Learning the Thai Language resources
Learn Thai good links
(Translating from Thai to English)
(Great free online Thai Learning site, contains alphabet with sound samples)
(More tools for learning Thai)
http://www.seasite.niu.edu:85/thai/
ROSETTA STONE
http://www.rosettastone.com/personal/languages/thai
(Pay software)
Some tips on learning the Thai Language
There are various ways to learn Thai but the method I used was to first try and memorize the Thai alphabet, this is not easy I grant you the Thai alphabet contains 44 consonants and 28 vowels and that's before you examine classes and tones but the thing is if you can get most of them memorized you will very quickly be able to read some Thai, street signs, bill board adverts things like that, you can also look up words that you already know in Thai and be able to read them. Although this is quite a hard way to start with the language it will reap dividends very quickly and help greatly with your pronunciation as you will be able visualize how each word is constructed. As my first step I just tried memorize the consonants and I broke these down into blocks, so I arranged all the T and D sounds as one block and did them first if you can get those that's already a big chunk taken care of, next hit the next biggest number of same sounding letters and so on down, you can group the smaller blocks together. Best aid for this is flash cards that you can get in many bookshops locally, put the cards into the blocks you will try to remember and carry them everywhere you go. The fun part is when you start to work onto the simple vowels now you will notice that you are starting to be able to break down simple words in signs and adverts and it happens really quickly once you have gotten over memorizing most of the letters involved.
Remember that when pronouncing each Consonant letter that it starts with an 'or word, eg. Gor Guy, Kor Kai etc. Vowels start with the word Sala or Sara eg. Sala Aah or Sala ee.
Thai sentences have no breaks, commas or full stops, the way you pull the word out is by learning where the vowels are that will tell you where a new word begins and ends.
If you can get this far you are very well set up to start learning the language in a way that will put farther ahead then just remembering words but it will seem slower in the beginning.
Any visual aides that you can find work very well, I have an alphabet poster in my office for example so even if I slack off I will often just test myself with a quick run through to make sure I still have them locked in my mind.
You could even at this point go back to just learning words by listening or using the system where Thai words are converted into Western letters, but if you can keep the that alphabet in your head you will soon start using it when your out and about. I find I'm often in situations where I'm waiting somewhere, either in the car or public offices or transport with nothing to do, that's when I'll try and find a sign or any kind of Thai script to focus on and then try to pick out words. If you really want to get moving on it get some Thai children's books and try and decode them, try copying the Thai script so it becomes familiar to your hand. With the Thai Consonants you always start at the bubble part of the letter when drawing the symbol.
There are some confusing conventions that you will come across, like for example sometimes there is no vowel or rather it is invisible so you have imagine the vowel sound is there but mostly it is fairly straight forward and logical.
You will also notice that a Thai sentence will seem to be in a different order of words than say English and you will start to understand why Asians that learn English talk in the way they do, it's mostly where they put the nouns, eg we might say "want 5 bottles of beer" a Thai would say "want beer 5 bottle".
Ok well that is just one strategy of learning that I use there are many different ways so first step is to decide how you will tackle it and then look for reading material that helps you get there, the main thing is to make a start anything is better than nothing and you might find it helps with day to day living in Thailand.
Tips by udonclassifieds web site owner.
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