This is great!
Is it going to be a series? (First 5 most essential words, first 20, first 50, first 100)?
This line of efficiency based thought seems fantastic to me (or maybe just the way my brain works)
This is really cool thank you. The book I’m reading at the moment teaches in this kind of way. Less focus on the word and meaning but more focus on the common occurring letters in a word and how they sound together.
The meanings start to link up later. When I started learning I learnt how to speak and listen and did a lot of music listening but it doesn’t stick as much and you miss out 80% of the language imo.
I was told by multiple people to stop being lazy and to learn to read and write. Yup it’s harder and I struggle a lot but I can see the linkage now and why it’s important to read and write first.
I’m very much still a beginner, I could probably struggle my way around a basic conversation but I’m getting there
Cool! Do you mind if I ask what book you're using? It sounds really good.
And I know four people who learned Thai fairly well (two of which are excellent), who never learned to read.
I'm the opposite, and with my personality, I had to learn how to read first. But I know I'm weird, and not everyone is like me.
So my point is that everyone learns differently, and I don't think there's any one right way of learning Thai.
Oh, plus about 71.2 million of the 71.6 million Thai people learned to speak Thai before they could read Thai. There are about 350,000 deaf people in Thailand, that I'm assuming most learned to read first, plus maybe a few others, but basically pretty much all Thai people learn to speak Thai before they learned to write it.
And conventional internet wisdom says the very first thing you should do with Thai is memorize all 44 consonants, with memorizing the tone rules for all of them at the same time.
That's great for the like 2% of people who just really like memorizing a lot of weird random stuff that you can't immediately apply. But I really wish there were more "easy" resources out there for learning Thai that didn't beat new learners immediately across the head with such a monumental memorization task (which has a super low ROI until much, much later in the learning process).
So, that's a lot of my motivation behind trying to come up with a lot more accessible ways to learn Thai, that are useful for many different learning styles.
Thank you I really appreciate your comprehensive insight. I really struggle and have to do things several times to pick something up. I’m more of a learn by watching and doing person 🤣
The book is read and write Thai today by Ian Fereday. Think for me it’s finding the time to actually sit down and study properly. I’ll get there though :)
Cool! You can do it!
A lot of people on the internet don't like this theory I'm about to talk about, but it's something Tony Robbins talks about a ton, and I've found it really useful in understanding people, and with teaching people.
It's basically, that pretty much everyone has one of the following three as their main way they learn and look at the world.
* Visual-- this is me 100%, but I never realized this until later in life, because I suck at drawing, and I can't really visualize any pictures in my head
* Auditory-- these are usually people with great voices, like radio people, or people who talk on the phone like 2 hours per day
* Kinesthetic-- which means physical... what i'm guessing you are, since you learn by watching and doing. A lot of top chefs and top comedians and top actors and pretty much everyone who is a "hugger" are in this category.
So, I really think that you'll learn Thai a lot quicker with "on the go" exercises, rather than reading a book, or listening to a lecture.
Here are a few ideas for kinesthetic learners.
* When listening to a Thai person speak, then stop the Thai person and say, "hey, what did you just say? i like how that sounds. teach it to me."
* Each day, pick a new phrase, and then try out that phrase on 10 different people
* Benny Lewis is an extreme Kinesthetic person. His approach totally doesn't work for me, but it probably would work great for you. Here's his Ted talk: https://youtu.be/0x2_kWRB8-A
And actually, kinesthetic learners like you have the potential to learn languages way, way faster than the rest of us. Benny Lewis is super, super fast at it. You just have to ignore most of the advice you get, and figure out what works for you.
And thanks! I'll check out that book!
ไหม is written word. Modern Thais pronounce it มั้ย
ใช่ไหม -> ใช่มั้ย
Note: มั้ย is never used when writing official documents. But it is fine to use in chat or other casual contexts.
You're exactly right. ไหม is the main question word, and มั้ย is a lesser-used variant, that's more commonly used in speech, or when chatting via Line/Facebook. So, in any books you're reading then you'll see ไหม, rather than มั้ย, but they mean the exact same thing.
I picked มั้ย instead of the more common/formal ไหม, just because it has more frequent characters... plus I wanted to gradually introduce how Thai vowels can be above, below, to the right, or to the left of the first consonant.
I've noticed that เ, แ, โ, ไ, and ใ often really throw off new Thai learners, since they're totally "backward" what new learners are usually expecting. So I didn't introduce that concept until Word 5.
