supergoondu

Onceyouhaveanadequatevocabularyinwhateverlanguageyou'retryingtolearn,

you'llquitequicklyfigureoutyoudon'treadANYlanguageletterbyletter,

butbyidentifyingwordsorwordclustersinagivensentence.

I am sure most engrish speaking/reading people have very little trouble reading the above sentence even though the words are not spaced out.

Reading thai is all about knowing the most common vocabulary words so that when you see them you know them already. While I applaud people for learning the tone rules first when learning thai; just being able to pronounce a word correctly does not give you the knowledge of the words meaning if that word is not in your current vocabulary.

That only comes from many hours of practice spent on learning thai vocab. There is no shortcut to it at all.

P/S: the very stylish fonts can be indeed be frustrating. Once you know enough recognized thai vocabulary, you can quite quickly work out the words in a sentence with wacky fonts by identifying the words you do know.

Good luck, don't give up, it is all about vocab, vocab, vocab..

Yes I have no problem in reading theenglishsentencewithoutspace, however I won't be able to read as smooth. Imagine the MTV video has the following lyrics for your favorite song.

i'msittinghereintheboringroomit'sjustanotherrainysundayafternoon

i'mwastingmytimeigotnothingtodoi'mhangingaroundi'mwaitingforyou

butnothingeverhappensandiwonder

i'mdrivingaroundinmycari'mdrivingtoofasti'mdrivingtoofar

i'dliketochangemypointofviewifeelsolonelyi'mwaitingforyou

butnothingeverhappensandiwonder

(I had deliberately removed the space and having lower case for all characters)

I wondering if now you can sing it well.

I would like to again clarify that I am simply amused by the Thai characters and the way the Thai sentences are written. I believe any languages have their 'tough' parts. For Chinese it is probably the Chinese characters, and for English (for me) the toughest part is the grammatical rules and tenses.

Yes, you are right, I am still at preliminary stage in getting familiar to Thai Characters and the rules in word formation. I still have tremendous difficulties in reading, understanding and making sense to their local newspaper HEADLINES. And when watching Thai MTV, I will never be able to follow the verses. I had tried to look on my shampoo and shower cream bottles and trying to make sense to those words (not sentences). And you shall also know that there is another Thailand Font Set (where you can see a S or a reflected C), till now I still trying hard to remember those Font. For years you know S, and now you need to treat S to be R, I have to admit I cannot react fast enough. I have to stare a word for awhile and have to verify it pronunication via a Thai-English dictionary. I have to say I have put in considerable effort in reading Thai characters.

I found the different writing styles frustrating when I was first learning Thai too - I spent a long time learning the alphabet, and I still couldn't read signs on the street or in the food courts because of the font style. There are quite a few different styles (they have cute fonts to make Thai characters look like Chinese, Burmese, Japanese, Korean characters too).

There are hundreds of Thai signs Here to help you practice : )

Thanks for the link.

I have to admit, the other Thai fonts (where a S refers to ร) are cute. However for a beginner like me, I use the small circle to differentiate the (พ ผ , น ม , ... ), and without the small circle I really have to think hard. Moreover the very first written rule for writing the Thai characters was probably 'the small circle is the starting point for all Thai characters'.

Anyway I am still not deterred yet.

哑巴吃黄莲──有苦自己知（或"有苦说不出"）

Earlier I mentioned that when one mentioned the first half, one infact refers to second half.

That is if I said 'I am 哑巴吃黄莲', infact I intended to say 'I am 有苦自己知'.

Literary 哑巴吃黄莲' means a dumb person eating lotus seed. I doubt you understand what it meant be 'I am a dumb person eating lotus seed'.

Fortunately the Google Transate is intelligent enough to translate 哑巴吃黄莲, to 'Dumb to suffer in silence' thus it means 'I am like a dumb suffering in silence.'

How long did it take you to become comfortable with this Korean ? Is there a tone to it?

People say to me ' How can you read that Thai' and i say reading it is the easy bit, understanding it back at speed from a deep voiced male taxi driver is the test, it has an alphabet including vowels and the vowels aren't just the a e o i u of English but lots of different vowels but more precise. I love the vowels of Thai.

It's funny really coz people try to learn Thai but then you realise that the people you want to speak with; the bar girl, the hotel worker, the taxi driver, the concierge etc. don't speak book Thai they speak street Thai and Isaan but it's like that in most languages i suppose.

Got to go Russell Brands on the telly

That's not Korean, they are Chinese characters. In Korean, the Chinese characters are called hanja. And for Japanese, the Chinese characters are called kanji.

However unlike the Japanese scripts, you won't be able to see any Chinese characters in any of Korean texts. The Korean texts are now written in hangul only (please do not quote me). So if you use Google Translate to translate hanja characters (from Korean to English), you will not be able to get any result.

