing the back-alleys of Bangkok stocking up on abacuses, Rubik's cubes and other goodies. I've also been recording new songs, grooves and other funky tunes that we'll be using in this weekend's Mnidcraft workshop. If you're in Bangkok - or you're looking for a good excuse to be in Bangkok this weekend, drop me a line! The venue is beautiful, though has limited seating. I've included the information below. If you think you can attend, drop me an email - stujay@hotmail.com to confirm your spot.

So far, I have people flying in from China, Hong Kong, Japan, as well as a whole bunch of fascinating people that live here in the Kingdom.

If there is enough demand, I might look at running another 2-day workshop the following week.

Look forward to seeing you all there.

Stu.

Mnidcraft by Stuart Jay Raj An Operating System for Your Mind It's time to invest in something that they can't take away from you! No – the spelling is no mistake! – The fact that your brain recognizes the word even though it isn’t spelled the traditional way is testament to what is at the heart of this programme. Duration: 2 days Dates: Sat 21st and Sun 22nd Feb Time: 08:30 – 17:00 each day Location: Fraser Suites – Sukhumvit Soi 11 Contact: stujay@hotmail.com URL: http://stujay.blogspot.com Have you ever wanted to master another language?

Fluent in over 15 languages and having a solid grounding in over 30, polyglot Stuart Jay Raj has delved into what makes him ‘him’ and from his findings has put together his ‘Mnidcraft – The Art of Language’ series. View Clip - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNlNhBGROQI

Mnidcraft empowers anyone with a will to succeed to develop the same aptitude for languages and communication as what Stuart Jay Raj possesses based on powerful NLP modeling principles.

NLP Modeling

NLP modeling is the practice of isolating essential patterns that makes someone successful and duplicating them into others in a way that they are practiced unconsciously. Stuart has carefully designed activities where you will not only learn the secrets that have crafted his aptitude for language, but will also have these skills, habits and knowledge embedded within you, breathing new life into your relationship with language!

More than just the ability to learn languages

Developing an aptitude for language is actually just a side effect of the Mnidcraft series. You will also tap into new abilities:

• Learn techniques to learn and develop native-like fluency in Thai, Chinese, English, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish and other languages • Super Memory • Perfect Pitch • Touch-type in multiple languages including Thai, Sanskrit and Korean • Be ‘funny’ across cultures • Increase self-esteem in yourself and others • Mimic sounds, body language and mannerisms • Build instant rapport with people you’ve just met • Master tones in Tonal Languages including Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese • Solve the Rubik’s Cube through muscle memory • Use an Abacus • Circular Breathing • Learn Morse Code / Sign Language alphabets Simultaneously • Speed Reading • Simultaneous Interpreting • XML and programming fundamentals

Getting Yourself Prepared

To prepare your mind for the workshop, I highly recommend taking a stroll through my blog:

http://stujay.blogspot.com And few several of the video clips available on the side-bar. In particular, the Mnidcraft preview and the Morse / Sign Language ABC clip.

Stuart Jay Raj. stujay@hotmail.com http://stujay.blogspot.com

Those iPhone Developers Might be the Funkiest, Schwaginist Geeks in Cupertino, but they Sure Ain’t No Linguists!
2009-01-12 03:12 The Language Guy

Dear gods of the cyberverse, please direct this blog-entry through the right routers,feed aggregators, RSS readers … anything it takes so that those great apple developers in the sky can start to get a taste of the multilingual HUMAN world outside of that apparently monoglot paradise of Cupertino.

I've had my iPhone for almost a year now. Someone actually gave me a 3G version, but I was so attached to my original phone that I sold the 3G version and kept the old one. You see apart from liking the metallic feel of it – something that you just can't find with handheld appliances these days, mine has a huge crack across the screen that I've grown rather fond of. (The crack happened when running to escape the Bangkok rain in mid 2008 – when the device slipped out of the slip-proof iPhone belt-holster that I'd purchased a few days earlier).

Why a Polyglot / linguaphile SHOULD own an iPhone

As we learned in Dale Carnegie Instructor training, when delivering bad news, START WITH THE POSITIVE AS A BUFFER! So here goes.

The first week I had my iPhone I wanted to throw the thing out the window. I'm a tinkerer – and not being an Apple person, I found the iPhone not really tinkerer friendly. Luckily within a few days I was lucky to find a team of enthusiastic iPhone hackers that whetted my palate with the possibilities that the iPhone holds for tinkerers. From that moment on, I started to take to the thing.

Podcasts, Language MP3's, Youtube and more

I quickly found many uses for it – it's actually changed my life. From ChinesePod.com to Japanesepod101.com to news podcasts in different languages to morse simulators to Youtube clips, the iPhone is a language learners dream! If you want to know someone, take a look at their iTunes library. I have MP3's and streams in over 40 languages in my iTunes that I sync with my phone which facilitates my learning every waking moment (that I'm not with clients of course … well, even then some)

Now with AV cables, I don't even have to take my computer to many events that I have to speak at / teach at. I can play the Audio / Video files straight out of my iPhone through the sound system / LCD of the seminar venue – and even record Presentations as video files and then use my iPhone as the presentation device rather than PowerPoint.

