Thai is really a very difficult language!

I think Thai, like Chinese, is difficult for the elderly to learn because they are languages ​​with different pitches associated with different meanings.
“Like Chinese, Thai is a one-letter language with five pitches, high, low, neutral, rising and falling. The pitch is indicated by accent marks above the vowels

Basically, each syllable is a word; identically spelled words take on different meanings due to the pitch associated with them. In Thai, for example, there is the famous phrase 'Mai mai mai mai mai?' that roughly means 'The green forest isn't burning, is it'?"
When you're young, you learn those pitches more easily than when you're older and your hearing isn't what it was when you were 10 or 15. Most expats are over 50.
“As we get older, hearing deteriorates very slowly, this is called age-related hearing loss or presbycusis. Especially, and especially in the beginning, hearing the high tones becomes less as the years go by. In addition to hearing the sound less well, the sound is also distorted.”

My experience of living in Thailand for 15 years is that Thais among themselves do not speak the Thai language.
For example, after living in the north for 4 years and thinking of speaking a few words of Thai, I learned that I was no longer understood or wanted to be understood because Isaan Thai is completely different words. North CNX is Lana, North East is Isan. I am 72 years old and try to learn new words every day, but every day it sounds different and it is sometimes annoying when people laugh at me because I said something wrong again.
When I said MAA and meant dog, they understood horse. So I go for a walk every day with my horse according to them instead of with my dog.
I give up trying to learn any more foreign words and then I just sawwow.

It was a bit sarcastic what I wrote above about the almost impossible task of learning Thai. I found the video very funny.
Learning reasonable Thai takes about a third more time: 900 hours compared to 600 hours for English, for example. Age and a gift for language are less important than perseverance. An hour a day of lessons, an hour a day of practicing on the street and after two years everyone can speak and read Thai properly.

I do not agree that Thai is a difficult language. You just need to have the will to learn the language. Agreed, there is no connection with our western languages, but I bought a small dictionary ENG/THAI, THAI/ENG during my first holiday in Thailand and spent a lot of time learning the language. After about 5 holidays later, I first managed to make a sentence and from then on everything went much smoother, so: make the effort and don't give up easily. Grammatically, Thai is simpler than English in that they have no plural forms and no past/future tense as we know it. They work more with descriptions.
There are many complaints about the difficult tones, but if you listen carefully to Thai you will get the hang of it. Mind you, I don't speak perfect Thai but enough to make myself understood and if I don't know a word I will describe it. I haven't used my dictionary for years and I've never lived in Thailand but spent more than 30 holidays there. It is necessary to talk to the local residents as much as possible and then you also command their respect.

It might be a bit clearer with phonetics and/or Thai script:

หม้าย = mâai (descending) = widow
ไม่ = mâi (falling) = not
หมาย = mǎai (rising) = aim
ไหม้ = mâi (falling) = to burn
ไหม้ = mâi (falling) = to burn
ไม้ = máai (high) = wood

เอา = ao (middle) = wishes
ไหม = mǎi (rising) = silk (but also question word: 'don't you?'
ใหม่ = mài (low) = new
ไม่ = mâi (falling) = not
ไหม้ = mâi (falling) = to burn
ไหม = mǎi (rising) = question word 'not?' (but also: silk)

Then you end up with this tongue twister, especially if it is pronounced quickly.
English translation: “the widow does not aim at burnt wood. You want new unburned silk, don't you?"