Online Dictionaries & Thai Language Resources

[desi]

After reading this post, I chose thai2english.com to compile a small working vocabulary for a beginner learning Thai.

Starting at 500, it soon grew to 1000 and now it's closer to 1500(still not finished). All using thai2english.com for final spelling and pronunciation.

But then I read in the "engthaisearch" post that thai2english.com is riddled with mistakes.

"With all due respect, the only dictionary which you can take as a reference seriously is from RID."

But RID is not for beginners, correct?

So could I please get knowledgable advice on a reputable dictionary for beginners? Preferably online. Hardcopy if online dictionaries can't be trusted.

Thanks in advance.

Edited June 14, 2008 by desi

[girlx]

It maybe because of my own mouse at home, but there is an annoying problem with this website; it always tells you that right click mouse is being disabled for this website...even when you want to left click...which causes trouble for the registration itself. Anyone else has tried ( and has had same problem/ it worked well) to browse on this website??

i had the same problem, too annoying to bother trying to use that site

[kriswillems]

Learning thai with audio files:

http://www.langhub.com

Thai-english dictionary:

http://thai.sealang.net

Dutch-Thai + Thai-Dutch dictionary:

http://www.pluk-in.com/thai/

Edited July 14, 2008 by kriswillems

[Nicky72]

I use quite often the ten lesson free online words and phrases available here:

http://free.lessons.l-ceps.com/learn-thai-free-lesson-1.html

The pronunciation is quite good.

You can also play audio with that. Sometimes when I have too many tabs open in Firefox the audio does not work. But it works fine with all other browsers.

[Nicky72]

I have mentioned before that I am quite happy with the phrasebook from l-ceps (see my previous post). I am also using their software product (personaltrainer) which uses the same audio files as the free phrasebook but is very comprehensive. What I like their, is that it also includes pictures for every word and sentence and it really makes the Thai language stick in your brain!

[klons]

I like to use the virtual thai keyboard to type in text that I can't copy and paste directly into thai2english for translation. An example would be the lines on a Karaoke video or I book. Should I find a Thai video on youtube that I would like to study further, I download it directly to the hard drive with a free program available at CNET downloads. For a sound recording and editing program there is Audacity, also available at CNET. With this program one can record directly off one's computer to a file on the hard drive. Then when you play it back with Audacity, it is easy to select a phrase or sentence and play it over and over again with one click. If they are talking too fast, it can also be slowed down. It is very useful for studying learningthai audio books for instance.

The links, most of which already posted:

virtual thai keyboard

http://www.learningthai.com/thaikeyboard/

youtube downloader

http://www.download.com/YouTube-Downloader...4-10647340.html

Audacity

http://www.download.com/Audacity/3000-2170....html?tag=mncol

thai2english

http://www.thai2english.com/

Audio books

http://www.spokenthai.com/talking-books/index.php

Also a good Karaoke site I came across on the forum.

http://www.ethaimusic.com/

.

[klons]

Many more resources listed here;

http://womenlearnthai.com/index.php/resources/learning-thai/

[JohnGotti]

anyone know how to isolate the thai language files on one computer so that they can be moved to another?

i do not have the windows disk with me anymore and the thai files therefore cannot be installed on my laptop. my desktop however, does have them already installed.

[tjansen]

Here is another "Learning Thai" site to add to the list. It appears to be a new site (this year).

At the moment, they have 15 free Thai Language lessons available with promises of more to come.

http://www.its4thai.com

I looked at several sites for learning Thai, and its4thai was my choice. I have done all 15 free lessons and learned a lot of basic sentence construction (with audio) that have eluded me for the year I have been in Thailand. I just subscribed to the whole course for $6.99 per month.

EXCELLENT SITE.

[fullservice]

I'm surprised nobody mentioned

http://learn-thai-podcast.com

They have some free lessons but the premium course is more structured and in my opinion the best self study course (and I have been through a lot of books, dvds and other online resources).

[SoftWater]

Not sure if this is the best thread for this question, but i'll try here first - does anyone have an mp3 audio for the Gethings reader? I've got the weblink, but I can only stream it not download as I don't have Quicktime Pro. Anyone got the whole lot on mp3?

thanks in advance

SW

[SoftWater]

Thanks to ElZorro for pointing out that both the text AND the audio are dowloadable from here

A Thai Reader

A fantastic free resource. Many thanks also to the people responsible for producing it and putting online.

Edited July 17, 2009 by SoftWater

[songoku777]

Hello Thailand! I'm from the Philippines and I need Thai help please. I got a thai motorcycle and i'd really like to find out what's written on the tank. I can't find (and i don't think there is), translator that will translate thai writing to english.. or if there is, i don't know which character is which to begin with.

