I've been looking at some books and dictionaries to help me learn Thai but they seem have been translated into English in different ways.

With some books the spelling varies from book to book but with others they use strange characters.

Do any of these have names and is one type better than another?

As for the one with non English characters is there a resource that explains what they are and how to say them?

I am trying to learn Thai which should help me get around this problem but in the meantime I'm a bit unsure which way to go.

Thanks.

The only way to go is to learn the Thai alphabet. It's not that difficult and it saves a lot of hassle regarding transliterations. Go for it, you won't regret.

In perusing the 'site settings' on the Glenn Slayden's website thai-language dot com, I see that he offers quite a few 'Romanization' choices of thai for pronunciation help. This is often called colloquially karaoke but is in reality, as was pointed out by far more illustrious posters than myself, called 'phonemic transcription'; the representation of one language's phonemes (sounds) in another language.

Glenn offers the following methods for this on his site;

thai-language.com Phonemic Transcription called "t-l Enhanced"

Phonemic Thai

IPA - International Phonetic Alphabet

Paiboon - Benjawan Becker's system used in her books

RTGS - Royal Thai General System

AUA - American University Alumni/Peace Corps

Bua Luang - "What You See Is What You Say (E.G. Allyn, et al.)

ALA-LC - American Library Association-Library of Congress

ISO 11940 - An International transliteration standard

I use Glenn's version; t-l Enhanced which shows the phrase; สวัสดีครับ like this; sa^L wat^L dee^M khrap^H (the superscript is the toning) as well as Phonemic Thai which shows the same word like this; สะ-หฺวัด-ดี-คฺรับ (This is also the way Benjawan Becker's Thai For Advanced Readers introduces new vocab).

There certainly appear to be NO shortage of methods to reproduce thai sounds in engrish and I would wager these are not the only ones in use either. Everyone who makes a thai language book for foreigners seems to invent their own 'best method'..

Unfortunately the only sure fire way is to teach yourself to read thai characters and learn pronunciation rules.

Hope it helps. .. Good Luck

For the record, ISO 11940 is utter garbage. It's only "standard" in that ISO agreed to state as much. No one on earth actually uses it. Anywhere. (Worth their salt, that is.)

The only way to go is to learn the Thai alphabet. It's not that difficult and it saves a lot of hassle regarding transliterations. Go for it, you won't regret.

It's a shame it can't represent all the contrasts that Thai speakers make. (Hint: Thais choose to represent tone rather than vowel length when forced to make a choice.)

For the record, ISO 11940 is utter garbage. It's only "standard" in that ISO agreed to state as much. No one on earth actually uses it. Anywhere. (Worth their salt, that is.)

And it is no more a way of showing pronunciation than Thai script. The theoretical usefulness is that those who don't know the Thai script can use it to copy names and titles, e.g. in book requests. However, given the obscureness of the diacritics being used, I can't see that happening, so I have to agree with Rikker on its categorisation.