Here's the hangul characters: 한문 - which means Chinese Characters

And here's the hanja equivalent for (한문 - which means Chinese Characters): 漢文

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja

Hope it clarifies.

哑巴吃黄莲──有苦自己知（或“有苦说不出”）

Earlier I mentioned that when one mentioned the first half, one infact refers to second half.

That is if I said 'I am 哑巴吃黄莲', infact I intended to say 'I am 有苦自己知'.

Literary 哑巴吃黄莲' means a dumb person eating lotus seed. I doubt you understand what it meant be 'I am a dumb person eating lotus seed'.

Fortunately the Google Transate is intelligent enough to translate 哑巴吃黄莲, to 'Dumb to suffer in silence' thus it means 'I am like a dumb suffering in silence.'

You ain't even got ya toes wet !!!

I started to learn 2 years ago and now reading Thai is like reading English, i may not understand the word but i can pronounce it. There are the exceptions like where there is a funny ending to a word that stops me in my tracks but English is worse for foreign learners.

Personally i advise people of average intelligence, like myself, to learn the script but forget the tone rules until you can read well and just remember how words are pronounced and just use lots of words in a sentence to create a context that leaves your victim in no doubt what you mean. I've found it so risky to think you can just whack out 3 words like a Thai to convey your needs unless you can pronounce it perfect don't bother.

Thai has so many words that have multiple meanings i sometimes think every word is like this just take my recent query - Toi or toy ... it has 5 meanings to move back, to throw, to strike, the spoken word or speech, and to be vile or despicable. Imagine trying to just convey your point in that one word and not pronouncing it perfectly. Luckily on the page it it spelled differently each time.

Theres a long way to go and even then it's near impossible and then there's all the different dialects etc.

Indeed it is still a long long way. Though I know day is 'wan', yet earlier I still need to refer to dictionary to verify if it is a short or long vowel 'a'. And as in my earlier posting, I would temporary ignore the tone ....

Thanks for your reply.

So far those languages that I know of have clear distinction for a word, like Chinese (a character is a word and has a syllabus), English, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, French .... I am not sure if Burmese, Laos, Khmer, Arabic, Indian ... language behave like Thai (that there is no spacing between words).

I believe you have misinterpret my intention. My statement regarding Chinese, English, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, French is based on my general understanding that those languages break the word for easy read.

Mainland SE Asian languages don't mark word breaks, while Arabic and modern Indian languages do. (Sanskrit and Pali don't normally mark word boundaries when written in Indic scripts.) Vietnames does mark syllable boundaries, and these usually coincide with word boundaries.

Syllable boundaries are generally clear in Burmese and modern Lao. This is because of clear marking of consonants without following vowels in Burmese and because modern Lao lacks implicit vowels and silent consonants and has very few consonant clusters.

Until you start to separate words in Thai by recognising words, you can go a long way by using preposed vowels, sara a and thanthakhat (not on ro) to locate syllable boundaries. Remember that syllables with mai ai, mai ao and sara a do not have unsilenced final consonants. Implicitly silenced ro is a problem, as in สามารถ [M]sa[F]maat.

That's a great reply, I shall take a closer look at those words formation rules and exceptions. I would like to pick up Thai characters, for it is very difficult to travel in Thailand where few of their sign boards are in English (at least in CM). And it is always useful and fun to learn another language and culture.

As perverse as it may sound, I have stopped watching movies with subtitles.

The reason being they are translated word for word with no understanding of the nuances of the language.

An example would be,

I saw khun x yesterady

Q. How was he doing?

A. He was looking good.

Translated to Thai subtitles, Kao doo dee, a literal translation, that is of course correct, but is incorect in the fact it doesnt convey the meaning of the sentance.

The above is an example using English, I dare say the same can be repeated using, Japanese, Chinese or any other language you care to mention.

The problem isnt only peculiar to students of the Thai language, my wife (Thai) will watch movies in Thai with English subtitles, then not understand why I dont understand what she is trying to say to me in English.

Until the subtitles are translated by native speakers of the language in question, and not Thais who speak whatever language you care to mention, the problem will exist, thus hindering students of the Thai language, or Thais who are trying to master another language, these subtitles help no one, in fact may be more of a hinderance than an aid.

Good luck in your studies.

Remember the film 'Day After Tomorrow', due to territorial differences, the Taiwanese and the Chinese has named the movie title differently. The Taiwanese call it '明天过后 - tomorrow after or Thai equivalent (wan prung ni langjak) ' and the Chinese call it '后天 - that's equivalent to Thai (wan mareun ni)'.

Maybe you can tell me how the Thai name that film? And whether you prefer the Taiwanese style or the Chinese style. Keep in mind that there is no single word in English for 'the day after tomorrow'.