There are also some great apps out there that developers are creating for learning languages - one that I particularly like is JapaneseFlip (日本語フリップ) by Andre Khromov. Very simple but good looking App that helps you get through your JLPT levels.

3 Steps to Drive a Polyglot to go Insane and Throw their Freaking iPhone off a Cliff!

I can imagine what the project management meetings in the development process were like:

Project Manager: "Now guys, there are gonna be some folks out there that don't speak 'Merican, so we might have to have some way they can talk to each other in their own gobbledygook"

Development Team Underling: "Ahh… yes boss, I'll get on it. Those Chinese folks down on the corner at the restaurant seem nice, maybe they'll be able to help me get some of their lingo into this thing."

Project Manager: "Great idea! Just make sure you don't make it too easy for 'em. We don't wanna encourage too much of 'their language'… in the long run, better to have 'em speaking 'Merican like the rest of the world! We have those great 'Merican language modules that we use in our Mac OS's … just throw one of those under the hood and it should do the trick"

Development Team Underling: "Umm .. boss… what about people who want to communicate in more than one language at once?"

Project Manager: "Yeah right!" (sarcastically)

Development Team Underling: "Okie Dokie boss – consider it done!"

And so the iPhone language development team was born.

3 Areas of iPhone Linguistic Insanity

1. Language Input
2. Predictive Text
3. Fonts

Language Input

Well, I have to hand it to the team. For the first models, there was only a handful of roman scripted languages that were catered for. Later firmware versions introduced more languages. I wish these US developers would realise that even in the US, you will have people using their devices who speak a whole array of languages. You don't need to release a phone in Thailand, Japan or China to warrant having Thai and Japanese input options. Give the options on installation / updating of the firmware as to what languages should be included – that way you don't eat up memory with unnecessary stuff and everyone is happy.

The way you switch languages is really cumbersome too! In a typical message sent out of my phone, I could have any combination of Thai, Chinese, Japanese, English, Indonesian, Spanish and Nordic languages being used. I just had a look through some of my SMS's and some of them use up to 4 languages in a given message.

Could I suggest a language selection button that will iterate if tapped normally through the input language list similar to the buttons that already open up to display additional characters when held. Rather than a straight tab of letters though, if held it would open up something like a daisy-wheel so you can slide your finger directly to the target language selection – when you release your finger, it's in that language input mode.

That way, if there are only 2 input keyboards running, you can do 1-tap iteration, otherwise people with more than 2 keyboards can also quickly switch between them without iterating through ALL OF THEM … often resulting in the thing hanging and then crashing. At the moment I have 8 keyboards active. So if I change to a language and back to English, a minimum of 9 clicks is needed. Not only that, because you're typing as fast as you can, you often get 'click happy' and iterate past the English keyboard and have to go through them all again. It's a bit 'Ground hog day'ish' guys!

Input Keyboard Layout

I understand that screen real-estate is scarce, but some of the excuses I've seen for Thai keyboards are appalling. Given, I don't think that most of the ones that I've been using have been developed by Apple themselves – most of them 3^rd party apps from Eastern Europe, the developers were probably just concerned about getting so many letters into such a small space and knew nothing about typing habits of native speakers of those languages, common letters vs. uncommon letters etc.

Predictive Text

With the original firmware, there was a function in there that allowed you to turn the predictive text off. Since version 2.0, I'll be darned if I can find it anymore!??

Even for monoglots of English, people don't communicate in standard English. There have been papers after papers on the language of messaging, sms language, email English etc.

Here's an example in English:

Desired text:

Ud bttr c if ur gf's up to it, coz ur gona get it otherwise.

If I type that into my iPhone without going back each time and correcting it here's the result:

I'd byte CID ye FFA up to it, cox HR Bina get it otherwise

The funny thing… each time I tried to backspace and fix things up, things progressively changed and got worse (even more changes to what you see above!)

I don't know what these guys could have been thinking. We don't send text messages to be grammatically correct! We send them for efficiency. Not only that, the shorthand used communicates a multitude of emotions, relationships and other 'meta meanings'.

Indonesian Texting

I think Indonesians would have to be right up there with the Filipinos as the number one texters on the planet! Someone could be driving down the freeway at 130kmh, swerving between the cars and still get out an epic text message in a few seconds flat.

As with many other languages, SMS language in Indonesia is a language of its own.

As a linguist, it's fascinating to analyse what's going on. Normal language takes on almost semitic language principles – where words retract into fundamental vowel deprived roots, then inflated with different amended affixes as needed.

Here's another call out to the developers…

INDONESIANS USE THE ROMAN ALPHABET TO TYPE BAHASA INDONESIA…. So there's no need to change a keyboard. The English keyboard would do just fine if there wasn't any freakin' predictive text there to botch it all up!

Not only do Indonesian's use the Roman alphabet, many of them can speak languages other than Indonesian!... so in a given message, you might have Bahasa Indonesia, Sundanese, Javanese, Mandarin, Hakka and English!

