Are There Mnemonics For Learning The Thai Script?

[Singkong]

(I've also posted this question on eslcafe.com)

Does anyone know any mnemonic techniques for learning the Thai script? Or anything at all that makes it easier to learn to read and/or write Thai?

I have have a good memory, but learning the Thai script without some kind of shortcut looks very daunting. I've heard that there are useful mnemonic techniques for learning the Japanese scripts (Katakana & Hiragana) in a book by Michael Rowley. I hope the same is true of Thai, whether it's on a website or in a book, or someone here has worked out there own system.

Firefoxx's post from 2004 (quoted below) looks very useful, but I gather this is just for modern Thai fonts.

And on a related topic... I'm also working on my own mnemonic system of learning Thai vocab, including tones, (but without the Thai script) and will post that soon. Does anyone know of any good mnemonic systems for vocab + tones, in case I'm reinventing the wheel? I've found two sites, which are handy but don't cover the tones:

http://web.singnet.com.sg/~tonym/thailang.html which lists about 80 words with similar English words.

also http://www.unforgettablelanguages.com/frames_a26.html which offers a course of 200 words for US$10.

Thanks!

Some modern Thai fonts use letters taken directly from the English alphabet.  Common examples are :

s=ร

n=ท

u=น

backward u=ม

backward c=อ

j=ง

i=เ

w=พ

U=บ

upside-down U=ก

่ีWhat you usually see is that the little "head" has been chopped off and strokes simplified.  Like with any font, you'll get used to it if you see it often enough.

(Edit to cut out the extra vowels.)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Edward B]

I'm no expert on mnenomics (I'm not even sure I spelt that correctly). I've got a feeling most people use their own system. For me I just learnt the alphabet by practicing every day, day in day out. Trust me, there are no real shortcuts in life.

Learn the 'thingies' that go with each letter. Gor Gai - the chicken is the first (ก). Hey, if you look at it long enough it starts to look like one. Khor Khai - the egg (ข), well, use your imagination. Khor Khuat - the bottle (ฃ), well, close enough, but this letter is hardly ever used (if at all). Then there's the buffalo, Khor Khwai (ค). Think of a buffalo's behind. Voila. You'll discover that every letter either has it's own thingy that starts with the same letter, or, if two words, the second word starts with that letter.

When you nearly mastered it, then you can learn the alphabet song. ก เอ๋ย ก ไก่ ข ไข่ในเล้า ฃ ฃวดของเรา.....

[The_Moog]

The alphabet song is the way nearly every Thai toddler memorises it.

Hey if a Thai toddler can learn it - so can we !

...not sure how they do the vowels - they're killers.

[buadhai]

It's actually impossible to learn the Thai script unless you have microscopic vision and a photographic memory. I've been trying for years and have never gotten past Yah Ying....

Why does Mr. Gor Gai have to appear, in various disguises, in so many characters? Twist his leg just a bit, or turn his craw from left to right and the pronunciation totally changes.

Same with Mr. Bottle. What a magician! The tiniest change turns him into an elephant and then a chain!

And, what about Ms. Woman? How come she gets a special appendage disguised as a vowel?

(Don't get me started on vowels. And, as for tones....)

Geez. I learned all 100+ characters of the Japanese syllabery in one afternoon on a train. Why so easy? Because they're all completely different. No chance of mistaking one for the other.

I'm years in to attempts to learn Thai (including the script) and have about a 100% failure rate in my attempts to communicate.

It's either really hard, or I'm really stupid.

I'm confident it's the latter.

Hey if a Thai toddler can learn it - so can we !

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!

[Abandon]

It's actually impossible to learn the Thai script unless you have microscopic vision and a photographic memory. I've been trying for years and have never gotten past Yah Ying....

Why does Mr. Gor Gai have to appear, in various disguises, in so many characters? Twist his leg just a bit, or turn his craw from left to right and the pronunciation totally changes.

Same with Mr. Bottle. What a magician! The tiniest change turns him into an elephant and then a chain!

And, what about Ms. Woman? How come she gets a special appendage disguised as a vowel?

(Don't get me started on vowels. And, as for tones....)

Geez. I learned all 100+ characters of the Japanese syllabery in one afternoon on a train. Why so easy? Because they're all completely different. No chance of mistaking one for the other.

I'm years in to attempts to learn Thai (including the script) and have about a 100% failure rate in my attempts to communicate.

It's either really hard, or I'm really stupid.

I'm confident it's the latter.

well you are getting on a bit now MG. They say it gets harder as you get older ... is that right?

still

[meadish_sweetball]

Not giving up, taking the time and doing it in a formal learning situation are my best bets for anybody who has not succeeded in learning the Thai alphabet himself. Learning the letters as groups based on their importance and function in the language is how I did it, this is the AUA approach - this way you learn the consonants that behave in similar ways and remember them as groups.

