Which language is more difficult to learn to speak: English or Thai ?

[metaben]

English is far tougher. I feel sorry for people having to learn so many idioms and slang to have basic comprehension. Reading and writing English is completely illogical and impossible without prior familiarity and memorization of words. Proper english writing is littered with junk like hyphens, apostrophes, commas, dashes, caps, etc--none of that in thai. And so with caps english has 52 characters to learn and with cursive it's 104. Thai language has no tenses and no plurals, hurray. Thai having a "bigger" alphabet is an advantage, not a disadvantage as the same vowel isn't reused to make different sounds like in english. Any word you see written in Thai you can pronounce precisely. Thai words are often shorter than english words because tones mean you can pack more into a single syllable. In english we get one word "cow". In Thai "cow" is many words based on tone including the word rice and the color white. That's easier than tacking on more syllables to deal with.

To me any new language is hard but doable, but the key point above is learning to read and write, especially in Thai where all the "diificulties" are actually simply spelled out.

[lostmebike]

Also, OP, if you are serious about learning to speak Thai, you should go ahead and learn to read it as well. Reading Thai and understanding how words are formed will help you immensely with your pronunciation.

Spoken like a man who knows.

I gotta agree with you Mr Rooney, my Thai was okay but then on the advice of an English friend, I went ahead with learning to read and write Thai. Just as he said, my pronunciation went through the roof. Knowing how the word is formed, consonants, vowels and how they make syllables is key to learning any language. As an example, just listen to the problems with the letters that have 'R' and 'L' sounds. Being able to read and write Thai alerts you to just how bad some of the locals pronunciation is also!

Edited December 9, 2013 by lostmebike

[recycler]

English is easy to learn, it has only few irregularities and even if you pronounce it wrong or with a heavy accent the message still gets across.

Thai is tonal and vague if you pronounce a bit wrong nobody understands it. When learning Thai you also have to get used to a vagueness in communication as the language is not adequate to define many things clear. Just look around, many Thais that speak the same dialect often misunderstand each other. They are used to this vagueness, we are not.

By the way, if you are serious about learning Thai it helps to learn to read it.

[soomak]

English is far tougher. I feel sorry for people having to learn so many idioms and slang to have basic comprehension. Reading and writing English is completely illogical and impossible without prior familiarity and memorization of words. Proper english writing is littered with junk like hyphens, apostrophes, commas, dashes, caps, etc--none of that in thai. And so with caps english has 52 characters to learn and with cursive it's 104. Thai language has no tenses and no plurals, hurray. Thai having a "bigger" alphabet is an advantage, not a disadvantage as the same vowel isn't reused to make different sounds like in english. Any word you see written in Thai you can pronounce precisely. Thai words are often shorter than english words because tones mean you can pack more into a single syllable. In english we get one word "cow". In Thai "cow" is many words based on tone including the word rice and the color white. That's easier than tacking on more syllables to deal with.

Completely wrong there.

Bottom line:

I've talked in English to people from India, the Philippines, Belgium, Mexico, Turkey, Ukraine and a dozen other countries, and we could understand each other. The reason: you can say an English word in almost any accent, and I can still figure out what it means based on the syllables. Impossible in Thai (you are welcome to try....)

But to be more specific:

Thai written language has many silent letters, plus letters put at the end of the word sound different then they would at the beginning or middle of the word. If you speak a Thai word to me, I can think of 15 possible ways to write it down, and unless I remember the exact spelling I have no idea how to write it correctly.

As for reading:

All the words are put together, so I have to either know all the words, or guess where one word ends and the next one starts.

And the tonal thing is a complete mystery. I have been here three years and still can't remember the tones for 95% of the words. I know that Mai is New, but can't remember how to say it or how to write it.

[SICHONSTEVE]

Also, OP, if you are serious about learning to speak Thai, you should go ahead and learn to read it as well. Reading Thai and understanding how words are formed will help you immensely with your pronunciation.

Without doubt, it is crucial to learn to read Thai first. I have mastered (pretty well anyway) how to both read and write Thai, although I have still got a long way to go before conversation is possible.