But let's get back to Indonesian SMS'ing. Here's a sample sentence:

SMS Bahasa Indonesia	Luh !... lg ngapain skrg? Skr aq lg ngopi2 ama tmn. Mo bareng2 ama kt gak?
SMS on iPhone after Predictive Text interferes	Lun ! of ngapain sir ? sir aa of NGO 2 AMA Tbk . Mo naren 2 AMA it Tak?
Colloquial Bahasa Indonesia (of original message)	Elu! Lagi ngapain sekarang? Sekarang aku lagi ngopi-ngopi sama teman. Mau bareng-bareng sama kita enggak?
Standard Bahasa Indonesia (of original message)	Hai! Sedang apa sekarang? Sekarang saya sedang duduk-duduk minum kopi dengan teman saya. Apakah anda ingin berjalan-jalan dengan kami?
English (with poetic license)	Hey dog! What'cha up to? I'm sitting here chillin' (over coffee) with a couple of friends. You wanna come out with us?

Thai and other languages

This applies to ALL languages. Sometimes depending on someone's phone and language upbringing, Thais might send a message in Thai – or write their version of Thai using the Roman alphabet. There is no standard to the spelling used, so developing a dictionary would be useless. Each person has their own 'flavour'.

It gets worse, the predictive text started to think it would be smart by 'learning' Thai letter order patterns. Well it thought it did… it applied 'English' logic to Thai and the results were terrible. Vowels and consonants were all swapped around to make the language look totally alien.

Other notes on Input Languages

The technology is out there guys… so how bout it…add a few languages into the iPhone official 'flock' – Arabic, Thai, Hindi / Devanagari, Tamil and other scripts that although they might be a little foreign to Cupertino, there are still billions of people outside of that 'hood' that use the languages.

Fonts

My last note is on Fonts.

On my Window's system, I love the MS Arial Unicode font – although it lacks some scripts like Burmese, Khmer, Tibeten and several others, it is fantastic in that the point size for Thai, Chinese, Arabic and Latin are all the same. I can even call a whole range of IPA characters up and they'll display on any page.

The iPhone's font mapping is bizarre with languages like Arabic. Arabic is a complex class script where the letters' forms will change depending on where they are in the word, with diacritics above and below the letters. For some reason, when reading pages on the web in Arabic / Urdu / Farsi etc, only the initial position letter forms are used. This again, makes the language look extremely bizarre. While it's possible to make out what the words are (kinda) it's very cumbersome and not in line with that slick 'Apple' image that I could imagine that you guys would be trying to shoot for.

APPLE EXECUTIVES TAKE NOTE

You are about to launch the iPhone here in Thailand legally. I'm not sure what you're doing in the way of your 'official' Thai input option, but if I were you, I'd seriously consider giving the Thai language issues an overhaul.

I'm happy to hire my consulting services out to you to make sure you don't piss the SE Asian texting community off any more than they already are.

Actually – I've changed my mind … hire me and we can sit down over a coffee in Cupertino and give the WHOLE FREAKIN' LANGUAGE thing an overhaul.

I've walked into Apple stores all over the world over the past couple of years and challenged the salespeople to convert me to a Mac user. I need a system that will allow me to use all the languages I use with ease – Microsoft actually got the whole predictive text thing right with Mandarin and Windows leaves Mac's OS in the dust when it comes to speed of typing up a Chinese document.

Both Apple and Windows do a dismal job in allowing us to type in Cantonese and other Chinese languages / dialects. I'm honestly surprised that one of the over a BILLION speakers of non-Mandarin Chinese languages hasn't mentioned it to you before.

CONVERT ME! MAKE ME A DISCIPLE! No one has been able to do it yet - and I still sit here with my PC - Linux and Windows.

Jazz Lessons on Language - Improvisation 101 - Stuart Jay Raj’s Indic Script Compass
2009-01-03 12:25 The Language Guy

Find Your Way Around Indic Based Writing Systems (Devanagari, Tamil, Panjabi (Gurmukhi), Burmese, Bahasa Bali (Balinese), Bahasa Jawa (Javanese), Thai and Khmer (Cambodian) Without a GPS

Download Full A3 Size Chart Here

Theme and Variation

The reason I love playing and listening to jazz so much is because you're able to get into the soul of the players by hearing how they improvise on a theme. Language is not that much different.

I've noticed what could be described as almost an unquestioning deific reverence and fear paid to the writing systems of Indic language systems by their users (and learners of them). Whether it's the Devanagari script used to write amongst other languages, Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi and Nepali, or the scripts of other languages in India and surrounding countries like Panjabi, Tamil, Telugu or as far down as Southeast Asia including Thai, Lao, Burmese, Khmer (Cambodian), Balinese orJavanese, when you start to scratch the surface of the origins, grammar or even just the reasoning of certain things that would seem strange to outsiders, the eyes of your average Joe who's spoken one of those languages since birth will tend to glaze over. (Now THAT was a long sentence!)

That's the Problem with Turtles… It really shouldn't be that way!

Those Indians were pretty cluey back in the day. They developed an alphabet thousands of years ago that was a virtual GPS for the human mouth!

Just like the theme and variation in Jazz, all the languages that I've mentioned above (and many more) have used this basic map as their base - a reference guide and then coloured it with the sound filters of their own respective languages.

