For High-Basic / Low-Intermediate Thai Readers

[Tod Daniels]

I am reading a book written in thai which teaches english to thais. This one is called "Let's Put Idioms and Phrasal Verbs into Use" or "เอา Idioms และ Phrasal Verbs มาใช้กันเถอะ".

I have found once you can read thai even at a low level, these types of books (teaching english to thais) can be a wealth of information.

They help a person improve their thai reading comprehension skills; seeing as most english sentences have the thai equivalent right under it. More importantly to me, this sort of book actually gives you the understanding about how something in common english like idioms or a verb phrase would be spoken in thai. MANY things due to cultural, regional and socio-economic reasons just can’t be translated word for word and have a thai understand what you’re on about.

As an example, in the chapter I just finished reading; it went over the following phrases.

1. make light of - มองเห็นว่าไม่สำคัญ, ทำเป็นมองข้าม

2. take a stand on - ตัดสินใจอย่างแน่วแน่, มีจุดยืนที่แน่วแน่

3. take advantage of - เอาเปรียบ, ตักตวงผลประโยชน์

4. take charge of - ควบคุม, รับผิดชอบ, ดูแล

5. keep an eye on - จับตาดู เฝ้าดู

6. find fault with - วิพากษ์วิจารณ์, หาข้อผิดพลาด, จับผิด

7. take exception to - ไม่เห็นด้วย, ไม่ชอบ

8. lost track of - ไม่สามารถค้นพบ, หาไม่พบ, ไม่รู้เวลา, ลืมเวลา

9. make sense of – เข้าใจ

Now you can see, some are quite easy, and a person would be able to sort ‘em out. Then again some are not so easy. In this book they explain when each of the suggested phrases are to be used, like with people, places, people's actions, what situations, etc. Pretty darned useful especially as it’s explained in thai with thai sentence examples too. It also tells whether the phrase can be used either in a positive way or with a negative connotation when they can be interchanged in that fashion

Granted, some of this book's vocab was over my head, (ตักตวงผลประโยชน์, วิพากษ์วิจารณ์ both of which I was clueless about before I looked 'em up). But lookin' up words/phrases either online, or in a dictionary is part and parcel of learning thai .

This company has quite a few books out in print. They seem to range in price from about 160 to 220baht a book.

Some of the titles are;

"English Thru Life Experiences"

"English Thru Life Perspectives"

"Religious Beliefs"

"Express Feelings"

"English for Job Interviews"

"English Thru Music"

"English Thru Film"

Two volumes of "More that 1000 Words to beat TOEIC, TOEFL"

Three volumes of "Everyday English Expressions"

If your interested; go to Google Thailand and put in เศรษฐวิทย์. You can see some of their books available on the top one or two hits. They're also at at most bookstores which sell thai language books. Next time you're in a bookstore (except Asia Boox, which doesn't sell books written in thai ), peruse the 'english for thais' section, you might find it of interest too.

I find it troublesome that there isn't always a lot of hi-basic or low-intermediate stuff written in thai to learn from. By that, I mean books which actually add measurably to a persons vocab or understanding of how the thai language goes together.

Although be forewarned , get ready to have MANY thais throw sidelong glances your way in regards as to why an obvious foreigner would be reading books on learning the english language which are written in thai .

Still it’s a good ice breaker, conversation starter.

[tgeezer]

You beat me to it; I intended to get one of these but still have enough on my plate with the Thai grammar book. I find the River books English/Thai a similar experience to what you have described, my aim was to see how the English grammar jargon is explained.

I take your point; seeing the language this way is very instructive.