Wanted: Tutor For Thai Pronunciation And Tones (Farang Or Thai Ok)

[Sugizo]

Hi all,

My first post on ThaiVisa. Thank you for the great forum.

I am looking for a professional who can teach me the proper pronunciation of Thai sounds (mostly vowels I cannot pronounce correctly). I have dabbled with learning the vowel pronunciations with various Thai tutors/people here and there over the last 10 years, but I just cannot mimic certain sounds perfectly, or even what I would consider to be 'close enough'.

I am looking for someone who can actually show me how to make the sounds properly. I am not interested in paying an incapable tutor to encourage me while I struggle. I need someone who knows what they are doing and can show me how to position my mouth and tongue for every vowel and consonant.

I am proficient in Mandarin and when I started my Mandarin studies I was lucky enough to have an actual Chinese news reporter take me under his wing. This guy has helped many other aspiring Chinese news reporters learn to pronounce every syllable perfectly and get every tone just right. As a foreigner I was extremely lucky to run into him. He had software with videos that showed exactly how I should breathe and move my mouth for every sound. He taught me how to pronounce every syllable in the language from scratch, which was important because many of the sounds are similar to English but are slightly different and require positioning the mouth/placing the tongue in ways that were foreign to me. He refused to teach me to speak until I had a good grasp on my pronunciation and tones (3-4 weeks). It wasn't easy and I almost quit, but looking back, receiving this kind of training was invaluable.

I want to do the same thing with Thai.

Does anyone have any recommendations? I am also happy to learn from a farang who has perfect pronunciation. (ie I feel someone who had to learn it perfectly from scratch will be much better suited to teaching it than a native)

Thank you all in advance!

Best Regards,

Rob

[kokesaat]

Here's what worked for me: My village pharmacist wanted to improve her English....I wanted to improve my Thai pronunciation. We worked together 4 hours, twice a week.....2 hours of English, 2 of Thai. I tortured her with making me pronounce words correctly (including tones). My head often hurt after class.....but in the end, I believe my pronunciation is much improved.....at least, that's what the natives tell me.

The only negative......I'm still unable to pronounce ต correctly........and all the forum clues haven't resolved my problem.

Good luck with your studies.

[eric67]

The only negative......I'm still unable to pronounce ต correctly........and all the forum clues haven't resolved my problem.

Say style 10x in a row, then cut out the "s" and say tyle 10x in a row, pronouncing the "t" the same way as in style (and make sure it doesn't turn into tile). It should be pretty close to ต then