Hoping someone could help me translate this with the complete thought or word for word if possible.. please help

Thank you very much in advance.. to the kind soul who can help me

[katana]

To start the bike from cold:

1. Pull the choke all the way out.

2. Press the starter button without opening the accelerator.

Remember:

Drive carefully.

Wear a crash helmet.

Protect the environment.

Read the owner's handbook carefully?... (glare on pic!)

Warning:

You may suffer death or injury if you don't wear a crash helmet.

Petrol or gasohol (E10)

91.

[Lost in LOS]

And one I posted a few days ago from MOE:

<a href="http://www.teachthai.com/" target="_blank">http://www.teachthai.com/</a>

It maybe because of my own mouse at home, but there is an annoying problem with this website; it always tells you that right click mouse is being disabled for this website...even when you want to left click...which causes trouble for the registration itself. Anyone else has tried ( and has had same problem/ it worked well) to browse on this website??

thanks

i use it all the time. great website and never had any problems

[songoku777]

To start the bike from cold:

1. Pull the choke all the way out.

2. Press the starter button without opening the accelerator.

Remember:

Drive carefully.

Wear a crash helmet.

Protect the environment.

Read the owner's handbook carefully?... (glare on pic!)

Warning:

You may suffer death or injury if you don't wear a crash helmet.

Petrol or gasohol (E10)

91.

.

T h a n k Y o u

Very Much !!

.

[SoftWater]

Writing Thai Letters

Lots of useful fixed patterns for writing letters to people in Thai

It's an old one, but I haven't seen it posted here (sorry if I didn't look carefully enough)

There's also a very useful and quite comprehensive section of formal patterns used in letter writing in the appendix of the Oxford River English-Thai dictionary, a first class resource in itself, well worth the 1000 baht price tag.

BTW, does anyone have a recommendation for a good Thai-English and good Thai-Thai dictionary? (paper dictionary I mean, not online!)

I use the Thaiways 'Thai-English', but I'm looking for something more comprehensive, like the Oxford River one mentioned above, but in reverse. I'd also like to know what is the most 'usable' Thai-Thai dictionary - many of them are so poorly laid out or typographically unattractive I can't make head nor tail of them!

Thanks in advance (ขอบคุณไว้ล่วงหน้าครับ)

Edited July 23, 2009 by SoftWater

[katana]

To start the bike from cold:

1. Pull the choke all the way out.

2. Press the starter button without opening the accelerator.

Remember:

Drive carefully.

Wear a crash helmet.

Protect the environment.

Read the owner's handbook carefully?... (glare on pic!)

Warning:

You may suffer death or injury if you don't wear a crash helmet.

Petrol or gasohol (E10)

91.

.

T h a n k Y o u

Very Much !!

.

No probs.

To improve it slightly, in the above translation I would replace the word 'accelerator' with 'throttle' and 'Read the owner's handbook carefully?... (glare on pic!)' with 'Read the owner's handbook carefully before riding'.

[ElZorro]

BTW, does anyone have a recommendation for a good Thai-English and good Thai-Thai dictionary? (paper dictionary I mean, not online!)

I use the Thaiways 'Thai-English', but I'm looking for something more comprehensive, like the Oxford River one mentioned above, but in reverse. I'd also like to know what is the most 'usable' Thai-Thai dictionary - many of them are so poorly laid out or typographically unattractive I can't make head nor tail of them!

Have a look at "A NEW THAI-ENGLISH DICTIONARY" by Tianchai Woramate. 1200 pages, hard cover, plenty of examples and Thai definitions for some entries for 760 Baht. See a sample here. I found quite a few misspellings in the English part, but on the whole I think it is very good value for its price.

[SoftWater]

BTW, does anyone have a recommendation for a good Thai-English and good Thai-Thai dictionary? (paper dictionary I mean, not online!)

I use the Thaiways 'Thai-English', but I'm looking for something more comprehensive, like the Oxford River one mentioned above, but in reverse. I'd also like to know what is the most 'usable' Thai-Thai dictionary - many of them are so poorly laid out or typographically unattractive I can't make head nor tail of them!

Have a look at "A NEW THAI-ENGLISH DICTIONARY" by Tianchai Woramate. 1200 pages, hard cover, plenty of examples and Thai definitions for some entries for 760 Baht. See a sample here. I found quite a few misspellings in the English part, but on the whole I think it is very good value for its price.

Thanks - I found at least half-a-dozen dictionaries by this author from varous dates (going back to 1998) in the Chula bookstore next to the British Council building in Siam Square. He's got both thai-thai and thai-english in various sizes and covers. I bought the biggest of each! As ElZorro says, there are plenty of example sentences in the entries, which for me is a huge plus.

