Vocabulary From Walen Book 1

[HappyInCM]

I asked at Walen and PM-d macwalen on here to get an electronic list of the words in the 3 books to no avail, so I entered about 300 of the least familiar (to me) words from book 1. Here they are. I proof read them but may have some spelling errors and I also added in my own expansion of some of the words where the spelling is irregular.

I also have the first two becker books in this format if they are of use to anyone else.

I use these on my iphone in StudyArcade and have found it a great way to study when I'm out and about.

walenbook1_v2.txt

[Tod Daniels]

This is a sample of a few pages from the notebooks I made up when I attended mac's school quite a while ago.

I have them for all three of their books as well as 3X5 flashcards of all the words too. (I certainly had too much free time on my hands but was motivated to learn to read as well, and I got good typing practice)

I used BIG thai font to make it easy to read and see the differences in the thai letters.

I purposely didn't use any transcription or transliteration, as I was teaching myself to read at the time.

(There could indeed be misspellings in mine as well)

Dunno what mac will think of you or myself posting his vocab on here though, but I'm sure we'll find out soon

Walen_Vocab_Sample.doc

[HappyInCM]

This is a sample of a few pages from the notebooks I made up when I attended mac's school quite a while ago.

I purposely didn't use any transcription or transliteration, as I was teaching myself to read at the time.

(There could indeed be misspellings in mine as well)

Dunno what mac will think of you or myself posting his vocab on here though, but I'm sure we'll find out soon

If you have all of them could be very useful to a lot of people. I just couldn't be bothered to do all of them especially after having done all of them for the first 2 becker books

I didn't use transliteration either, but expanded some words using thai - e.g., กรกฎาคม july (กะ-รก-กะ-ฎา-คม).

I would hope mac's reaction would be positive as its good for his students and should therefore be good for him I would hope he wants serious as well as less than serious students.

[DavidHouston]

Thank you, Todd,

Question for you: What is the difference between "แท่ง counting unit for pencils" and "แท่ง classifier for pencils"?

This is a sample of a few pages from the notebooks I made up when I attended mac's school quite a while ago.

I have them for all three of their books as well as 3X5 flashcards of all the words too. (I certainly had too much free time on my hands but was motivated to learn to read as well, and I got good typing practice)

I used BIG thai font to make it easy to read and see the differences in the thai letters.

I purposely didn't use any transcription or transliteration, as I was teaching myself to read at the time.

(There could indeed be misspellings in mine as well)

Dunno what mac will think of you or myself posting his vocab on here though, but I'm sure we'll find out soon

[Rikker]

David, clearly they're the same thing.

[Somtamnication]

For newbie learners, the transliterations are a god send. After I speak it, I show off to my wife, who then ties me up, beats me and then corrects me.

Seriously, transliteration does help.

[HappyInCM]

For newbie learners, the transliterations are a god send. After I speak it, I show off to my wife, who then ties me up, beats me and then corrects me.

Seriously, transliteration does help.

I agree. They should provide books with and without the transliteration. With for the beginners and advanced readers and without for intermediate readers like me - although I get more information out of reading the Thai, my eye is naturally drawn to the roman letters, so for example, in all my becker books, I have whited out all the transliteration.

[Tod Daniels]

Question for you: What is the difference between "แท่ง counting unit for pencils" and "แท่ง classifier for pencils"?

I copied the vocabulary directly out of mac's books. Sometimes the same word is introduced with a slightly different meaning, and as I just followed word by word, I didn't delete the repeats.

In resposne to "eljefe2" (and others)

I have found once you can read thai (even a little) the thai way of pronouncing words seems to get someone 'closer to the mark' on how a multi-sylable word is said in regards to vowel sound, vowel length, ending consonants, etc. Using the engrish-transliteration of a thai word given the disparity in accents the way english is spoken has always been a tough row to hoe for me.

I will use the first 6 thai months as an example with the RID's pronunciation;

มกราคม : มะ-กะ-รา-คม; มก-กะ-รา-คม

กุมภาพันธ์ : กุม-พา-พัน

มีนาคม : มี-นา-คม

เมษายน : เม-สา-ยน

พฤษภาคม : พฺรึด-สะ-พา-คม

มิถุนายน : มิ-ถุ-นา-ยน

This is the same pronunciation Benjawan Becker uses when introducing vocabulary in her Thai for Advanced Readers, and I have found it very valuable.

It's good on the website thai-language dot com to go into "site settings" and under 'content' tick the RID (Royal Institute - 1982) box as it shows the above mentioned pronunciation, as well as word origin and definition in thai of words, even some words that Glenn doesn't have an english definition come up with the RID's info.

Also for the best 'bang-4-the-baht' make sure you tick the boxes to enable both “racy content" and "gay content", as you get a lot more contemporary slang with those boxes checked.

Again, once you can read, ticking the “click to show” box under the heading "Romanization and Phonemic Thai" will let you work out how you think a word is pronounced BEFORE seeing the phonemic transcription forcing you to try to increase your reading thai skills.