I have downloaded it, unfortunately I didn't get to explore it much. And now mine had exceeded that 15 days time frame.

I have bought hardcopy Thai-English dictionary, English-Thai dictionary. And I have found both very useful. The other problem was the Thai fonts on the dictionaries were too small, and I have bought myself a magnifying glass to look at the Thai font. The sales person was amused when I told him I need it for reading Thai font. (And I am not really old.)

I have no comment about Thai2english, but I would strongly encouage you to subscribe for Learn Thai Podcast if you would like to build up your vocabularies and under the Thai language structure.

I find that all of these factors compound the problems

1. Alphabet non-Roman

2. everythingisruntogetherandihavenoideawhereonewordsentenceparagraphorvolumeends

3. Vowels everywhere, nowhere, under, over, left, right

4. Tones

5. Teaching methods are usually farangophobic

Totally agreed for point 1, 2 and 3.

For 4, yes it is tedious, fortunately I understand the importance of tones, for like the Chinese language, different tones meant different things. 'I understands there are rules in Thai language in when to read it it at high, medium, low, falling or rising tones, somehow I didn't pay particular attention in how rising tone or falling tone should be like..., I shall pay attention to it probably when I am pretty comfortable with the Thais consonants and vowels.'

Try this (a very popular tongue twister):

绕口令：四是四，十是十

四是四，十是十；(si4 shi4 si4, shi2 shi4 shi2)

十四是十四，四十是四十；(shi2 si4 shi4 shi2 si4 , si4 shi2 si4 si4 shi2)

别把四十说喜席，别把十四说席喜。(bie2 ba2 si4 shi2 shuo1 xi3 xi2, bie2 ba2 shi2 si4 shuo1 xi2 xi3)

要想说好四和十，全靠舌头和牙齿。(yao4 xiang3 shuo1 hao1 si4 he2 shi2, quan2 kao1 she2 tou2 he2 ya2 chi3 )

要想说对四，舌头碰牙齿；(yao4 xiang3 shuo1 dui4 si4, she2 tou2 peng4 ya2 chi3)

要想说对十，舌头别伸直。(yao4 xiang3 shuo1 dui4 shi2, she2 tou2 bie2 shen1 zhi2)

认真学，常练习，十四、四十、四十四。(ren4 zhen1 xue2, chang2 lian4 si2, shi2 si4 , si4 shi2, si4 shi2 si4)

literary:

4 is 4, 10 is 10

14 is 14, 40 is 40

don't say 40 as 'xi3 xi2' (xi3 xi2 has no literary meaning)

don't say 14 as 'xi2 xi3' (xi2 xi3 has no literary meaning)

to be able to pronunce well 4 and 10, it all depends your tongue and teeth

to be able to pronunce correctly 4, use your tongue to touch your teeth

to be able to pronunce correctly 10, your tongue must not be straightened. (curvl your tongue)

learn faithfully, learn consistently, 14, 40, 44

I believe quite a handful of Chinese (especially the Southerners) have difficulty in identifying correctly shi, si, ci, chi, ceng, cen, ...

As for point 5, I am not able to comment.

I'm far from expert, so don't quote me......

I also found it daunting at first that there was no spacing between words, however for English in particular spacing is very important because, as a bastard language (formed from many sources) we do not have firm or consistant spelling or pronunciation rules and a lack of spaces could very easily lead to misintepretation whilst reading. There are always exceptions to the "rules".

English has soooooo many anomalies and inconsistancies that have to be rote learnt. Modern English also has a HUGE vocabulary, but limited characters to express it (21 consonants and 5 vowels), so there's alot of potential for merged words to mean something entirely different.

Thai however, seems to have less of a problem with this. Since you can read the script, I suspect that once you have a decent vocabulary, reading will become easier.

Thanks for your reply.

I can not comment on your statement

'English has soooooo many anomalies and inconsistancies that have to be rote learnt.'

for my understanding on Thai language still very skin-deep. Somehow my gut feel is that Thai language has more rules and 'exceptions'. Anyway that's so much I can talk about regarding that statement.

For me the easiest way was to draw a vertical pencil line between the words and work out the tones by applying the tone rules, then put a tone marker above each word.

After a while I got to know the tone of a word just by seeing the initial and final consonant and vowel length.

This led to words standing out straight away.

To make it easier, start by reading books for children, simple sentances with few words, after a while you will be able to recognize the words at a glance, then work on to something a bit more challenging.

It may be worth your while to read on subjects that interest you this should prevent your studies from becoming tedious and boring, you will also build up your grammar and learn new words at the same time.

The above method worked for me, but we all have differing skills and needs, so our learning methods may differ, do what works for you.

