Best Way To Learn To Read / Write The Thai Alphabet

[fanciman]

Which is the best book to use to commence studying thai with the alphabet?

There are websites around to provide the sounds (where is the best one?), but i want some sort of exercise book/website.

Ideally, it would take the form of a series of mnemonics...

[bmore99]

Well, sofar many read your question but nobody bothered to answer.

Now why is that?

For one, there is not best way of learning Thai. It is just a p.i.t.a. process, whichever method you use. Mnemonics, haven't seen any out there yet.

Ok, for learning the Thai characters, I like Courage software best. Clear characters and clear sounds. For the rest, the method is great, but the sound quality is terrible.

For getting a nice vocabulary, Benjawan Poomsan Becker's Thai for beginners is good. Clear sounds. Play the sound files on your walkman as often as you can.

For having a basic set of expressions in which you can change nouns and verbs, etc. Rosetta Stone has a good, but expensive drilling/analogy system. Although the pictures can be a bit confusing due to their inaccuracy. It has no explanation at all, just drilling.

Last but not least, get yourself a non-english-speaking native-speaker and take the plunge. Learn as children learn their mother's tongue.

Hope this helps you.

Ben