I can recommend highspeedthai for learning how to read and write Thai. The good thing about this is that once you buy it, it is yours for good unlike some other programmes whereby you have to renew and pay for it every year.

[willyumiii]

I respectfully disagree with the op.

I teach English to young Thai children and help older students with their studies of the English language.

I have been struggling for years to learn to speak Thai.

I have developed a pretty large vocabulary in Thai, but still can not communicate beyond what I call " Taxi cab Thai".

I need to go here, I want to buy that, where is this?, but still no real conversations.

Even though I am immersed in the Thai language and they are not immersed in the English language, Thais learn to speak English much faster.

Also I have read and been told several times that the best and fastest way to learn the Thai language is to learn to read and write it first.

I do not read or write Thai yet myself!

When I look at my Thai students, they all learn to read English as they learn to speak it.

I think one of the biggest difficulties learning to speak Thai is the tonal factor.

The tones can be very subtle, and the "older ear" like mine ( 60 yo) is not as sensitive to tonal differences as the younger ear.

Like the op, the Thai woman in my life helps me very little with the language.

I think she would rather I didn't understand what her family and friends are saying about me!

When I find the time and extra money, I plan to take a course on reading and writing Thai.

I've been told that the spoken language just falls into place once that is done.

[rct99q]

Great great, enormous, gargantuan leap. I feel more relaxed. And I now there are 1,000s of examples like the above.

Depends on where you are? Most Thais that have been exposed to native english speakers will be able to understand your, at present, rudimentary Thai. I have found it more difficult than say Spanish or French, but miles easier than Greek. Simple sentence structure helps in that all you really need to do is concentrate on vocabulary (in the beginning). Thus you may be speaking pigeon Thai most will understand you if your context is correct.

As for understanding what a group of Thais are saying.......I have difficulties understanding what my Irish family are saying half the time. They are speaking English but have not a clue. Or try listening to a group of Australians......most sound as if they just got of the boat from Liverpool...only they are sober.

[willyumiii]

Well, the question should be for people with normal hearing. But those who have trouble deciphering lyrics in music and other frequency filtered troubles, will find English much easier to learn. And it doesn't have to be perfect and full ranged as it can be understood even in it's pigeon form. English language is being simplified and mutated as the cultures decline. I learned it proper and see it being mutilated every day. And for the new vocabulary that is era specific, i don't care to learn, "yo bud" dig?!

"I learned it proper"

Say it again Joe!

We be lovin it dude!

[wolfmanjack]

Both of my kids were born in Thailand with a native english speaking father and an native thai speaking mother.They are going to a thai gov school so they are surrounded by Thai language all day. They both say learning thai is more difficult than learning english.

[malt25]

Which language is more difficult to learn to speak: English or Thai ?

English for a Thai & Thai for everyone else !!!! Wouldn't you think ???

[willyumiii]

Also, OP, if you are serious about learning to speak Thai, you should go ahead and learn to read it as well. Reading Thai and understanding how words are formed will help you immensely with your pronunciation.

I feel incompetent at the moment. Your replies make me feel this way. I will try to read Thai at a later time. Now I just want to talk. But when I listen to Thais talk it seems like a losing battle. Throw in the slang they have and I'm in big trouble since I do want to know what they are talking about.

I hope you are not disappointed when you do understand passa Thai.

Mostly, they talk about food, gossip and farangs ( when they think we can't understand them )!

[wolfmanjack]

English is far tougher. I feel sorry for people having to learn so many idioms and slang to have basic comprehension. Reading and writing English is completely illogical and impossible without prior familiarity and memorization of words. Proper english writing is littered with junk like hyphens, apostrophes, commas, dashes, caps, etc--none of that in thai. And so with caps english has 52 characters to learn and with cursive it's 104. Thai language has no tenses and no plurals, hurray. Thai having a "bigger" alphabet is an advantage, not a disadvantage as the same vowel isn't reused to make different sounds like in english. Any word you see written in Thai you can pronounce precisely. Thai words are often shorter than english words because tones mean you can pack more into a single syllable. In english we get one word "cow". In Thai "cow" is many words based on tone including the word rice and the color white. That's easier than tacking on more syllables to deal with.