To draw an analogy from English, take a common sentence that we use every day like:

'That's the problem with turtles'

This is the 'base' or 'theme'. A variation might have those same letters read as:

'Dat's da pwoblem wif toitles' …

For many, the whole concept that 'Dat's' had come from 'That's' was never explained, leaving not only learners, but also native speakers of the language in a haze as to 'why' certain things are about the language and just accepting that it's something beyond the comprehension of mere mortals.

Part of my Mnidcraft course is to get a good grounding in the principles of Indic based scripts and develop some level of proficiency in identifying several the scripts including Devanagari, Thai, Khmer and Burmese.

I developed my 'Indic Consonant Glyphs' and the 'Stuart Jay Raj's Indic Script Consonant Compass' as a tool to accelerate the acquisition / learning of scripts based on the Indic sound system themes and variations.

Don't Count The Letters!

I'll often hear people measuring the complexity of a language by the number of letters in its alphabet. This to me is absurd as the practice of judging a presentation's quality by its PowerPoint slide count! (Another pet hate of mine… which led me to designing my 'Present!' presentations workshop who's subtitle is 'Bringing Presentations Back to The Presenter').

It's this body count (or in this case consonants + vowel count) that has turned many a learner off from learning languages like Thai, Sanskrit, Khmer and Burmese.

What Language Would You Prefer to Learn?

Here's the blurb….

I don't know about you, but I don't think I'd be lining up to learn Wadafrackizet! (Ok, I admit it – I probably would)… but honestly, Soowizy sounds just so … EASY!

The Cardinal Points of the Mouth

As you read through the brief explanation to each of the following glyphs, place your tongue / mouth in the position and hold it there. Once you can do it for each glyph, move your gaze from one glyph to another at random and practice locking your mouth into the correct position according to the glyph that you're looking at.

Drilling yourself for about 2 minutes like this should be enough to start to develop some long lasting muscle memory.

대한민국! (Dae Han Min Kuk!)

Now, I know the Korean speakers out there must be thinking "Hmmm… some these symbols seem eerily familiar!".

Koreans are very proud of their writing system 'Han Geul' – 한 글 .. . and so they should be. Developed by King Sejong the Great (1418-1450) in 1444, it is one of the easiest scripts to learn on the planet! (I learned it on a bus ride across Seoul one sunny afternoon in 1996J ).

To add value to learning the Korean alphabet, I suggest spending an extra 10 minutes to learn how to touch type in Korean also. The keys are very logically set out between:

• Left hand: Consonants
• Right hand: Vowels

Each syllable in Han Geul is broken into a beginning (initial) sound, vowel and final sound component (if necessary). The symbols used to represent each of the sounds were based on the various parts of the mouth from which they were produced.

Korea Meets India

I have combined this principle with the basic principle of the Indic Scripts 'Map of the Mouth' logic to develop my own symbols.

It's interesting to note that the sound for 'r' / 'l' in Korean is uncannily similar to many of the symbols used to represent these same sounds in Indic (Brahmi) based scripts that display a 'rolling tongue' in one rendering or another. When I'm learning a new Indic script, this is actually one of the first memory points I will look for – I will peg the similarity or difference of its 'r' sound to the ones that I already know. I can't include all the samples in this text based medium as the fonts probably won't render properly on your computer. You can see them on the main 'Indic Consonant Compass' chart though.

Another shape that is very similar include the 'base voice' symbol which in many scripts is a circular shape of some sort.

The 'y' symbol which in Korean is normally 'two prongs' heading in the vowel direction. In the Indic scripts, the 'y' sound is usual a 2 or 3 pronged shape which I imagine is a representation of the way the tongue interacts with the palate.

Here is a sample:

Comparison of Similar Sound Shapes in Korean, Devanagari, Thai, Tamil and Gurmukhi (Panjabi)

The Key Actions of the Mouth

Colour Coding

I have also colour coded each category within the sound system to give a colourful representation of the textual glyph. There are 5 base colours that correspond to each of the 5 cardinal points of the mouth (see above).

When comparing the sound shifts from the original base letter to the target language letter, you can either follow the 'glyph' transliterations in the octagon adjacent the target letter, or just look at the colour changes. Getting a visual and emotional representation of these sound shifts through colour is another device that I find really useful in 'embedding' the language within me.

Ready to Go!

"Stuart Jay Raj's Indic Script Consonant Compass v1.0 – Southeast Asian Version"

There were so many languages to choose from. I broke this chart down to 8 scripts that I think would cover a good portion of the globe. The languages / scripts with my reasoning for choosing them are:

Download "Stuart Jay Raj's Indic Script Consonant Compass v1.0 – Southeast Asian Version"

As my New Years gift to you for 2009, rather than giving you a cruddy jpg or bmp version (like you see above) and waiting for you to come to my Mnidcraft workshop to receive a full high resolution version, I have included a PDF version of my "Indic Script Consonant Compass – v1.0 – Southeast Asian Version". I have created it using vector graphics, embedding the fonts where possible and expanding any other fonts that could not be embedded. What this means is that you are free to print out the chart to enormous sizes and stick it all over your home, office, toilet and any other place you see fit. Getting one or more of these scripts under your belt is an investment that you won't regret.