ว่าเธอไม่ชอบเรา

ammended to ว่าเธอไม่ชอบเรา

Thanks for replying. So at least we have done the same thing, our first attempt was to identify each block of word in a string of words. For me I use highlighter to highlight alternate word.

Yes, there is a method which is fairly effective for me. Their TV channels play Taiwanese serial dubbed in Thai, fortunately they do not removed the Chinese substitles. And by watching those serials, they helped to re-enforce my vocabulary. Unfortunately they screen those serials at late hours.

I too observed that many (may I say all, probably not, because of the DMC channal) of their Thai TV programs have no English substitles. Some English-speaking movies have Thai substitles, unfortunately I am still at stage trying to identify each block of word.

1日二度の食事と労働が牢獄内の犯罪者の生活のすべてだった。

I don't know much about Japanese language, but when attempting to read:

のすべてだった,

I shall read 'no su be teh ta ci ta', somehow I know that 'の' shall stand by itself, and 'だった' is the extension (some tenses) of 'すべ' ... Or rather each character already has the built-in consonant and vowel, thus u can read rather easily.

แต่ใจเจ้ากรรมไม่รู้เลย ว่าเธอไม่ชอบเรา

Somehow in Thai, there is no spacing between the word, and there is a possibility that a consonant can be at the front or at the back of a word, so for beginner, it can be very difficult to break up the sentence into separate words in a glance. And the vowel can wrap at the front, back or top or bottom of the consonant. So somehow I find it difficult to 'glance' the sentence and sing to the tune to my favorite Thai music.

I am just voice up my problem when learning Thai, and wondering others may face the same problem, and how they finally overcome it. To drill those Thai characters and word formation rules are really a must, but wondering if one has a fancy method in overcome it. That's the intent for my post.

I think your good-hearted attempt here to contrast Japanese and Thai tends to highlight the weakness of your initial assertion. I'll show you why:

You said:

"のすべてだった,

I shall read 'no su be teh ta ci ta', somehow I know that 'の' shall stand by itself, and 'だった' is the extension (some tenses) of 'すべ' ... Or rather each character already has the built-in consonant and vowel, thus u can read rather easily."

Your second issue is wrong and your third issue is wrong: だった' is not the extension. And not all the letters have a built in consonant and vowel. Many are vowel sound only (e.g. 'あ'). Some are then not pronounced the way they are written depending on circumstances (e.g. 'へ').

You then rather reinforce my point by providing a perfect example of a word that can be spotted immediately in Thai.

แต่ใจเจ้ากรรมไม่รู้เลย

Those first bits 'แ' are an absolute dead giveaway of the start of a new word. Japanese has no such easy tactic. You can also wildy guess other starts to words:

แต่ใจเจ้ากรรมไม่รู้เลย

And endings:

แต่ใจเจ้ากรรมไม่รู้เลย

If you heard the whinging of Japanese learners then you would understand this is not just a Thai issue.

But linguistics is fun.

Isn't 'へ' always pronounced as 'he' (thought I was taught to read it as 'eh' rather than 'he'), it is one of the hiragana character.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana

Many are vowel sound only (e.g. 'あ'), I am confused by this statement. Isn't each hiragana has can be read 'with a consonant and a vowel'? Or are you referring to compounded vowel like 'desu', where it should be pronounced as 'des' rather than 'de-su'. Yup I had make this mistake, but it can be corrected quickly and easily.

Somehow I still find it a challenge to identify the first consonant in a Thai sentence.

The wikipedia reference that you provide proves each point I made. You should read it. Such quality lines from it:

あ a [a]

"With a few exceptions for sentence particles は, を, and へ (pronounced as wa, o, and e), and a few other arbitrary rules, Japanese is spelled as it sounds. " Yep. So へ can be pronounced as 'e' or as 'he'.

It then has two pages of spelling rules that tell you they are not as simple as they seem.

I feel you are tying yourself in knots. I think you need to understand I am a very advanced learner of Japanese (I passed the highest level proficiency exam 7 years ago) so there is not much point in lecturing me on it. I am just trying to help you.

Oops, I am indeed sorry, I need to be more careful in my future postings. (However I still do not think that my earlier postings were offensive.)

I am indeed '班门弄斧'. Luckily I have yet to reply to your japanese tobacco query.

BTW，may I know what's your mother tongue? You shall have my ultimate salutation if you are a non-Asian, and you are able to read and write Kanji or rather Chinese Characters.

For a Farang, I believe Chinese language may be 10 times more tedious than Thai language.

1日二度の食事と労働が牢獄内の犯罪者の生活のすべてだった。

I don't know much about Japanese language, but when attempting to read:

のすべてだった,

I shall read 'no su be teh ta ci ta', somehow I know that 'の' shall stand by itself, and 'だった' is the extension (some tenses) of 'すべ' ... Or rather each character already has the built-in consonant and vowel, thus u can read rather easily.