Completely wrong there.

Bottom line:

I've talked in English to people from India, the Philippines, Belgium, Mexico, Turkey, Ukraine and a dozen other countries, and we could understand each other. The reason: you can say an English word in almost any accent, and I can still figure out what it means based on the syllables. Impossible in Thai (you are welcome to try....)

But to be more specific:

Thai written language has many silent letters, plus letters put at the end of the word sound different then they would at the beginning or middle of the word. If you speak a Thai word to me, I can think of 15 possible ways to write it down, and unless I remember the exact spelling I have no idea how to write it correctly.

As for reading:

All the words are put together, so I have to either know all the words, or guess where one word ends and the next one starts.

And the tonal thing is a complete mystery. I have been here three years and still can't remember the tones for 95% of the words. I know that Mai is New, but can't remember how to say it or how to write it.

Same problem I have. I can't tell the diff pronunciations.

Mai = new

mai = wood

mai = silk

mai = ?

mai = no

mai = not

When I was out buying wood I did not know if "mai mai" was "new wood" or just "not new" If they said "mai mai mai" then i would know it was "not new wood"

Mai mai mai = Is this new wood?

Mai, mai mai mai = No, not new wood

yep clear as mud.

Edited December 9, 2013 by wolfmanjack

[ozyjon]

The Thai script comes from the Indian script, where the western script comes from Latin script that is used world wide, if the Thai language was so easy to learn then i think Bill Gates made a mistake to make Windows and the English language universal, he should have made it Thai script instead.

I ran a guest house in Sydney in the 90's, i started because there were so many students coming here to learn English to the point i had to buy another house to keep up with the demand, i asked a Korean student "why so many Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Brazilian etc" were coming here to learn the English language, the student told me that many international companies would conduct business world wide in English, so they needed English speakers employed in the company, i'm so happy the international language isn't French or Thai, i'm happy speaking English, and my friend good luck with your Thai lessons because as soon as you go out of Thailand ---guess what--- you will forget it all..

[otherstuff1957]

As others have pointed out, learning to speak a tonal language like Thai is very difficult for those of us who grew up speaking European Languages. I spent a few weeks in the Dominican Republic and, by the time I left, I was speaking Spanish about as well as I could speak Thai after living here for two years!

Thai grammar is simple and spelling and pronunciation is almost 100% regular, so learning to read Thai is almost easier than learning to speak it. I have lived in Thailand for over 10 years and I can read Thai and understand spoken Thai far better than I can speak it. I just can't get the tones right.

As for English being difficult, yes the grammar is complex and the spelling is irregular, but learning to communicate in basic English is quite easy. You don't need to have perfect grammar or pronunciation to communicate in English, but you do need perfect pronunciation to communicate in Thai.

[bifftastic]

I'd say English is a far more complicated language. Take 'ough' for example - it can be pronounced 9 different ways.

up - hiccough

off - cough

uff - rough

oe - dough

ow - plough

oo - through

A rough coated, dough faced thoughtful ploughman trudged through the streets of Scarborough after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.

And what about all the silent letters and idomatic phrases, 12 tenses! etc

ok - but basic english is easy to learn

As is basic anything, that's why it's called 'basic'.

Obviously people who can already speak English, but have yet to master Thai will feel that Thai is harder and vice versa.

There is no definitive answer to the question in the OP, it's all relative to what you already know.

[craigt3365]

This is a pretty good guideline for English speakers:

http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty

Arabic, Japanese, Chinese and Korean are listed as the hardest, Thai is also listed as being very difficult. Again, this is for native English speakers. I'm sure somebody from Japan would find it easier to learn Korean than English. Just as somebody from America would find it easier to learn Spanish than somebody from Asia.

I picked up Spanish in no time...at least conversational and the ability to figure out some written. I've struggled with Thai.