If you learn the alphabet first, you may fail to see the phonetic connections they have with tone rules and be discouraged.

Get the pictures that go with each consonant, such pictures are readily available in small books from any bookshop in Thailand, or as wall posters (often sold by the road, for example on Rachadamnoen Rd. in Bangkok, or in shopping centers such as Kaat Suan Kaeow in Chiang Mai).

I don't think you are stupid mwnewman, but you are probably not realizing or managing to adjust to what information is important to convey when you speak Thai. Most farang that fail to communicate in Thai do not realize that they have to learn to speak with the tongue and lips in many new and unusual positions when speaking Thai. Trying to substitute sounds in their native language for Thai sounds doesnt work.

Also, many foreigners tend to use the same stress and intonation patterns on Thai as when they speak their mother tongue. This interferes with the Thai tone system that needs a "drone" quality to be pronounced according to theory. Of course, in reality, intonation and stress do exist in spoken Thai, but they 1.) play a secondary role to the tones when determining the meaning of an utterance. 2.) Differ from Indo-European intonation patterns to a large degree.

One way to get out of your native language intonation habits is to try to *entirely* devoid your voice of any feelings when you speak. Keep your voice volume as well as your quality of speech level, and concentrate ONLY on getting the tones correct. This way you will achieve more success. The problem is that many people think it is stressful to speak a foreign language in the beginning (fear of mispronouncing, being misunderstood, etc...) these blocks will increase our stress level and also increase the likelihood that we let intonation interfere...

Some people find their language skills increase when they drink - I think the reduced stress level when drinking contributes to this (apart from the obvious reason that we always think more highly of ourselves after a few brewskis).

This post wandered off topic, but maybe somebody will find it useful info anyway.

.........................

Just to make sure everyone understands what Firefoxxx was saying in his post correctly, please note that the *sound values* of

s and ร

n and ท

u and น

backward u and ม

backward c and อ

j and ง

i and เ

w and พ

U and บ

upside-down U and ก

are ENTIRELY different. The similarity is entirely in the shapes... and using the shapes of stylized letters as mnemonics may prove to be a false friend, because you may connect the letter to the wrong sound.

You should learn the "standard" Thai font first, and then go on to learn the deviations.

Edited May 25, 2005 by meadish_sweetball

[The_Moog]

over-intellectualization !?

Guilty !

....Thai kids are incapable of such a feat...they just learn the song

Buy the 79 baht VCD of the alphabet with the singing cartoon animals. I bought it for baby and I.

[Abandon]

now I stopped chuckling ...

meadish is right about the kids books - available in pretty much any book shop near a school. That's how I did it - kept filling out all the lines i.e. writing the characters rather than just look at them.

Learning Euro languages you can pick up words, bit by bit, and place them in fairly familiar verb structures. You can't with Thai - you have to jump in with both feet, to give you a foundation to build on. Fundamentals of the Thai language is a good book for that.

Also - with my left brain way of thinking I had to have a symbol to go with each new sound - so I had to learn the alphabet first. After the kids books I wrote them out on blank name cards and it took 6 days to have them all off-by-heart.

[buadhai]

  well you are getting on a bit now MG. They say it gets harder as you get older ... is that right?

still 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Some things don't get harder and some things do. Fortunately, there is medication for the former....

[meadish_sweetball]

over-intellectualization !? 

Guilty !

....Thai kids are incapable of such a feat...they just learn the song

Buy the 79 baht VCD of the alphabet with the singing cartoon animals. I bought it for baby and I.

Remember there is a great difference between how a child learns and how an adult learns. An adult has the ability to reflect over his learning process and his actions. He also has finished cognitive models (his brain "wiring") which have become automated to a certain degree. These models include the "learning" model. Typically, we develop our own unique system of learning around the age of 3-5. During this time it is very common that a child becomes an expert at catecorizing something unexpected, such as car brands, African animals or whatever else it may be. What is happening inside the child is that he/she has chosen a group of objects to learn to generalize from.

If you try to explain to a child how to learn something, chances are very great he/she loses interest, because your reasoning only serves to confuse the kid. Most kids learn by imitation, or prefer to use their own models of learning. They can start to respond to formal learning around the age of 5-7.

A child always learns his native language before he/she goes on to learn the writing system. This means that the grammar and pronunciation, and other distinctive features (such as tone rules in the case of Thai), are already in place when the kid learns the alphabet. Nobody needs to tell a Thai child of 6 years old who has grown up surrounded by Thai speakers, what tone "kor kai" has. The kid already knows. When a farang learns, he is usually using some kind of phonetic transcription in Roman letters, which, because of the way his "reading process" is wired, is very likely to interfere with his pronunciation.