แต่ใจเจ้ากรรมไม่รู้เลย ว่าเธอไม่ชอบเรา

Somehow in Thai, there is no spacing between the word, and there is a possibility that a consonant can be at the front or at the back of a word, so for beginner, it can be very difficult to break up the sentence into separate words in a glance. And the vowel can wrap at the front, back or top or bottom of the consonant. So somehow I find it difficult to 'glance' the sentence and sing to the tune to my favorite Thai music.

I am just voice up my problem when learning Thai, and wondering others may face the same problem, and how they finally overcome it. To drill those Thai characters and word formation rules are really a must, but wondering if one has a fancy method in overcome it. That's the intent for my post.

I think your good-hearted attempt here to contrast Japanese and Thai tends to highlight the weakness of your initial assertion. I'll show you why:

You said:

"のすべてだった,

I shall read 'no su be teh ta ci ta', somehow I know that 'の' shall stand by itself, and 'だった' is the extension (some tenses) of 'すべ' ... Or rather each character already has the built-in consonant and vowel, thus u can read rather easily."

Your second issue is wrong and your third issue is wrong: だった' is not the extension. And not all the letters have a built in consonant and vowel. Many are vowel sound only (e.g. 'あ'). Some are then not pronounced the way they are written depending on circumstances (e.g. 'へ').

You then rather reinforce my point by providing a perfect example of a word that can be spotted immediately in Thai.

แต่ใจเจ้ากรรมไม่รู้เลย

Those first bits 'แ' are an absolute dead giveaway of the start of a new word. Japanese has no such easy tactic. You can also wildy guess other starts to words:

แต่ใจเจ้ากรรมไม่รู้เลย

And endings:

แต่ใจเจ้ากรรมไม่รู้เลย

If you heard the whinging of Japanese learners then you would understand this is not just a Thai issue.

But linguistics is fun.

Isn't 'へ' always pronounced as 'he' (thought I was taught to read it as 'eh' rather than 'he'), it is one of the hiragana character.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana

Many are vowel sound only (e.g. 'あ'), I am confused by this statement. Isn't each hiragana has can be read 'with a consonant and a vowel'? Or are you referring to compounded vowel like 'desu', where it should be pronounced as 'des' rather than 'de-su'. Yup I had make this mistake, but it can be corrected quickly and easily.

Somehow I still find it a challenge to identify the first consonant in a Thai sentence.

And for Japanese, except for Kanji, I believe each katagana and hiragana has a syllabus. A string of katagana or hiragana shall form a word.

No (in effect) and no, I'm afraid.

The hiragana and katakana can be altered by the letters around them, as well as their stress changing depending on the particular word.

For example: 敗因 (haiin) 'i'　is rendered 'i' in English phonetics (pronounced 'ee') but can become what an English speaker would recognise as a final "n" sound or else it can be a nasal "h" sound. Ask a japanese beginner to pronouance hai'in and they will say "hain", but then listen to a native speaker and it sounds like this "hanern" because a native English speaker can not register the nasal 'g' sound that is a consequence of the positioning of the 'i' in the word.

Then more fundamentally, a string of katakana and hiragana often do not constitute one word. They can be several words (as a Westerner would understand it) or could be the tail end of a verb or adjective.

e.g.

1日二度の食事と労働が牢獄内の犯罪者の生活のすべてだった。

Two meals a day and labor constituted all of the criminal's life in the jail.

This is the hiragana divided into arguable word concepts:

1日二度の食事と労働が牢獄内の犯罪者の生活のすべてだった。

The one good thing about Japanese is that the Revised Hepburn System totally dominates the transcription to English so you don't have the chronic problems that you find in Thai. And, in theory, the Roman alphabet is actually Japanese (is is called the 4th set, after katakana, hiragana, furigana). So the surname 'tanaka' written using the roman alphabet is also Japanese alphabet.

1日二度の食事と労働が牢獄内の犯罪者の生活のすべてだった。

I don't know much about Japanese language, but when attempting to read:

のすべてだった,

I shall read 'no su be teh ta ci ta', somehow I know that 'の' shall stand by itself, and 'だった' is the extension (some tenses) of 'すべ' ... Or rather each character already has the built-in consonant and vowel, thus u can read rather easily.

แต่ใจเจ้ากรรมไม่รู้เลย ว่าเธอไม่ชอบเรา

Somehow in Thai, there is no spacing between the word, and there is a possibility that a consonant can be at the front or at the back of a word, so for beginner, it can be very difficult to break up the sentence into separate words in a glance. And the vowel can wrap at the front, back or top or bottom of the consonant. So somehow I find it difficult to 'glance' the sentence and sing to the tune to my favorite Thai music.