Just the Consonants Ma'am

Remember, these are only the consonsants... and admittedly, there are a couple of rare consonants in each script that I haven't included on the chart as it would in my opinion add unnecessary complexity to learning the scripts. There is also some funky stuff happening with the Tamil that I'm working at ironing out in future versions. If there are any Tamil experts out there, drop me a line!

You will also notice that I haven't touched on vowels. … stay tuned… that will come in a later installment.

I also have some surprises planned for this whole 'Indic' kick that I'm on. If time permits, I'm sure that you will see the bizarre fruits that my brain has borne in the near future.

Good Luck!

Stuart Jay Raj – Subconsciously Embedding Morse Code, Sign Language Alphabet and most Importantly … how to GROOVE!
2008-12-12 02:07 The Language Guy

It's a fantastic day in Siam today … why? I'm not quite sure yet, but I'm really enjoying it so far for some reason!!

Before you read any further, check out my latest clip that I've just thrown together. It will form the base of this blog entry.

Where Jazz, Language and Ciphers Meet

Playing for years in my Jazz Trio – "The ROL Trio" with Dale Lee and Kenro Oshidari, we would often experiment with new ideas for soloing and communication when we played together. Kenro is a master of telling a story on his double bass, and Dale likewise. I used to try and take that 'communication' concept to a new level. I would often incorporate into my piano solos, messages in Morse code.

This must have been rumbling in my subconscious a few weeks ago when I dreamed of teaching perfect pitch, relative pitch, how to swing, Morse Code and Sign Language in one big strategic globule!

Words were running through my head. I wrote down several versions and after a little thought decided on what you see in the clips for various reasons.

Lyrics

Here are some of the concepts that went into the mix when putting this together:

• Language / Learning / Mind / NLP
  • Simultaneous Language Acquisition
  • Using Humour and Emotion in Learning
  • Guiding the Eyes / Utilising Peripheral Vision
  • Subconscious / Unconscious Programming
  • Hearing a new language or 'Morse' as 'Sound Blocks' – not text strings
  • Use of Colour in Learning and Memory
  • Learning Things Without Even Knowing We've Learned Them
• Music
  • Perfect Pitch
  • Relative Pitch
  • Rhythm – the power of 120 beats per minute
  • Pedal Notes – makes the note easier to recall through repetition
  • Pedal Notes – Help change the brainwave state

Language / Learning / Mind / NLP

Simultaneous Language Acquisition

I'm a strong advocate of Simultaneous Language Acquisition. I've found that any time I learn more than one language at the same time, there are synergies that happen that wouldn't have otherwise occurred.

In this clip, I chose two 'candidates' for our lab rats – Morse Code and the American Sign Language (ASL) Finger Spelling Alphabet. They are easy because they have a common link – the Alphabet. I admit that in other languages there are other letters and some of the images that I have used (e.g. Oreos) may not be relevant in some countries / cultures. I always have a problem when trying to make something 'universally applicable', as when you start to get broader with mnemonics, links etc, the 'emotional' potency is sometimes lost that would normally be there from things that have strong emotional value in one's own culture. I would recommend to people who find that some of the words might not sit well with them, to change them.

Some examples of this might be the word 'Laboratory' for 'L'. Some people say 'LABratry', some say 'LaBOratory' and then some say (as I've used in the clip) LaBOratry.

Some people might have an aversion to embedding 'Yankee Doodle' into your psyche too. That's just personal choice I guess J … I fully understand if you'd like to change it to something else.

Humour, Emotion and Learning

I've tried to tap into the 'emotional' realm of things on a number of levels here.

120 bpm

The first thing that I did intentionally was to choose 120 beats per minute. This rhythm sets our brainwaves into a state ideal for 'learning'.

Imagery

I've chosen to use a sparse plain white background. This enhances the images and colours used. I put several filters on myself to try and make the picture look a little more surreal. I didn't want to appear as a 'human teacher' in the video. Just a memory aid that dueled with the pictures opposite.

You can see a similar intentional use of 'space' in training programmes like the Landmark Forum. Many people either love or hate the forum. I will reserve the right to not express my opinions on their philosophies, but they definitely understand how to use space, colour and repetition to have a subconscious impact.

I have tried to choose images that evoke emotions. In some cases I have also tried to choose words that look like the hand-signs. Often these emotions are reinforced by my facial expressions. Some examples are:

A Apple Looks like an Apple

D Dog's Behind – humourous picture / concept. My facial expression reinforces it and the index finger in the sign is reinforced by the dog's tail caught by peripheral vision in the image of the 'dog's behind'

E EGG! – The beat that the word 'egg' comes in on is an off-beat – chosen to represent a 'splatting egg'. The image chosen reinforces it.

K Kangaroo – the Sign already looks like a 'K' and I bounce my fingers slightly to trigger the thought of a Kangaroo

V Victory 'V' – This is a very powerful image the world over. I've abused THREE meanings of this sign. First – the letter 'V' which is the learning target. I've chosen the words 'Victory V' as the Morse peg, and to reinforce the meaning of 'Peace' to keep re-occurring each time the 'Peace' riff comes up.

Y Yankee Doodle – This image is filled with different meanings for different people – depending on what part of the world you're from and what era you're from. I've tried to have a similar expression on my face as Uncle Sam.