We may think the child "just learns the song" - but it is a considerable feat if you really try to grasp what mental processes the child has developed to do so...

The adult has to fight ingrained habits of language when learning a new one. Rewiring old structures often seems to be more difficult, than for the child to create a totally new structure in the brain.

Over-intellectualization? Most definitely, but hopefully someone thinks it's interesting.

[buadhai]

meadish is right about the kids books - available in pretty much any book shop near a school. That's how I did it - kept filling out all the lines i.e. writing the characters rather than just look at them.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I tried this. Got at kid's work book. Learned one new character each day. Traced it out many times then did them freehand dozens of times. Said the character name out loud for each writing to get the left and right brains talking. Then moved to a blank notebook where I wrote out to fill a page all the characters I'd learned to date. Even got complimented on my nice Thai handwriting.

But, once I got to Ya Ying all learning stopped. Couldn't remember any more. Poor old brain just couldn't cram any more in there. Now, everything I learned up to that point is long gone....

Meadish, I'm sure you're right about why no one understands my Thai. I don't know how to convey the important information. But, beyond that, I simply cannot hear the differences that are distinctive features in Thai but not English and therefore cannot reproduce them. For example, I know there is, in Thai, an important difference between a voiced and non-voiced initial unaspirated interlabial stop. But, I can neither hear no reproduce that difference. Nor can I tell the difference between the gai that means chicken and the kai that means egg and kai that means fever and the kai that is really krai with the "r" dropped. And, I pronounce the Thai for "9" so poorly that I'm sure there are many Thai's who wonder how that Farang got a phone number that ends with "rice" or "white" or "old" or whatever it is they think I've said.

The other day my brother-in-law was getting in the car about to go somewhere. I tried to ask him: "bpai nai". I'm sure I said it more like "bai nai". In any even, he had no idea what I had said. I later asked my GF about it and she agreed that the way I pronounced it was too bad for any Thai to understand. I then asked her if she were about to get in the car and a foreign guest asked her "go you veah", wouldn't you understand that they were making an inquiry as to your proximate destination? She said, sure, but he should say, "Where are you going?" (duh!) So, my GF can use context and analytical thinking to decipher poorly formed English, but not poorly formed Thai. (We've been together over a year and she understands none of my Thai. We were in a department store looking for running shoes for me. I told her my size was "eleven" in Thai. Fifteen minutes later she and the clerk returned to report that the store had no size 16 running shoes.....)

After years of failure I've finally thrown in the towel and decided I'm better off learning how to live here without knowing the language then I would be wasting vast quantities of time trying to do something that, for me, seem unattainable.

YMMV

[Abandon]

I can't hear the tones, or the differences between the p and pb or t and dt. After 9 years with fairly good Thai. But using little graphs I can reproduce the sounds correctly so that Thai's understand clearly.

Besides, much of being understood is confidence and saying the kind of things that Thai's expect to hear. We topiced this recently somewhere....

[Singkong]

Thanks everyone, this is great. It's all interesting. Keep the suggestions coming.

Edward B I love the buffalo's behind, etc - I can actually pick those letters out now. I'll pick up those books and posters too... I'm feeling more confident now.

Trust me, there are no real shortcuts in life.

I think there are great shortcuts in language learning, whether it's the buffalo's bum, or making a scene in my mind involving a frog wearing a cop's hat. Most people looked at the way I learnt Indonesian, and thought I was crazy. But it worked and I outstripped them - and it was the techniques that did it, the little visualizations and bizarre connections I made between words, not sheer brain power or hard work.

And, I pronounce the Thai for "9" so poorly that I'm sure there are many Thai's who wonder how that Farang got a phone number that ends with "rice" or "white" or "old" or whatever it is they think I've said.

After years of failure I've finally thrown in the towel and decided I'm better off learning how to live here without knowing the language then I would be wasting vast quantities of time trying to do something that, for me, seem unattainable.

Major tangent here...

Well, if it's any comfort, some people do well without the language. Here's my brother's rules for being popular in a cross-cultural setting, based on his experiences in Thailand, Indonesia and elsewhere:

* Don't learn the language

* Bulls**t a lot

* Learn the cultural taboos

* Break the taboos

When I was living with an Indonesian family, my first time out of Australia, he swung by to visit. He did all the above... and was very popular. Mind you, I was acting as his translator, but they didn't need a translator when he pointed at me and said "He Christian! No good!" and then pointed at himself and said "I Islam." When they suggested he didn't need to go to a hotel but could share my bed, he said "No, later I will get pregnant" and used his hands to suggest a swollen tummy. He offered cigarettes to the daughters in the family, and when one was looking for a chair he offered his knee. They were talking and laughing about it for many weeks. But I suspect that someone without the same tact and without that hint of a cheeky grin might cause offence... I suppose the fact the everyone was laughing was a good indication that he could keep going without getting lynched or stoned.