I am just voice up my problem when learning Thai, and wondering others may face the same problem, and how they finally overcome it. To drill those Thai characters and word formation rules are really a must, but wondering if one has a fancy method in overcome it. That's the intent for my post.

I did know the origins. It is a famous story. It shows how the 'meaning' of the characters can become detached from the word so become functionless to all but the most educated users. Rather like Latin hidden into English words.

I would say that's the beauty of the language, just 4 characters and they can mean so much.

There are alot of such examples: (愚公移山， 孔融让梨，左右逢源, 八仙过海 。。。) which if you break them into individual word, you might get clueless.

And there is another group, we call them 歇后语：

猪八戒照镜子——里外不是人

哑巴吃黄莲──有苦自己知（或“有苦说不出”）

When we make a sentence with 歇后语, we only say out the first half(哑巴吃黄莲), and one shall expect to know what the second hald mean(有苦自己知).

Example: In this forum, I am just like a 哑巴吃黄莲.

These problems are real, but tend to be overexaggerated.

I don't know if the OP was trying to 'big note' himself or not, but one month is easily enough time for anyone to learn the Thai alphabet and the basic rules of word-formation. That is not the challenge - that is just opening the door to the challenge (because once you get past that, you start getting into the realm of grammar construction, connotation, register, word choice, idiomatic usage and all the other complexities that we take for granted in reading our first language. Learning the letters and their sounds, how to read tones etc etc is rule-governed. Much that comes after is not).

I like to think of the lack of spaces as part of the beauty and exoticness of the language, one of the things that make it worth learning from a purely aesthetic perspective, but in any case, spacing is not really as big a deal as you think. The reason you find it problematic now is mostly due to the fact that you are still reading words by constructing them letter by letter. This is natural (I still do it with unfamiliar words), but disappears naturally as your read more. The great news about this is you don't have to do anything extra, or learn some special trick, to solve the spacing problem: you brain will solve it for you so long as you keep reading regularly ("a little, often" beats "a lot, occasionally" here as in most things). You don't read every letter when you read English, and you won't read every letter when you read Thai once your brain has seen enough words enough times to recognise them as wholes.

Keep reading, and you will start to see words instead of letters, and after a while you'll never even notice (quite literally) that the spaces aren't there!

Softwater

Yes, you are right, I am still at preliminary stage in getting familiar to Thai Characters and the rules in word formation. I still have tremendous difficulties in reading, understanding and making sense to their local newspaper HEADLINES. And when watching Thai MTV, I will never be able to follow the verses. I had tried to look on my shampoo and shower cream bottles and trying to make sense to those words (not sentences). And you shall also know that there is another Thailand Font Set (where you can see a S or a reflected C), till now I still trying hard to remember those Font. For years you know S, and now you need to treat S to be R, I have to admit I cannot react fast enough. I have to stare a word for awhile and have to verify it pronunication via a Thai-English dictionary. I have to say I have put in considerable effort in reading Thai characters.

I have subscribed to learn-thai-podcast, and their podcasts have definitely accelerated my Thai learning.

I choose to learn Thai rather than Vietnamese, because I was fascinated by it having its own character sets. And my first posting is never a deterrance for me to further indulge in Thai language. And hopefully my interest will last long.

My first posting was only to highlight what a beginner might face when first reading a Thai Script. And I never say that it is a problem. It is a problem for me to read the character and not the other way.

If you read a English sentence, example (I like Thai), your eyes simply glance from left to right, for you know the first character is a Consonant.

However if you read a Thai sentence, because the Vowel may be at the front of the Consonant, so if you read from left to right, somehow you may need to backtrack (in order to form the word) ... Example

แต่ใจเจ้ากรรมไม่รู้เลย , and somehow you may feel that if that Consonant is the starting of a new word or the end of a word ...

Anyway it was never an intent for me to be boastful.

And hope more forummers may provide me with tricks in reading Thai scripts.

Yes and No.

Example: 煙草 reads 'toe-ba-coe'. From the English word tobacco, and it misleadingly means cigarette. The sounds are not constituted from the kanji parts, so it disproves your hypothesis that they are each a syllabus. But in this case, the Chinese characters do offer a meaning: 煙smoke-草leaf which is readily understandable.

The character can then, when it is using the syllabus of whcih you speak, have enormous numbers of readings. So many, it might as well be random. e.g. na/i/u/ki/nama and another 16 other readings for this character 生.

There are then lots of Kanji with no fundamental meaning. The idea of Chinese characters as exuding a meaning is common among beginners because typcially they are taught those very characters first that not only have a clear meaning but even look like what they mean: e.g. 川　river (it looks like a river).

e.g. 臥薪嘗胆 (as used above) [meanings: supine- firewood- [no meaning]- amazed/gall bladder]

So the characters can in some ways mean something (e.g. firewood) but they actually also means nothing, since they aid no interpretation of the word. Or else the meaning is only that very word of which the meaning you know not. Or else, it has multiple unconnected meaning.