[bannork]

A Thai friend has a business producing herbal products and a Czech wants to import one of his products. The Czech has sent him a list of herbs banned from Czech in English, the list has over 200 herbs.

My question is, is there a dictionary of herbs, Engliah- Thai available? I looked on google but couldn't see anything.

Thanking anyone in advance.

bannork.

[smint]

Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but I found this resource:

http://www.thaicyberu.go.th/

Thai Cyber University

You can register for a Thai course module there, and thereafter you are able to view Adobe Flash files to learn basic Thai. Useful for beginners as it includes phrases, rules, consonants and vowels etc.

Steps: (Note that I tried this on Firefox, if on Safari or Opera or other browsers might not work as it might appear all in Thai.)

1. Register

2. Login

3. Under Menu, choose Course -> Self Paced Learning Course

4. Search for Course ID "TCU-2549052" (Copy and Paste)

5. Click on the course (popup will appear)

6. Click Register.

7. Go back to the menus again, and select "Classroom" now.

8. Click "Enter" Class

9. Select a Chapter that interests you.

10. Ta-dah!

First few steps are a hassle, but you get lots of cool steps afterwards. Cool resource.

If you are tech savvy, you can actually find the root swfs and save them down into to your computer, in addition to the pdfs available. Thus you don't need to be online to view them.

[DickFarang]

A Thai friend has a business producing herbal products and a Czech wants to import one of his products. The Czech has sent him a list of herbs banned from Czech in English, the list has over 200 herbs.

My question is, is there a dictionary of herbs, Engliah- Thai available? I looked on google but couldn't see anything.

Thanking anyone in advance.

bannork.

IMHO he should use, to avoid any ambiguity, the botanic binary nomenclature in Latin invented by Carolus Linnaeus.

[DickFarang]

Learning thai with audio files:

http://www.langhub.com

Thai-english dictionary:

http://thai.sealang.net

Dutch-Thai + Thai-Dutch dictionary:

http://www.pluk-in.com/thai/

Out of curiosity I looked once in the Nederlands↔Thais woordenboek พจนานุกรมไทย·ดัตช์ (http://www.pluk-in.com/thai/) and could not find the word กะเทย = katoey = travestiet, transseksueel, homoseksueel, etc.

[Rikker]

I haven't seen this posted before, but tell me if this is a repeat.

The first email forward in years that I've actually found useful: a Thai friend (with a 3-year-old son) sent around this link:

http://www.karn.tv/thai.html

Looking at it, this website has a number of free practice exercises and test questions for primary school-level Thai (of varying levels).

Teaching to native children and teaching to foreign adults is very different, though, so there's something to be learned from the materials on this site for foreign Thai learner of every level, I'd say. Useful for boning up on all the stuff you thought you had down cold. Have a look.

(Oh, and you can also use the links up top to other subject materials. Practice your Thai be reading about primary school science experiments! Fun stuff.)

[kokesaat]

"http://www.karn.tv/thai.html"

pdf files of the Maani series up to grade 6! In color! I had no idea it went beyond lesson 44 or so. Oh happy days! I've got interesting reading material to last me a loooong time! Thank you for the link!

[ElZorro]

Rikker mentioned in the chang kui podcast that there are no ebooks in Thai; I have recently discovered a daily program on witayu sueksa that consists of readings from a novel by a voice actor/actress split in 30 minute chunks. Last month they were reading from Bung ya pa yai by Thepsiri Suksopha and since Jan 12th it's a translation of "Sans Famille" by Hector Mallot. It's on every day from 19:30 to 20:00 on FM 92 MHz and AM 1161 kHz, the online stream is mms://www.moeradiothai.net/fm92 and you can also listen to past programs from the station website.

[Tod Daniels]

I haven't seen this posted before, but tell me if this is a repeat.

The first email forward in years that I've actually found useful: a Thai friend (with a 3-year-old son) sent around this link:

http://www.karn.tv/thai.html

WOW, what a great resource. Thanx, have printed off several of the tests and will see how I do.

[tina2112anit]

Hi! This is a video to help distinguish between the 5 different tones:

youtube.com/tina2112anit

Hope this helps!

[mahtin]

"60 Minutes to Learn the Thai Alphabet" really works. Well, perhaps not in 60 minutes. Instead of learning the Thai alphabet by rote, it ditches the animals and such one would normally learn with each letter, and instead gives you ways to learn the sound(s) and classes. I was surprised at how quickly I picked up the system.

Just bought it for half that "promotional" price at:

http://ebooks.ebookmall.com/title/60-minut...osmo-ebooks.htm

Note your e-mail and password from the invoice to activate.

And no my online tailor is rich