[dotpoom]

Not sure what you mean when you ask for Help.....do you want to convince your Thai friends that the English language is more difficult to learn by showing them this forum if the majority of us agree with you?

[lostmebike]

English is far tougher. I feel sorry for people having to learn so many idioms and slang to have basic comprehension. Reading and writing English is completely illogical and impossible without prior familiarity and memorization of words. Proper english writing is littered with junk like hyphens, apostrophes, commas, dashes, caps, etc--none of that in thai. And so with caps english has 52 characters to learn and with cursive it's 104. Thai language has no tenses and no plurals, hurray. Thai having a "bigger" alphabet is an advantage, not a disadvantage as the same vowel isn't reused to make different sounds like in english. Any word you see written in Thai you can pronounce precisely. Thai words are often shorter than english words because tones mean you can pack more into a single syllable. In english we get one word "cow". In Thai "cow" is many words based on tone including the word rice and the color white. That's easier than tacking on more syllables to deal with.

Completely wrong there.

Bottom line:

I've talked in English to people from India, the Philippines, Belgium, Mexico, Turkey, Ukraine and a dozen other countries, and we could understand each other. The reason: you can say an English word in almost any accent, and I can still figure out what it means based on the syllables. Impossible in Thai (you are welcome to try....)

But to be more specific:

Thai written language has many silent letters, plus letters put at the end of the word sound different then they would at the beginning or middle of the word. If you speak a Thai word to me, I can think of 15 possible ways to write it down, and unless I remember the exact spelling I have no idea how to write it correctly.

As for reading:

All the words are put together, so I have to either know all the words, or guess where one word ends and the next one starts.

And the tonal thing is a complete mystery. I have been here three years and still can't remember the tones for 95% of the words. I know that Mai is New, but can't remember how to say it or how to write it.

Same problem I have. I can't tell the diff pronunciations.

Mai = new

mai = wood

mai = silk

mai = ?

mai = no

mai = not

When I was out buying wood I did not know if "mai mai" was "new wood" or just "not new" If they said "mai mai mai" then i would know it was "not new wood"

Mai mai mai = Is this new wood?

Mai, mai mai mai = No, not new wood

yep clear as mud.

Maybe leave the wood purchasing to the the Mrs in future.

[thaimite]

Sorry, this is sightly off topic, gut here goes.

A big deal is made of the tones which I agree add significant complexity to the language, however, can somebody please answer this

Are deaf Thai people able to lip read? If so how do they lip read a tone?

Finally I agree that learning to read Thai helps significantly. I have done little more than master the Alphabet and I am already finding its advantages

Edit (After thought)

has already been pointed out in English we have many words that sound the same but are spelt differently and mean different things (See and Sea) and also words that are written the same but pronounced differently depending on the meaning required. Isn't this a little bit like tones where the correct meaning can be gather even if the tone is wrong by judging the context. I am sure if a Thai was enquiring whether or not the wood he was buying was new or old, he would compose a sentence that did not consist entirely of the word 'mai'.

Edited December 9, 2013 by thaimite

[thrilled]

One of the problems with Thai is,if your in Issan,getting near Nongkhai the Thais speak thai/Lao.I imagine it's the same living near Cambodia and so on.But English,proper English is hard.If your A baby and grow up speaking it ya have half the batte done.But learning proper English is A challenge for anyone.

[thaimite]

Although not an English teacher, I once attended a Thai school English lesson (in Issan) so that the students could converse with a native English speaker.

At the start of the lesson the teacher stood up in front of the class and proudly stated that English was much easier than Thai because:

1 The English ALFABET (his spelling) only had 26 letter, where as the Thaialphabet had many more.

2. In English we only have one word for walk where as in Thai there are many depending on the circumstances. (I was thinking walk, stroll, dander constitutional, perambulation.....)

This is an example of why the ability of Thais to speak English is so poor. Later the same school asked me to attend a seminar for Thai national English teahcers. Most of them knew no more than the basics.

[james68]

It has to be Thai...I know many Dutch and Swedish people whose English is nearly better than mine, have excellent linguistic skills but find Thai nearly impossible bar the very basics..