Z Zebra Crossing. Rather than using a shot of an actually Zebra Crossing, I finally decided on stark graphic black and white stripes as a cue in peripheral vision.

Subconscious / Unconscious Programming

My kids were singing the song this morning in the car on the way to school. They were sitting in there when I was knocking the tune out on the piano from the beginning, and so now know all the rhythms and melodies.

This morning, I was listening to my daily morse code bulletin and my 4 year old daughter could pick out many of the letters that she heard and referenced the melody and letter that the different letters appeared in my clip. I was very happy – as this was one of my intentions! – To help people to learn without realizing that they're learning.

There are many other devices that I use to do this too. From the Spinning Peace Sign with a riff that is actually 'Peace' in Morse code, to flashing text 'Groove' and strong command words with black text on a white screen –

"Sing the Words to the Tune" (note use of capitals to stress key words)

"Copy my Hand" (not hands plural – subconsciously want to look again to make sure it's right)

"And GROOVE" – (Groove in capitals and flashing)

These all help access the subconscious and the unconscious.

Flicker Rates

There has been extensive research into flicker rates – and how TV actually flashes at a rate that can put us into an altered state. This can be (and no doubt has been)abused by people who manage the medium. It is a fascinating subject though. If you are interested, you might want to start your research here.

Not a Word is Heard

You will notice that you don't HEAR me say a word. I mouth the words, but my voice is essentially the music. I want listeners to be able to hear their own voice in their heads… or even better, to be able to link the concepts together with the rhythm etc without hearing ANY voice. This is a great skill to prepare people for simultaneous interpreting.

Hearing Sound Blocks rather than Text Strings

I've done this in many places. Actually – the whole song! One thing that I hear from experienced teachers of Morse Code is that they struggle to get students to not think of the textual dots and dashes and rather have them starting to hear 'sound blocks'. I would say the same for learning a new language – rather than learning just grammatical structures and spelling, we need to learn to hear the way the meanings are locked into different sound blocks – not just individual words.

Some examples of this in the clip are:

"Prepare for Transmission" – The international Morse is QRV : --.- .-. ...-

"PEACE" :.--. . .- -.-. . (I've intentionally rotated the Peace sign – with the intention that the eyes will follow the bottom 'stokes' in the circle as it spins and take the viewers attention of the text that comes up on the left. It still enters the subconscious, but the main focus is to think of 'Peace' via the symbol accompanied by the organ riff – which is spelling 'Peace'.

"LOVE": .-.. --- ...- .

"End of Message" -The international Morse is AR: .- .-.

Music

To briefly touch on the music specific aspects of the clip.

120 bpm

I already mentioned the use of 120bpm. It's a great thing for a musician to know how to play at a certain bpm on call. 120 is a good standard.

Pedal Note (Holding / repetition of one note)

Even from the 'Mnidcraft' intro before the main clip, you can hear that I have a 'C' pedal note in the background going. 'C' is a good central note to peg oneself when learning to develop perfect pitch. The whole song is in the Key of C, and I utilize certain intervals at different points within the Ionian and blues scales based on C.

The pedal note also helps change brainwave patterns

I've also used this concept on certain key letters like 'Queue in a Line' and 'Zebra Crossing'. These work as anchors. The 'Q' also words as a great point for people looking to develop perfect pitch – you know that that is a 'G' – and it's also a 5^th interval from the root note C – which to resolve would be a perfect cadence.

Beethoven's 5^th

Two great techniques for learning to recognize a minor 3^rd interval is to hum the first 4 notes of Beethoven's 5^th Symphony "DAH DAH DAH DAH!!!!!"…. Beethoven's 5^th is actually in Cmin. It just so happens that 'V' – is the same rhythm… which is very dramatic and so can easily link in with the concept of "Victory V".

It just so happens of course that 'V' is '5' in Roman Numerals... so linking it into Beethoven's Vth is also another reinforcement.

Another tune to get this interval is to hum the first 3 notes of the Lullaby song 'LullaBY' – that is also a minor 3^rd.

What's Next?

This clip is actually part of my Mnidcraft programme. In just a couple of minutes, the clip is able to touch on many of the topics that are close to my heart – and really want to be able to share with other people. These are the things that I believe have led me to have such a good relationship with languages.

If you'd like to run a programme in your neck of the woods, drop me a line / email. I'd love to see how I can adapt it all to work across different languages and cultures.

If you haven't done so already, I've created a Mnidcraft group in Facebook. Go on in and join the group. I will keep you up to date with latest news, materials and events. It also serves as a great meeting point for people who love languages, communication and using their minds!