So what does this word mean?

"To put your self through great suffering for the sake of vengeance. " I think if you could work that out from "supine- firewood- [no meaning]- amazed/gall bladder" then impressive are you.

For 卧薪尝胆, if you break out the words it means (sleep or lie down - firewood - taste - gall bladder). So what it means is to sleep on firewood and to taste gall bladder (bitterness).

There is a story regarding this 卧薪尝胆 :

典　故：公元前496年，吴王阖闾派兵攻打越国，但被越国击败，阖闾也伤重身亡，阖闾让伍子胥选后继之人，伍子胥独爱夫差，便选其为王。此后，勾践闻吴国要建一水军，不顾范蠡等人的反对，出兵要灭此水军，结果被夫差奇兵包围，大败，大将军也战死沙场，夫差要捉拿勾践，范蠡出策，假装投降，留得青山在不愁没柴烧。夫差也不听老臣伍子胥的劝告，留下了勾践等人，三年，饱受侮辱，终被放回越国，勾践暗中训练精兵，每日晚上睡觉不用褥，只铺些柴草（古时叫薪），又在屋里挂了一只苦胆，他不时会尝尝苦胆的味道，为的就是不忘过去的耻辱。

勾践为鼓励民众就和王后与人民一起参与劳动，在越人同心协力之下把越国强大起来。

一次夫差带领全国大部分兵力，去赴会，要求勾践也带兵助威，勾践见时机已到，假装赴会，领3000精兵，拿下吴国主城，杀了吴国太子，又擒了夫差，夫差悔当初未听伍子胥言，留下了勾践，死前，他只求，不要伤害吴国百姓。

(This happened during Before Christ 496) There is this 勾践，whose kingdom (越国) was overthrown by 吴国。For 3 years, he suffered tremendous humiliation and was finally allowed to be returned back to his earlier (越国)。He trained his army secretly, and in order not to forget his past humiliation, for each nights, he will sleep on firewood (薪) and sucked on the gall (胆).

And finally, he lead a 3000 elite army and seized an opportunity in overthrowing 吴国。

"To put your self through great suffering for the sake of vengeance." - So you now know why (卧薪尝胆) means that? I can further elaborate if you still in doubt.

http://baike.baidu.com/view/35626.htm

For your tobaco, I shall explain it later.

been learning a whole month and still not quite mastered it!! have knowledge of many other languages!! You are not asking question you are just trying to big note yourself

So far those languages that I know of have clear distinction for a word, like Chinese (a character is a word and has a syllabus), English, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, French .... I am not sure if Burmese, Laos, Khmer, Arabic, Indian ... language behave like Thai (that there is no spacing between words).

I believe you have misinterpret my intention. My statement regarding Chinese, English, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, French is based on my general understanding that those languages break the word for easy read.

Example for Chinese, each character is a syllabus though same character may read differently. It is definitely a syllabus for a character.

And for Japanese, except for Kanji, I believe each katagana and hiragana has a syllabus. A string of katagana or hiragana shall form a word.

As for English and French, the space between the words make reading easier.

And for Korean, a Korean character may have multiple syllabus example gyeong (경, "capital"), however one can deduce the phonetics from the character.

And for Vietnamese, just like English and French, Số tham chiếu của ngân hàng, they use space to break up, for easier reading of text.

And I can tell you about Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia. What I mention in my earlier posting is a general knowledge where people like me born and raised in this part of the world should know. Definitely I know little on the grammatical rules, sentence structure and vocabularies regarding above-mentioned languages other than English and Chinese.

I never claimed to be a master of all above-mentioned languages. And my posting did not provide the slightest clues.

test -- okay to delete.

I am glad you have deleted your earlier comment, I am feeling so bad after reading your comment. I have spent considerable time in getting accustomed to the Thai Script during my recent stay in CM. I think you have some misunderstandings regarding my earlier posting in CM forum, however there is never a time I am attempting to make boastful statement.

My initial plan while in CM was to learn Thai language. And a secondary plan would be to think of way how to make a living in CM if I intend to stay 'long-term' there, and the quickest way was to start a business there. And I do not think I have make any boastful statements in any of those listings.

Anyway glad that you have remove that your earlier posting.

A chinese character does not necessarily make up a word in Chinese or Japanese. The following 4 characters are one word in Japanese:

Let me clarify, a Chinese character is definitely a syllabus.

臥薪嘗胆 (wo4 xin1 chang2 dan3). And each character has it own meaning. Example 尝 (simplified form for 嘗) means to taste. And 尝试 means to try.