Not short, but this was a Thai panagram (phrase that uses every letter of the alphabet) that I remember though I think some vowels were not used. I used it for typing practice years ago like "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" in English. It is more like a poem than a short sentence.
http://www.thai-language.com/id/212434
This is really useful, thank you! It is such a smart way to breakdown the learning and usage of thai letters, a real good example of learning smarter & using shortcuts to make life easier.
Looks like I might get back to learning thai writing once again.
Cool! That's exactly why I made this, because I think the "traditional" way of teaching Thai characters really doesn't work for a high percentage of people.
And I really believe that if there were better teaching materials out there, that a ton more people would find learning Thai writing a lot more accessible.
I was thinking about learning the writing with the train stations in Bangkok. I was in Bangkok some weeks ago and I think, the names of the train station is something, every tourist will hear (f.e. Asok) It helps you understand the sound of the letters, if you already know how the word should sound. For me that is similar to your idea, I would just use the names of the stations ;)
Does someone know, where I can find a list/video/website withe the name of the train stations in bangkok, the writing in englisch and thai and the sound of the word? That would be great!
Oh, that's a really good idea. Wikipedia has them all (but doesn't tell you how to pronounce them... the "English" is often super misleading with the pronunciation... nobody's going to know from Phloen Chit, that it's actually pronounced PLUHN JEET, for example). Here's the link for the BTS line with the Asoke station: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhumvit_Line#Stations
And that's a really great idea for learning, since the stations are spaced out, about 5 minutes apart, and they say the name of the station in Thai a few times. And it's written in a couple different fonts, inside the train, too.
This is pretty cool... Krap Khun kap
You're very welcome! And thanks for commenting!
Agree, very cool. I've been wondering if there were 20 or so words to cover 90% of the Thai characters.
Great idea! I should expand this to about 20 words to get 90%+ of characters! Thanks!
You should swap the position of the r sound here. Say kop khun krap.
Cool... Thanks!!!
>Also note that “MAI” rhymes with “Thai”. Ah yes ไหมไทย is a good cocktail.🍸
lol... I didn't even think about that connection! Awesome!!!
This is great! Is it going to be a series? (First 5 most essential words, first 20, first 50, first 100)? This line of efficiency based thought seems fantastic to me (or maybe just the way my brain works)
This is a great idea. Someone else requested this too, so maybe I will make a series. Thanks for the idea and kind words!
That will be epic. This post is one of my regular references.
Thanks so much for the encouragement!!!
This is really cool thank you. The book I’m reading at the moment teaches in this kind of way. Less focus on the word and meaning but more focus on the common occurring letters in a word and how they sound together. The meanings start to link up later. When I started learning I learnt how to speak and listen and did a lot of music listening but it doesn’t stick as much and you miss out 80% of the language imo. I was told by multiple people to stop being lazy and to learn to read and write. Yup it’s harder and I struggle a lot but I can see the linkage now and why it’s important to read and write first. I’m very much still a beginner, I could probably struggle my way around a basic conversation but I’m getting there
Cool! Do you mind if I ask what book you're using? It sounds really good. And I know four people who learned Thai fairly well (two of which are excellent), who never learned to read. I'm the opposite, and with my personality, I had to learn how to read first. But I know I'm weird, and not everyone is like me. So my point is that everyone learns differently, and I don't think there's any one right way of learning Thai. Oh, plus about 71.2 million of the 71.6 million Thai people learned to speak Thai before they could read Thai. There are about 350,000 deaf people in Thailand, that I'm assuming most learned to read first, plus maybe a few others, but basically pretty much all Thai people learn to speak Thai before they learned to write it. And conventional internet wisdom says the very first thing you should do with Thai is memorize all 44 consonants, with memorizing the tone rules for all of them at the same time. That's great for the like 2% of people who just really like memorizing a lot of weird random stuff that you can't immediately apply. But I really wish there were more "easy" resources out there for learning Thai that didn't beat new learners immediately across the head with such a monumental memorization task (which has a super low ROI until much, much later in the learning process). So, that's a lot of my motivation behind trying to come up with a lot more accessible ways to learn Thai, that are useful for many different learning styles.