[wolfmanjack]

English is far tougher. I feel sorry for people having to learn so many idioms and slang to have basic comprehension. Reading and writing English is completely illogical and impossible without prior familiarity and memorization of words. Proper english writing is littered with junk like hyphens, apostrophes, commas, dashes, caps, etc--none of that in thai. And so with caps english has 52 characters to learn and with cursive it's 104. Thai language has no tenses and no plurals, hurray. Thai having a "bigger" alphabet is an advantage, not a disadvantage as the same vowel isn't reused to make different sounds like in english. Any word you see written in Thai you can pronounce precisely. Thai words are often shorter than english words because tones mean you can pack more into a single syllable. In english we get one word "cow". In Thai "cow" is many words based on tone including the word rice and the color white. That's easier than tacking on more syllables to deal with.

Completely wrong there.

Bottom line:

I've talked in English to people from India, the Philippines, Belgium, Mexico, Turkey, Ukraine and a dozen other countries, and we could understand each other. The reason: you can say an English word in almost any accent, and I can still figure out what it means based on the syllables. Impossible in Thai (you are welcome to try....)

But to be more specific:

Thai written language has many silent letters, plus letters put at the end of the word sound different then they would at the beginning or middle of the word. If you speak a Thai word to me, I can think of 15 possible ways to write it down, and unless I remember the exact spelling I have no idea how to write it correctly.

As for reading:

All the words are put together, so I have to either know all the words, or guess where one word ends and the next one starts.

And the tonal thing is a complete mystery. I have been here three years and still can't remember the tones for 95% of the words. I know that Mai is New, but can't remember how to say it or how to write it.

Same problem I have. I can't tell the diff pronunciations.

Mai = new

mai = wood

mai = silk

mai = ?

mai = no

mai = not

When I was out buying wood I did not know if "mai mai" was "new wood" or just "not new" If they said "mai mai mai" then i would know it was "not new wood"

Mai mai mai = Is this new wood?

Mai, mai mai mai = No, not new wood

yep clear as mud.

Maybe leave the wood purchasing to the the Mrs in future.

I take my kids with me now. They are much more willing translators than the missus is.

[Hecate]

English teachers in here? Please help! How many words in the English language v Thai ? Also tell us about grammar and any other things that might help me? I know English is more difficult. I had a great example above fm neeranam. Any more? Oh, forget out lazy people.

I am an English teacher, and I agree that English is the more difficult language. In Thailand, pronunciation is more difficult for Thais than it is for English speakers, because the Thais are listening to a wide variety of dialects and accents. Native English speakers can't even understand each other sometimes. English has more vocab and more grammar rules.

Thai doesn't have articles (a, the). They are fiendishly difficult. If you don't believe me, look at every noun in what I have just written and explain why some have articles and some don't. Why is there an article for "The Titanic", but not "Market Village"? It's because "the Titanic" is a boat, so the full name is "The Motor Vessel Titanic". "Motor Vessel" drops, but the article remains. "Market Village" is a shopping mall, and there is no article in the name. That's crazy-making.

Also there's plurals and countable and non-countable nous--the difference between "sugar" and "a sugar cube". More fun with articles.

As well English has twelve tenses, not including things like "going to" and "used to". Things like, "I will have been living here three years in February." It gets worse: "Aren't you going to make it up to me?" That last one is a seven-part verb form with couple of pronouns tossed in. It's got an inversion, a negative, a contraction, and an idiomatic phrase. When spoken half of it disappears. It's something like, "Arn cha gonna makitup t'me" Nasty. I don't think we can make it up to them.

As for pronunciation,consider:

How do you tell a phone from a fax machine? (How do you know the difference?)

How do you telephone from a fax machine? (How do you make a call?)

English speakers would understand the difference in meaning because the first sentence is spoken more slowly and the stress pattern is different.

And English has tones. Consider:

A: It's $20 extra.

B: That's okay.

If B speaks with a rising tone, he's going to pay the extra $20. If he speaks with a falling tone, he isn't.

