Thai Alphabet Soundboard

[Baannok]

Dear language buffs

As I'm studying Thai on my own in my spare time, one big obstacle is pronounciation. There is simply nobody around to ask when I'm unsure of how to pronounce something. There are sound & movie clips of the Thai alphabet on the 'net (some even posted here) but I don't find that good enough. If I'm looking for a certain character, I need to fast forward or rewind through the file which is very tedious. So I came up with the idea of creating a Thai Alphabet Soundboard.

I'm of course aware of that this is not a unique idea and somebody has probably done it before! However, I did not get any results after a quick google, so perhaps this will be the first one. Regardless of whether it's been done before or not, I will go ahead and create this soundboard for two reasons: 1. I need it, 2. Just by doing it will improve my understanding of the Thai alphabet.

Specs

Please see mockup. It's just to give you an idea, so I have repeated the first four consonants instead of typing the whole alphabet. It's very simple. You have all the characters and vowels infront of you. If you click on one, you'll hear how it's pronounced. It will be created with Flash, so anyone with an internet connection and Flash Player can download and use it.

For each consonant, I will have:

1. The consonant itself

2. The word associated with it

3. The initial and final pronounciation*

4. Color coded according to class (high = red, middle = yellow**, low = blue)

*Should I include middle too?

**I will probably change this to green

There won't be any pictures simply because I don't have any. I don't want to "borrow" any from existing Thai alphabet charts either. Perhaps there will be pictures in a future version if I can get hold of free ones.

There won't be any written phonetics like "kor kai" under ก ไก่ because it defeats the whole purpose of the soundboard. And transcribing Thai to English is silly anyway.

Sound

I will get a Thai friend to do the voice work for me. I will of course make sure everything is pronounced very clearly with a minimum of background noise.

-OR-

If someone has a bit of time on their hands and is willing to help out with the audio, please do Do note that there is no money involved in this and I reserve the right to not use your work if I deem the quality to be too poor. If I do use your work, you will be given full credit of course.

Why am I posting this?

I want to hear some feedback on this. My Thai is still very poor and I haven't mastered the alphabet yet. Please let me know if there are any features or changes I can make to this.

Thanks for reading!

[Optimodo]

sounds like a very good idea,

one suggestion if you have the time and people is to possibly get maybe at least 2 male 2 female voices instead of just one voice. And you never know if it takes off you can always put together a nice little learn thai website few adds here and there and you got a nice little income! Thai translation, tutorials the works!

Mike

[Baannok]

Thanks Mike

Yes, I forgot to add that I do plan to have male and female voices. There will be a button somewhere where the user can switch between the different voices. Not sure about having more than one of each gender though. I'll be happy if I can get just one voice to begin with

No, I'm not interested in putting together a website or making any money of this as there are plenty of them around already. As I wrote, I'm doing this mainly for myself. If somebody else finds this useful, I consider it as a bonus

[mauGR1]

Wow,Baannok,i think your idea is great!It is true the bigger hurdle for us learning Thai is the tone;if i had that sounding board i could click it until the tones stick in my old brain!I think a female voice could be enough,after all the majority of foreign residents must be males.

[eric67]

If you mean something like this: Thai Alphabet , then yes, it's already been done.

Doesn't mean that there isn't room for improvement though

[Guest Bellini]

...Just by doing it will improve my understanding of the Thai alphabet...

You are absolutely right. This is an excellent way to memorise things.

[Baannok]

eric67: Yup, that is exactly what I'm going to do, although my version will be a bit more detailed, as I've written in the first post. Thanks for the link, haven't seen that before!

Progress

Please note that the screenshot has been resized, so the text isn't really that small.

Progress has been very slow because of a few problems. My copy of Flash was terribly broken and I had some health issues to take care of. I've also got a lot of work to do suddenly, which is typical just when I want to work on this instead.

Things done:

- First 10 consonants working 100% with sound.