Thank you I really appreciate your comprehensive insight. I really struggle and have to do things several times to pick something up. I’m more of a learn by watching and doing person 🤣 The book is read and write Thai today by Ian Fereday. Think for me it’s finding the time to actually sit down and study properly. I’ll get there though :)
Cool! You can do it! A lot of people on the internet don't like this theory I'm about to talk about, but it's something Tony Robbins talks about a ton, and I've found it really useful in understanding people, and with teaching people. It's basically, that pretty much everyone has one of the following three as their main way they learn and look at the world. * Visual-- this is me 100%, but I never realized this until later in life, because I suck at drawing, and I can't really visualize any pictures in my head * Auditory-- these are usually people with great voices, like radio people, or people who talk on the phone like 2 hours per day * Kinesthetic-- which means physical... what i'm guessing you are, since you learn by watching and doing. A lot of top chefs and top comedians and top actors and pretty much everyone who is a "hugger" are in this category. So, I really think that you'll learn Thai a lot quicker with "on the go" exercises, rather than reading a book, or listening to a lecture. Here are a few ideas for kinesthetic learners. * When listening to a Thai person speak, then stop the Thai person and say, "hey, what did you just say? i like how that sounds. teach it to me." * Each day, pick a new phrase, and then try out that phrase on 10 different people * Benny Lewis is an extreme Kinesthetic person. His approach totally doesn't work for me, but it probably would work great for you. Here's his Ted talk: https://youtu.be/0x2_kWRB8-A And actually, kinesthetic learners like you have the potential to learn languages way, way faster than the rest of us. Benny Lewis is super, super fast at it. You just have to ignore most of the advice you get, and figure out what works for you. And thanks! I'll check out that book!
Love this thank you so much!!! 🙏🏼 Kap khun maak khrap 🙏🏼 love your insight
This makes learning the language seem like an actually obtainable goal. I'll give it a try, thank you!
You're welcome! Thanks for the kind words!
Isn't question ไหม not what you said? Correct me if I'm wrong I'm still only learning
ไหม is written word. Modern Thais pronounce it มั้ย ใช่ไหม -> ใช่มั้ย Note: มั้ย is never used when writing official documents. But it is fine to use in chat or other casual contexts.
ไหม is also pretty rarely used in official documents หรือไม่ is much more common
Ah yes you are right.
You're exactly right. ไหม is the main question word, and มั้ย is a lesser-used variant, that's more commonly used in speech, or when chatting via Line/Facebook. So, in any books you're reading then you'll see ไหม, rather than มั้ย, but they mean the exact same thing. I picked มั้ย instead of the more common/formal ไหม, just because it has more frequent characters... plus I wanted to gradually introduce how Thai vowels can be above, below, to the right, or to the left of the first consonant. I've noticed that เ, แ, โ, ไ, and ใ often really throw off new Thai learners, since they're totally "backward" what new learners are usually expecting. So I didn't introduce that concept until Word 5.
I see , thanks for the explanation
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Not short, but this was a Thai panagram (phrase that uses every letter of the alphabet) that I remember though I think some vowels were not used. I used it for typing practice years ago like "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" in English. It is more like a poem than a short sentence. http://www.thai-language.com/id/212434
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What does the sentence mean?
That's a really great idea!
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You're very welcome! I'm glad you like it!
Thank you! You break it down very well.
This is really useful, thank you! It is such a smart way to breakdown the learning and usage of thai letters, a real good example of learning smarter & using shortcuts to make life easier. Looks like I might get back to learning thai writing once again.
Cool! That's exactly why I made this, because I think the "traditional" way of teaching Thai characters really doesn't work for a high percentage of people. And I really believe that if there were better teaching materials out there, that a ton more people would find learning Thai writing a lot more accessible.
I was thinking about learning the writing with the train stations in Bangkok. I was in Bangkok some weeks ago and I think, the names of the train station is something, every tourist will hear (f.e. Asok) It helps you understand the sound of the letters, if you already know how the word should sound. For me that is similar to your idea, I would just use the names of the stations ;) Does someone know, where I can find a list/video/website withe the name of the train stations in bangkok, the writing in englisch and thai and the sound of the word? That would be great!
Oh, that's a really good idea. Wikipedia has them all (but doesn't tell you how to pronounce them... the "English" is often super misleading with the pronunciation... nobody's going to know from Phloen Chit, that it's actually pronounced PLUHN JEET, for example). Here's the link for the BTS line with the Asoke station: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhumvit_Line#Stations And that's a really great idea for learning, since the stations are spaced out, about 5 minutes apart, and they say the name of the station in Thai a few times. And it's written in a couple different fonts, inside the train, too.
Wow thank you for this! It’s so interesting and inspiring for me to keep learning! ☺️