And:

A: I'm from Canada

B: Where?

If B uses a rising tone, he didn't hear A. If he uses a falling tone, he wants to know where in Canada.

I could go on. I don't think people who try to learn English are lazy, but I understand why some of them get frustrated!

[Prettygirl051469]

My partner and I have been studying Thai these past 6 months. Most of our time has focused on reading. Because of that we can read Thai "slowly" and we know the tone to use. Just recently we are being pushed to increase our vocabulary and understanding of grammar.

It's a slow process. Guess we should require at least 2 years of study and focused work to emerge with any confidence.

It's about commitment really and it's not that easy.

My partner started to speak English in 2006 and is now ahead of me in Thai!!!

[sfbandung]

Depends what you learnt first of course.

But anecdotal evidence would suggest Thai. I know many Thais who have mastered spoken and written English. My wife for example. Pronunciation is always a difficulty of course. But I know only 1 native English speaker who has mastered both spoken and written Thai.

[CJ100]

I am from the UK but live in Thailand, I can also read write and speak Thai with about 90% accuracy or so I've been told. English is a much more complicated language, I think so anyway. In some ways you could say English is a badly designed language. For example, as if the changing regular verb tenses weren't enough we added in 250 or so 'Irregular" verbs (the most used) with no patterns! Then there's the verb subject agreement with its 14 additional rules, 12 to 14 tenses, articles with rules. Not forgetting our use of personal pronouns and possessive/reflexive adjectives? "It's my car I bought it myself, it belongs to me it's mine", all just unnecessary. Thai is a much easier laguage to read also, once you see a word you immediately know how it should sound because of the usage of long and short vowels in the written form. There are many more "homonyms" in the Thai language than there are in English I agree, but once you start to hear the differences in the tones they're easy to distiguish.

[Aforek]

Being a person whose language is not English or Thai and being very interested by these two languages, I give my opinion: basic english is not very difficult , but to speak or write like english speaking people is much more complicated than french people ( my language ) think; as for thai, I don't think it's so difficult now ( but I have worked hard and still work every day ): I speak of normal level, not fluent

the story of learning the alphabet and rules of tones in Thai is just to learn them by heart ; as for speaking, and using the right tones, thai people often understand me, it's a question of good ear, but it's not impossible for a farang : we must forget completely our own language and swim in thai language to understant how it works

to answer the OP question, I would say the difficulty is not at the same level ; prononciation,and forget our language western notions forThai , and "idioms" ( anglicism ) for English ;

Thai is much more difficult than english for spelling: due to the big alphabet, and tone marks and many other strange things, if we don't use the good spelling, it means something else : we don't really have this problem in English or French

Edited December 9, 2013 by Aforek

[canman]

Is it remotely possible in the written Thai language to do something like this:

7H15 M3554G3 53RV35 7O PR0V3 H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5! 1MPR3551V3 7H1NG5! 1N 7H3 B3G1NN1NG 17 WA5 H4RD BU7 N0W, 0N 7H15 LIN3 Y0UR M1ND 1S R34D1NG 17 4U70M471C4LLY W17H0U7 3V3N 7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17, B3 PROUD! 0NLY C34R741N P30PL3 C4N R3AD 7H15. R3 P057 1F U C4N R35D 7H15

[huwgo]

silly question...

but from a non English-native's point of view:

Thai, and by far, being a tonal language. yep, i am not chinese, nor come from another native tonal language, so, this is a major difficulty for me, and i believe for most.

throw in writing...thai is completely different alphabet, so, ground zero, cant use even my own letters i got used to...

so, conclusion: thai is by far more difficult, doesnt matter what you feel, really

test your skills with strangers, where they dont have to be polite about it. and get ready for a surprise.

PS:

i am not sure why the thai kids in most case cant speak English after leaning it for 12-18 yrs in school...

They are probably just shy. This is what I have found. Thai people's comprehension of English is really good (in my experience) but they don't get the chance to practice speaking with English speaking people.

Talk with them in thai and have them reply in English and you'll both get better