- Sexy female voice for all consonants. Some consonants needs to be re-recorded because of background noise. Other than that, I'm quite happy with them.

[khaowong1]

Dear language buffs

As I'm studying Thai on my own in my spare time, one big obstacle is pronounciation. There is simply nobody around to ask when I'm unsure of how to pronounce something. There are sound & movie clips of the Thai alphabet on the 'net (some even posted here) but I don't find that good enough. If I'm looking for a certain character, I need to fast forward or rewind through the file which is very tedious. So I came up with the idea of creating a Thai Alphabet Soundboard.

I'm of course aware of that this is not a unique idea and somebody has probably done it before! However, I did not get any results after a quick google, so perhaps this will be the first one. Regardless of whether it's been done before or not, I will go ahead and create this soundboard for two reasons: 1. I need it, 2. Just by doing it will improve my understanding of the Thai alphabet.

Specs

Please see mockup. It's just to give you an idea, so I have repeated the first four consonants instead of typing the whole alphabet. It's very simple. You have all the characters and vowels infront of you. If you click on one, you'll hear how it's pronounced. It will be created with Flash, so anyone with an internet connection and Flash Player can download and use it.

For each consonant, I will have:

1. The consonant itself

2. The word associated with it

3. The initial and final pronounciation*

4. Color coded according to class (high = red, middle = yellow**, low = blue)

*Should I include middle too?

**I will probably change this to green

There won't be any pictures simply because I don't have any. I don't want to "borrow" any from existing Thai alphabet charts either. Perhaps there will be pictures in a future version if I can get hold of free ones.

There won't be any written phonetics like "kor kai" under ก ไก่ because it defeats the whole purpose of the soundboard. And transcribing Thai to English is silly anyway.

Sound

I will get a Thai friend to do the voice work for me. I will of course make sure everything is pronounced very clearly with a minimum of background noise.

-OR-

If someone has a bit of time on their hands and is willing to help out with the audio, please do Do note that there is no money involved in this and I reserve the right to not use your work if I deem the quality to be too poor. If I do use your work, you will be given full credit of course.

Why am I posting this?

I want to hear some feedback on this. My Thai is still very poor and I haven't mastered the alphabet yet. Please let me know if there are any features or changes I can make to this.

Thanks for reading!

I personally think this is a great idea.. I have been here for three years, and can get by speaking, but can't read a character and would really like to... it's just I am not sure how the characters sound.. so this makes sense to me...

[Baannok]

Thai Alphabet Soundboard v0.9

Ok, the consonants are now in a presentable state (v0.9). Click the link above to see it. I'm hoping the more experienced members here can have a look through it and see if there are any mistakes somewhere. After a few fixes it can be ready to become v1.0!

Known issues:

- Some of the audio has background noise (thank you, noisy neighbors). Will re-record later.

- ฑ is only pronounced as "to mon-to" but I've been told it should be "to nang mon-to". Will re-record later.

- Mouse cursor is incorrect on Help and About pages. This is because of my limited knowledge of Flash. If a Flash expert is reading this, please send me a pm.

- Links in About page are a bit broken. Will be fixed.

Enjoy

Edit: Is it not possible to edit the first post?

Edited May 4, 2009 by Baannok

[kriswillems]

Looks really good!

I found 3 mistakes. Here the correction:

ผึ้ง พาน หีบ

To me it doesn't sounds like the speaker pronounces ฮูก with a clear falling tone. The other sound files sound are very clear.

Edited May 4, 2009 by kriswillems

[jamiesensei]

Nicely done! I like the use of colour to identify the different consonant classes. The consonants are in Thai alphabetical order right?

[T_Dog]

This just might be the top contribution any Thai Visa member has ever made to those members just learning Thai! Great progress! My only suggestion would be able to elect male or female voice. Thanks BannNok! It helps me and I already speak some Thai.

