Advice Please On Learning Software

[DarloKnight]

I would like some advice before spending over £100 on Rosetta Stone learning Thai software. I would love to learn the language and also try and get my 10 year old to learn it. Can anyone advice me if this is the best learning device.

Many thanks

[kriswillems]

I have tried Rosetta stone for Japanese and Thai. I don't like both (although the Japanse version is a bit better). If you're planning to learn to read Thai Rosetta stone will not help you. The audio is compressed to a very low rate bitrate, so the audio quality is not good enough to study Thai. The voice recognition is a toy that doesn't word. There's no phonetic script. This together with the fact that the CD doesn't teach you to read Thai, will make it not very useful.

Better start with a beginners book and CDs like "Thai for beginners" of BP Becker or "Thai, a complete course for beginners" from David Smyth. I think the latter is even a bit better, but David Smyth has no books for intermediate and advanced learners.

The best way to study Thai is to follow courses with a Thai person. Is the a Thai temple were you live? That's always a good place to start looking.

[DarloKnight]

I have tried Rosetta stone for Japanese and Thai. I don't like both (although the Japanse version is a bit better). If you're planning to learn to read Thai Rosetta stone will not help you. The audio is compressed to a very low rate bitrate, so the audio quality is not good enough to study Thai. The voice recognition is a toy that doesn't word. There's no phonetic script. This together with the fact that the CD doesn't teach you to read Thai, will make it not very useful.

Better start with a beginners book and CDs like "Thai for beginners" of BP Becker or "Thai, a complete course for beginners" from David Smyth. I think the latter is even a bit better, but David Smyth has no books for intermediate and advanced learners.

The best way to study Thai is to follow courses with a Thai person. Is the a Thai temple were you live? That's always a good place to start looking.

Thanks for the information I will look for the above on the internet.

I don't live in Thailand, I live in the UK so no temples and don't know any Thai people who live in my area (wish I did).

[scottyd]

I would recommend Pimsleurs Thai, it is an all audio course, so you will be able to speak, but not read or write.

If you want to read and write, you can order "Teach yourself Thai" from WH Smiths, RRP£30, but I think they sell it for £20, thats how much I got it for. I bought it just so I could learn to read/write and it is excellent also, but it also comes with an audio cd so you can listen and practice speaking, although I cannot comment on that because I have not tried it!

edit: where abouts in the UK do you live?

Edited February 20, 2009 by scottyd

[DarloKnight]

I would recommend Pimsleurs Thai, it is an all audio course, so you will be able to speak, but not read or write.

If you want to read and write, you can order "Teach yourself Thai" from WH Smiths, RRP£30, but I think they sell it for £20, thats how much I got it for. I bought it just so I could learn to read/write and it is excellent also, but it also comes with an audio cd so you can listen and practice speaking, although I cannot comment on that because I have not tried it!

edit: where abouts in the UK do you live?

Hi thanks for the info will look into that, I live in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Just come back from Thailand our 4th visit and would have loved to have been able to speak Thai as we stayed in a small Thai hotel this time and the staff were great espcially with my daughter and they tried to teach us some of the language and my daughter loved it.

[Baannok]

I tried Rosetta Stone when I was a complete beginner and found it absolutely useless.

[DC1066]

I use Rosetta Stone and find it ok, but not the complete answer the marketing tells you it is.

A lot of it is intuitive which is good for progressing, but for the times you get stuck and can't make the link it is very difficult.

Where it got me was with the use of classifiers. I couldn't see the logic in:

dtua = people

kan = cars

lam = planes

When you get stuck it is frustrating having nowhere to go.

For reading and writing I use Thai for Beginners and I also picked up some very simple books from a Thai market used to teach Thai kids the alphabet and basic grammer.