Turning a Love for Language into a Career - Stuart Jay Raj's Response to a Letter from a Frustrated Polyglot
2008-12-11 14:27 The Language Guy
I just received a letter from another Polyglot that I had come into contact by a fantastic language learning site out there - how-to-learn-any-language.com . After asking his permission, I've pasted the letter and my response here in the hope that it might be of assistance to other frustrated language lovers. Original Email:

Dear Stuart, I take the liberty of dropping you a line for a piece of advice as a younger fellow-polyglot. What I really find terrific about your professional profile, besides your impressive linguistic achievements, is your ability to connect with people and situations, to be the right man in the right place, and basically to make a living out of a passion we all share. I lack this spontaneous talent, so I thought that perhaps you’d spare me a couple of tips to get me started in some way. I love languages more than anything else, and I feel that they love me back, so to speak. I have been working on and off as a freelance translator for publishing houses, but I’m currently facing unexpected challenges, and I would like to find new ways to draw on my gift to fight back. Pursuing my career in humanities as a university researcher in Europe is getting harder and harder every day due to a severe lack of funding, no matter how qualified you are. I feel I’m wasting my time and my skills queuing in front of doors that won’t open, and if by chance I could manage to merge my passion for languages with a real job with real wages I wouldn’t even think twice… Can you give me a general idea how you started out, what kind of business needs you were the answer for, what kind of service a language expert may offer, and drop me a hint? University life kind of atrophied my practical 6th sense, but I’m sick of this game and I’m ready to get back on the track. You can’t imagine what a difference a few expedient suggestions could make… I thank you heartily in advance! Keep up the good work, , Ph. D. (<-- as if it mattered these days)

Stu's Response

Hi Francesco, Thank you for your email. I've mentioned a few times through various interviews or clips that my grandfather used to teach me that if you do something you love doing, people will pay you good money to do it. ... Well.. that's kinda true, but there's a catch! You have to do it in a way that it brings value to other people. No matter what way you cut it, there are very real limitations to the extent that your average polyglot can go. If they're not working as a teacher, translator, interpreter, most are gobbled up as spooks, never to see the light of day on the corporate side of the rainbow. There IS money however in finding ways for companies human resources to work more effectively for them, or in improving the relationship that they have with their customers, or in giving them market insights that they or their normal marketing teams might be overlooking. This is where language, the ability to communicate with people - from grass roots levels to CEO / Presidential comes in. Don't sell yourself as a 'language expert'. That means nothing to the corporate world. They would much rather hire a 'cross-regional corporate communications agent', or a 'Business Development Specialist' that can go in on the ground and find out what's really going on 'on the ground' and translate it into a workable solution that can be quantified. Quantifying a financial value for the work you do is very important. My advice to you would be to find out what business networks are running in your area - Chambers of Commerce, Rotary, HR Associations etc. Try and start building a network of decision makers - CEO / Director level and listen to the issues that they're facing. As they're speaking, try and figure out whether you have anything that could be of value to them. Go home and sit and work out how you could 'package' your skill-set and your network of people in a way that could help them. It might be working with the management team in helping them understand the cultures of the people they're working with, or it might be to get on the ground and build communication networks or just understanding of how to get the most out of working with the 'foreign' management. If you're in a market where this isn't relevant, maybe you might think of moving somewhere where your value is appreciated more. It comes down to one thing - you need to bring a Return On Investment to any relationship you have - whether it be with family, friends, students or clients. I've found that if I can do this by digging into my own experience, networks, knowledge or skills and sharing it when appropriate, it is very Karmic. Eventually it comes back to benefit me in one shape or other. Stu

Mnidcraft by Stuart Jay Raj - The Art of Language
2008-12-11 14:26 The Language Guy

The Art of Language

“We are wired to learn languages! …- That’s what I was told from childhood, that’s what I believed and that’s what I’ve become.”

This is an exciting week for me! ... and NO I didn't make a spelling mistake... and NO your eyes aren't playing tricks on you :) ...well... maybe they are. The word 'Mindcraft' has been used and registered by many other companies before, but I felt it best sums up what I'm doing. Writing it like 'Mnidcraft' both gets people's attention and in its essence, sums up what this new programme is all about - Who you are, what you see etc. is only what your mind makes of it!... interested? Then read on!...

Over the past few months, I've been doing quite a lot of introspection. I often refer to the emails that I receive in my blog-posts. People are wanting to know 'what's the best way to learn a language?', 'how should I start learning a language?', 'how do I get motivated to learn???'.

But it's the comments like 'Well, it's easy and natural for you to learn languages, but how should your average Joe Blow go about it?' that really got me thinking.

I have worked as a trainer / facilitator for the past ten years or so. When I train, I incorporate many principles of NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) into what I do. Many of the techniques that my grandfather had used with me in retrospect really resemble many of the popular techniques employed by NLP practitioners today.

Based on NLP modelling principles, I have put together a programme that has me really pumped. Instead of just suggesting to people the best ways to learn languages, get motivated about languages, prepare themselves for learning languages, techniques for memorizing vocab, kanji, grammar etc. I have put together a programme that embeds all the fundamental HABITS and KNOWLEDGE that make up STUART JAY RAJ through face to face contact and activities that range from learning to recalibrate your hands and touch-type in foreign scripts to identifying languages and accents - even of languages that you don't speak. We'll be decoupling our mind from our bodies through exercises with Rubik's Cubes, the Abacus, musical instruments, learning speed reading techniques, developing cognitive fluency without using words based on exercises taken from simultaneous interpreting training, learn now to be 'funny' in different languages / cultures, how to gain acceptance and render 'who we are' in palatable forms in our target language's culture, hone subconscious assessment skills that allow us to analyse people based on the way they talk, how they dress, how they sit, who they talk to, learn fundamental principles of language including phonetics, IPA, tonal languages, Indic languages and even a touch of computer languages!.