If anyone's interested;

I've got the first 3 "Speak Like A Thai" series from Benjawan Becker "Contemporary Thai Expressions", "Thai Slang and Idioms" and "Thai Proverbs and Sayings" in Word doc format like I did the Walen stuff; including the example sentences used in the little books which come with the C/D's.

Edited February 13, 2010 by tod-daniels

[desi]

If anyone's interested;

I've got the first 3 "Speak Like A Thai" series from Benjawan Becker "Contemporary Thai Expressions", "Thai Slang and Idioms" and "Thai Proverbs and Sayings" in Word doc format like I did the Walen stuff; including the example sentences used in the little books which come with the C/D's.

Tod, I am very interested.

On and off I've been working on a vocabulary listing from the top Thai courses/resources: Assimil, AUA, BYKI, Fundamentals of Thai Language, MacFarland, Pimsleurs, Teach Yourself Thai, thai-language.com, Thai Language and Culture for Beginners, Thai for Beginners/intermediate, the ranking list Rikker posted awhile back, etc.

When finished, I will throw everything together to see which words come out on the top 300/500/1000/2000. The idea is that they should be pretty representative of the top Thai words one should know.

Then I plan on bugging Rikker (he's already agreed) and others to get opinions.

There might be easier way of doing it... but I was curious to see what words each course/resource deemed important enough to learn. So if you have a good selection typed in Thai script, I'm interested.

[Ericx25]

Please contribute to the already existing lists of thai vocabulary.

Once you've installed Anki (free software) you will have access to FREE lists of thai vocabulary. So with Anki, every can contribute to the same lists.

I personally use Voca (free as well) I have lists (with sound) for the two first books of miss Becker.

When I have time, I will make a Voca list (with sound) from the book+2 CD "Thai for lovers"

I would be great if we could share lists with sound.

Eric

Edited February 14, 2010 by Rikker
Removed personal website URL per forum rules.

[HappyInCM]

Please contribute to the already existing lists of thai vocabulary.

Once you've installed Anki (free software) you will have access to FREE lists of thai vocabulary. So with Anki, every can contribute to the same lists.

I personally use Voca (free as well) I have lists (with sound) for the two first books of miss Becker.

When I have time, I will make a Voca list (with sound) from the book+2 CD "Thai for lovers"

I would be great if we could share lists with sound.

Eric

That's a good idea and I have uploaded Walen to Anki, however, there's value to the "raw" format as it can be uploaded to many different software packages and not locked into Anki's format.

Could you upload your becker 1 and 2 stuff here or it only in Voca's format - even so, where can I get it?

Edited February 14, 2010 by Rikker

[smint]

I have some, including page numbers which I did while studying some time ago... This is in an excel format, perhaps useful:

Thai_words_list.xls

Edited February 14, 2010 by smint

[Ericx25]

That's a good idea and I have uploaded Walen to Anki, however, there's value to the "raw" format as it can be uploaded to many different software packages and not locked into Anki's format.

Could you upload your becker 1 and 2 stuff here or it only in Voca's format - even so, where can I get it?

Thanks Peter for sharing your list.

The lists I have are indeed in the Voca format. If you export them to "raw" format (csv) you won't get the sound part of it...

The "Thai for advanced readers" does not contain sounds. You can download them all here : Share your lists !

Please use this folder to share your updates to these lists or any other lists you may have in the future.

Eric

Edited February 14, 2010 by Ericx25

[smint]

Hi Eric, what is the .wdl format that you have shared, which app could we use to open it? Any apps for mac users?

[Ericx25]

Hi Eric, what is the .wdl format that you have shared, which app could we use to open it? Any apps for mac users?

Unfortunately VOCA only runs on Windows.

I am a mac user myself and the only reason why I use FUSION to emulate XP on my macbook is because I like this VOCA program so much !

I never use the "flash cards" feature, I just browse the words and I play the sound files until I can sing the words in tune.

Edited February 14, 2010 by Ericx25

[smint]

Okay, thanks, hoping to download it now. I can run windows stuff too so I suppose no problem.. hopefully!

[RickBradford]

I'm very interested in an effort to create a good 3000/5000+ word list.

I currently have 800-odd (ranging from not-quite beginner to advanced) which I use in a memory game I am developing

I have tried a number of sources, but finding something simple with in a text format of: English=Thai, is harder than it looks.

I hope to have my list up to 1200 words in the reasonably near future -- its drawback being that as it is used in a multiple-choice game, I only supply one meaning for each word. still, it might serve as a useful additional resource.

[desi]

I'm very interested in an effort to create a good 3000/5000+ word list.

I currently have 800-odd (ranging from not-quite beginner to advanced) which I use in a memory game I am developing

Rick, what criteria did you use (are you using) for your vocabulary list?

[RickBradford]

Very much a hodge-podge.

I didn't start this project until I'd been learning Thai for a few months, and from there on I added in words I didn't already know.

So the word list lacks the real beginner basics: please/thankyou, numbers, and/but/if/or, although it has many common verbs and nouns.

More recently, I've started to get more systematic about it and have added various special areas - animals, months/days, automotive, body parts, colours, professions, (Thai for ornithologist, anyone?) clothing, cooking, electrical, family and so on.

If you want the list to look at, let me know and I'll send it over.