As for Japanese character, example hiragana ひらがな, each character is a syllabus, and for tabeshimata 食べました, 食 is a kanji and has 2 syllabus tabe. Most kanji may have the equivalent hiragana written ontop of the kanji to aid the reader in reading the kanji.

So basically, a Japanese character except for Kanji, should have a syllabus.

I have spent slightly more than a month making attempt to learn Thai. I am able to recognize all Thai Characters (Vowels and Consonants). I understand there are some rules in forming a Thai word (example how to read ร and รร and many many more). Somehow I feel that the most challenging for me was to break up the long strings of words into individual words

(example: แต่ใจเจ้ากรรมไม่รู้เลย ว่าเธอไม่ชอบเรา).

Definitely it would be easier to read if there are gaps in between the words or some block distinction ...

แต่ใจเจ้ากรรมไม่รู้เลย ว่าเธอไม่ชอบเรา

And what make reading Thai scripts difficult is the vowels can appear infront, behind, top or bottom of the consonant. And a Thai word can have open or closed Vowels...

So far those languages that I know of have clear distinction for a word, like Chinese (a character is a word and has a syllabus), English, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, French .... I am not sure if Burmese, Laos, Khmer, Arabic, Indian ... language behave like Thai (that there is no spacing between words).

Definitely I need to spend alot more time to get myself more acquainted with Thai Characters Set and those words formation rules, and hopefully I can read the Thai scripts as smooth as a Thai.

Do you have the same thought?

why pay $34, you can have unlimited train and bus rides for $8day. Moreover the train and bus rides cover the whole of Singapore, unlike the Hippo ride which ply only the city area and you never know when the next Hippo ride will be.

<H1 class="consumer style7">Singapore Tourist Pass</H1>Unravel the treasueres of Singapore with a Pass!Enjoy unlimited train and bus rides with a pass at only $8 a day. With the Rent-A-Card scheme, you do not need to purchase an ez-link card. Just be sure to return the card within 5 days and enjoy the use of the card absolutely free!

On top of exclusive promotional offers and benefits at various retailers and F&B outlets, the Tourist Pass comes packed with all you need to know to help you start savouring popular attractions and hidden local treasures.

http://www.ezlink.com.sg/consumer/consumer_tourist.jsp

make sure you know how much the food is, before you place any order.

$74 = B1702 for a simple meal for 4.

http://www.straitstimes.com/ST+Forum/Onlin...ory_433411.html

Chinatown foodstall charged tourists $74 for simple meal ON TUESDAY, I took my three cousins from Indonesia to Chinatown for some sightseeing, and we had lunch at an eatery in Trengganu Street that sold chicken rice. As we were used to the hawker centre way of ordering food - the place did not look any fancier than a hawker stall - we went straight to the counter to order some chicken rice and drinks. I told my cousins that the last time I ate there, it had cost me no more than $4 a plate.

When the bill arrived, we were shocked to see that the cost came up to $74. Each plate of chicken rice cost us $12, and a plate of char siew cost $18. This was double the price we would have paid in the foodcourts of Ngee Ann City and Wisma Atria.

It is simply unthinkable that a simple eatery with outdoor plastic chairs and no air-conditioning could charge double what fancy foodcourts in Orchard Road charge.

We complained about the bill to the staff and the owner, who curtly said that everything was on the menu, that each plate of chicken rice was either $8, $10 or $12.

However, we were never shown this menu before or while we ordered, and the staff never asked us if we wanted the $8, $10 or $12 plate. Billboards displaying the menu also did not indicate the price. And it was not as if the staff could not explain the menu or prices to us earlier: At least one employee could speak English.

I wanted to show my cousins, who have not visited Singapore in nine years, that the country does not tolerate tourist scams. I was very disappointed that this practice still exists, even after widespread publicity of overcharging at Newton Circus.

I hope the Singapore Tourism Board takes notice of this issue and encourages food sellers to display prices on their menus to avoid such incidents in future. After all, we do not want people to stop coming to Singapore just because they have an unpleasant experience like this.

Elina Ciptadi (Ms)

I had just checked out from Loft Residence after a month stay and the power bill is 1525 B. And my total bill for a month there is: 5000 (a month rental) + 1525(power bill) + 500(final room cleanup) + 200(water bill) = 7225B

If not for the power bill, I would recommend LR to others.

PS: I had tried very hard to cut down my air-con usage, probably less than 2.5h per day during the last 2 weeks.

can anyone please help me.thinking of renting a shop and sell handphone.where can i source for handphone distributor and suppliers.no experience in this field and would need some guidance.how much of investment $$ to put in and renting of shop where can get the most of it.

It seems you have tonnes of monies to burn . Perhaps you should tell us why would you think your shop would be successful?