I will be running the workshops in conjunction with RadioBangkok.Net - there will be podcasts available via Radiobangkok (and of course fed through this blogsite as well (http://stujay.blogspot.com) that support what's learned in the sessions.

Facebook Mnidcraft Group

I have also started a group in Facebook for participants / anyone else interested in the programme wanting to network with like-minded people. We can use it as a place to exchange ideas, experiences, files etc.

Should everything go well with the first few runs of the series here in Thailand, I will look at taking it on the road in the second quarter of 2009.

So without any further ado, for my blog viewers, here's the official 'blurb' that will be going out about the programme. It might well change a little between now and when I run the first series in Bangkok in December - but you will get the general idea!

Mnidcraft - The Art of Language

“We are wired to learn languages! …- That’s what I was told from childhood, that’s what I believed and that’s what I’ve become.”

Now having fluency in over 15 languages and a solid grounding in over 30, polyglot Stuart Jay Raj has delved into what makes him ‘him’ and from his findings has put together his ‘Mnidcraft – The Art of Language’ series.

Mnidcraft empowers anyone with a will to succeed to develop the same aptitude for languages and communication as what Stuart Jay Raj possesses based on powerful NLP modeling principles.

NLP Modeling

NLP modeling is the practice of isolating essential patterns that makes someone successful and duplicating them into others in a way that they are practiced unconsciously.

Stuart has carefully designed activities where you will not only learn the secrets that have crafted his aptitude for language, but will also have these skills, habits and knowledge embedded within you, breathing new life into your relationship with language.

7 Drivers of Mnidcraft

The 7 Drivers of Mnidcraft are:

1. Memory / Mind Capacity Building
2. Social Awareness
3. Relationships / Rapport
4. Motivation / Attitude
5. Language Fundamentals
6. Hard Skills
7. Hard Knowledge

More than just the ability to learn languages

Developing an aptitude for language is actually just a side effect of the Mnidcraft series. You will also develop new skills including:

• Super Memory
• Perfect Pitch
• Touch-type in multiple languages including Thai, Sanskrit and Korean
• Be ‘funny’ across cultures
• Increase self-esteem in yourself and others
• Mimic sounds, body language and mannerisms
• Build instant rapport with people you’ve just met
• Master tones in Tonal Languages including Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese
• Solve the Rubik’s Cube
• Use an Abacus
• Circular Breathing
• Morse Code / Sign Language alphabets
• Speed Reading
• Simultaneous Interpreting
• XML and programming fundamentals

Schedule

The initial series will be run as 4 x half day sessions. Each session can be attended as a stand alone session, but of course the full impact will come as a result of following the whole programme and becoming part of the online community

Coming to a city near you

Like I mentioned above, I'm really excited about this programme. I can see how it's going to help people regardless of their linguistic or academic background. Not only will it get participants motivated about language, but also music, math, I.T., problem solving, networking, business, public speaking and possibly even stand-up comedy!

If you're not in Thailand and you'd like this run in your city / school / university etc., drop me a line and I'll see what we can do :)

That's all for now - no doubt I'll keep you posted as to the results of the series in the coming months.

Mnidcraft - The Art of Language Video ... "Change Your Mind!"
2008-12-11 14:25 The Language Guy

It's both a very happy and sad day here in Bangkok. Sad, because not in a long time have people been so politically polarized ... to the point that today people are baying for blood from both sides of the spectrum.

Now the GOOD news.... I've just finished my latest video edition and posted it up to Youtube. This is the first covering my 'Mnidcraft' series. The first series will be starting on the 2nd of Dec, 2008 in Bangkok. If you're in town, come along!

Facebook Mnidcraft Group Up and Running!

The response to the 'Mnidcraft' Facebook group that I've created is fantastic. Within the first day or so there were over 120 members and counting.

If You Would Like To Attend An Event ...

As sessions get scheduled, I will mark them on there as 'Events' so people can register. Once you click 'accept', you will be contacted to let you know what / how you need to prepare and answer any questions you might have.

RadioBangkok.Net - Sponsorship and Podcasts

Thanks to Bill Hammerton and RadioBangkok.Net, I've been able to increase the audience that the message is getting out to. An added bonus is that thanks to Bill's great networking skills, we have great sponsors like Fraser Suites (Thanks Jacqui) Suk. 11 to help with the Training Facility... though if numbers start to go North, I think we might even have to look at up-sizing future venues.

I've set up an email with RadioBangkok.net that you can make enquiries on - language@radiobangkok.net. Otherwise, my usual 'public' email address still works - stujay@hotmail.com.

Show me the Video Already!

So here it is! ... btw.. if you are a facebook member, I have uploaded a copy of this to the Mnidcraft Group and the resolution looks a whole lot better! Here's the Youtube version.

Taking it On The Road

As I mentioned in the Video, I'm looking forward to taking this programme on the road. I'm excited to see the chemistry that a programme like this has with all different profiles in the community - Adults, Business-people, University Students, Children, Migrants and anyone else willing to "Change Their Mind"!.