Beginner's Gripe

[khaojao]

ok....so i've learnt to recognize the alphabets, and i've learnt how to hold a very basic conversation in thai. when i pick up a children's book and proceed to read it, i cannot recognize the words! i can read it...but it is not until i read it out loud that i can understand what the word means (coz i hear it)

do beginners normally go through this phase? is there an effective way out of it? flashcards? something? it's like trying to read english when the word is written backwards or top-down

makes me feel stupid for not recognizing the word by sight

[DavidHouston]

I have been learning Thai for many years and I still find myself reading out loud or even moving my lips. It will take you a while, hopefully less than me, for you to recognize individual words in your reading. The words don't stand out to me either but I believe it will come to you. I think this mainly comes from the fact that Thai words are written without spaces. Sometimes it is difficult to see where one word ends and another begins or which part of a string of letters goes together in Thai polysyllabic words.

Look what happens when we do that to an English sentence and remove capital letters to boot:

ihavebeenlearningthaiformanyyears

It takes a bit of work to separate the words. Could be worse -- Thai could be a character-based language like Chinese. Be thankful that it is alphabetic and generally phonetic.

I wish you the best of luck; keep on trucking.

[Jay_Jay]

One thing that might help is to teach yourself to touch type in Thai. Then, as you learn each word, train your motor skills to type the word. As you do, you start recognising them as syllable blocks - in their vowel frames rather than just a string of consonants and vowels. When I type in Thai my hands fall in syllable blocks rather than letter by letter - similar to playing chords on a guitar.

I have been learning Thai for many years and I still find myself reading out loud or even moving my lips. It will take you a while, hopefully less than me, for you to recognize individual words in your reading. The words don't stand out to me either but I believe it will come to you. I think this mainly comes from the fact that Thai words are written without spaces. Sometimes it is difficult to see where one word ends and another begins or which part of a string of letters goes together in Thai polysyllabic words.

Look what happens when we do that to an English sentence and remove capital letters to boot:

ihavebeenlearningthaiformanyyears

It takes a bit of work to separate the words. Could be worse -- Thai could be a character-based language like Chinese. Be thankful that it is alphabetic and generally phonetic.

I wish you the best of luck; keep on trucking.

[DavidHouston]

Thanks, Jay Jay,

I bought "Typing Express" with a book and CD which instructs for both the Thai and Roman keyboards. The costs was only 190 baht. The CD-key is interesting. Each page of the manual has a key at the top of the page. When you log into the disc, you are asked to type in the keys for three designated pages in the manual. I guess this discourages separating the manual from the disc and, if the disc is illegally copied, so must the manual be as well.

[taxexile]

typing in thai takes me forever , so much so that i avoid it wherever possible.

is there any logic to the placement of the letters on the keyboard ?

[meadish_sweetball]

Yes, there is, at least some.

For example, all the high /s/ letters are on adjacent keys (K and L). The super- and subscript signs (tone markers, vowel shortener, garan) and vowels run through top to bottom of the middle of the keyboard (on keys 6, 7, TYU, GHJ, BNM). As a rule, the most frequently occurring letters do not require pressing SHIFT whereas the letters that are used chiefly in Pali/Sanskrit loan words do require shifting.

There may be more patterns that I haven't noticed.

[khaojao]

wow...thanks guys...i don't feel so frustrated now

i'm using a mac so the typing tutor's not going to work for me

funny i actually thought that learning how to type it out wouldn't have helped coz i'd still be dependant on reading it out letter by letter then forming the word. hmmmm...

for instance i'd read "ler-uuk maa" then go "oh! luuk-maa, child-dog = puppy" instead of just seeing the word and recognising it as "luuk-maa" immediately. i guess i just have to keep looking at those squiggles huh? sigh...

david...u are right about chinese. i studied it for many many years and i still can't get it right sometimes haha...although, there are patterns which u can use to half guess a word when u don't recognise the character (eg. a certain style of squiggle will almost always have the same phonetics, just different tones)

edit : typo

Edited September 14, 2007 by khaojao

[kokesaat]

I struggled with typing the simplest Thai words.....until I played with a free typing program call Thai Typing Tutor....available at http://www.users.bigpond.com/gurce/thai/type/

It's a small download, simple to use.....just start at beginner level. I spent 10-15min/day for about a week and now I do all my lessons/homework on my computer.

[Richard W]

Is there any logic to the placement of the letters on the keyboard ?

There's enough for some Kedmanee Mnemonics. Meadish has given most of the important logic.