[ozsamurai]

A wonderful little tool, most miss the ending sounds, that is for sure a useful feature of yours, may I make a suggestion to the next evolution. The Alphabet has been covered a lot by various sites, but not a lot will tackle the vowel sounds, and that will be you next challenge anyway if you are studying, so how about a vowel one?? Then inflection/tone marks.

like

http://www.learningthai.com/vowels.html

[Baannok]

kriswillems: Thanks! I will make the corrections and add you to the thanks list ฮ will be added to the re-record list.

jamiesensei: Yes, they are in order, starting from top left and going right.

T_Dog: Alright, I'll try to add a male voice before going to version 1. Unfortunately I can't think of any male Thai friends with a good voice right now...

ozsamurai: Yes, my plan is to start the Vowel Soundboard once the Consonant Soundboard is completely ready. That is actually the main reason I started this project because I'm having much more trouble with the vowels than the consonants

[Koh Tao Man]

kriswillems: Thanks! I will make the corrections and add you to the thanks list ฮ will be added to the re-record list.

jamiesensei: Yes, they are in order, starting from top left and going right.

T_Dog: Alright, I'll try to add a male voice before going to version 1. Unfortunately I can't think of any male Thai friends with a good voice right now...

ozsamurai: Yes, my plan is to start the Vowel Soundboard once the Consonant Soundboard is completely ready. That is actually the main reason I started this project because I'm having much more trouble with the vowels than the consonants

Hi Baannok,

Excellent learning tool, i'm so looking forward to the vowel soundboard.... as these are the ones i find most difficult to pronounce.

Well done fella

Robin

[Baannok]

Thai Alphabet Soundboard v1.0

Alright, since I won't see the lady who did the voice work for a week or more, I decided to just correct all non-audio stuff and release it as version 1. I don't like to have almost-completed stuff lying around.

Features in upcoming version:

- Male voice

- Maybe some fixes to the female voice

The vowel soundboard should take form this weekend.

[T_Dog]

Really good! Is there any way to denote the ones that are rarely used? Maybe put them in a sub-category?

[Insight]

Excellent, well done!

What would be useful for me is a way to hide the guide at the right, possibly via a checkbox?

(and then what would be really ace is it to remember the setting so the next time it loads you don't get any hints when testing yourself )

[desi]

Dear language buffs

Nicely done! I've added it Learn Thai for FREE at WLT.

What are you using to record sound? I finally went with the Blue Ball.

[Gaccha]

Thai Alphabet Soundboard v1.0

Alright, since I won't see the lady who did the voice work for a week or more, I decided to just correct all non-audio stuff and release it as version 1. I don't like to have almost-completed stuff lying around.

Features in upcoming version:

- Male voice

- Maybe some fixes to the female voice

The vowel soundboard should take form this weekend.

[uPDATE-- apologies if everyone already knows]

The soundboard appears to have been moved here:

http://www.aeylaboratories.com/thai/

The old link is now dead.

The vowel soundboard appears to have never been made. A real shame. What is needed is the cluster soundboard...

All I can do is lose all self-respect, and get down on my hands and knees and lick the boots of Baannok and plead for a cluster sound chart.

Thanks. :jap:

[Gaccha]

Thai Alphabet Soundboard v1.0

Alright, since I won't see the lady who did the voice work for a week or more, I decided to just correct all non-audio stuff and release it as version 1. I don't like to have almost-completed stuff lying around.

Features in upcoming version:

- Male voice

- Maybe some fixes to the female voice

The vowel soundboard should take form this weekend.

[uPDATE-- apologies if everyone already knows]

The soundboard appears to have been moved here:

http://www.aeylaboratories.com/thai/

The old link is now dead.

The vowel soundboard appears to have never been made. A real shame. What is needed is the cluster soundboard...

All I can do is lose all self-respect, and get down on my hands and knees and lick the boots of Baannok and plead for a cluster sound chart.

Thanks. :jap:

At the risk of having a conversation with myself, I am pleased to announce that there is, in fact, a vowel soundboard out there in the Web:

http://www.learningthai.com/vowels.html