I love learning languages, but on the other hand my brother travels the world speaking only English (apart from a half-dozen words) and using hand gestures (what Indonesians call "Bahasa Tarzan"). And he probably makes a bigger impression than me. Mind you, problems could arise - having a romantic interest in someone with whom you don't have a common language and who has an entirely different cultural background is a huge problem for some farang, but your GF speaks English by the sound of it...

But I digress.

Singkong

[Valjean]

I started my memorizing the alphabet is groups of four in the traditional order. (comment above I think in the tone groups might have been better but the software I had didn't do it this way) Then I’d group the groups of four until I could get from beginning to end. The Thai names for the letters helped create some associations like below but mostly it was brute force for me. I used the Thai for Beginners software and used their drills and tests over and over until I could get it 100% right. Still drill on the vowels + consonants to try to keep at 100%. I made a CD of both and listen and repeat when driving in my car while I have a paper with them printed very big in front of me so I can see the road and glance down at a letter. Sometimes I listen then repeat other times I say the letter ahead of the recording, this requires more thinking but you hear afterwards to improve. I do this over, and over and over and over until now I tend to not have any associations, I just know the letters. Once I accepted that it was going to take hours of drill I quit going crazy trying to make up shortcuts or associate with English. I agree with one comment above that comparing to English didn’t help me and just confuses.

I did use little tricks like this:

น is mouse, ม is horse. Horse is big, mouse small, opposites as is the loop on the bottom

ผ, ฝ, พ, ฟ are a series to learn with ฬ for added effect but it is like a Kite flying

ศ, ษ, ส, ซ these are all S sounds and have a little something curling up to the right. There are three others that do this but at least this is a group.

ภ Sailboat, the sail is out ถ Sack – the sail is in the sack

ฉ Cymbals looks like the little hand cymbals

[Richard W]

When you come to learn the tone classes, the chart at the Alternative Presentation of the Consonants will be very helpful. The patterns there turned learning them from a struggle to a piece of cake.

For the tone rules, there are three tips:

• You don't get a low tone with a low class consonant, and you don't get a high tone with a high class consonant.
  
• A middle consonant is like a high consonant except in the commonest case - live syllable with no tone mark!
  
• Dead syllables are almost the same as mai ek, except that a short vowel is not given long enough to fall.
  

Most of the vowels aren't too bad. Sara i, ii, ue and uee are all modifications of sara i (อิ). Sara u (อุ) and sara uu (อู) are the ones that go below, and the long one has a longer tail, which bends up. The following vowel marks are all variations on /a/. The combination เอา looks odd - 'ea' = /au/! I found it easy because I know the historical association English beam = German baum (also head ~ haupt).

Sara a (ะ) is a shortening mark that precludes a final consonant - that fact may help with some of the compound symbols. (I would argue that it actually denotes a final glottal stop, but if that statement doesn't help, forget it.) It may not hurt to think of mai hanakat /a/ (อั) and maitaikhu (อ็) as reduced forms of it - I'm not sure whether that's historically accurate.

[The_Moog]

When you come to learn the tone classes, the chart at the Alternative Presentation of the Consonants will be very helpful. The patterns there turned learning them from a struggle to a piece of cakeFor the tone rules, there are three tips:

    * You don't get a low tone with a low class consonant, and you don't get a high tone with a high class consonant.

    * A middle consonant is like a high consonant except in the commonest case - live syllable with no tone mark!

    * Dead syllables are almost the same as mai ek, except that a short vowel is not given long enough to fall.

Most of the vowels aren't too bad. Sara i, ii, ue and uee are all modifications of sara i (อิ). Sara u (อุ) and sara uu (อู) are the ones that go below, and the long one has a longer tail, which bends up. The following vowel marks are all variations on /a/. The combination เอา looks odd - 'ea' = /au/! I found it easy because I know the historical association English beam = German baum (also head ~ haupt).

Sara a (ะ) is a shortening mark that precludes a final consonant - that fact may help with some of the compound symbols. (I would argue that it actually denotes a final glottal stop, but if that statement doesn't help, forget it.) It may not hurt to think of mai hanakat /a/ (อั) and maitaikhu (อ็) as reduced forms of it - I'm not sure whether that's historically accurate.

....Or sing along to the alphabet song (with cartoon animals)