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

[12DrinkMore]

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.

Once I reached the level of understanding where I could comprehend what Thais were saying, I realised I did not want to know what they were saying.

[12DrinkMore]

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

I just learnt a new language in 30 seconds.

7H4T5 4W350M3

Do you have a verbal equivalent?

Edited December 9, 2013 by 12DrinkMore

[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

I just learnt a new language in 30 seconds.

7H4T5 R5UM

Do you have a verbal equivalent?

R5UM has me stumped

[SteveB2]

It's difficult in different ways. Thai is difficult for us to learn because the pronunciation is so different than what we are used to. The grammar and vocabulary is actually pretty easy, though.

English is difficult for Thai people to learn because in addition to the pronunciation being difficult (for native Thai speakers), the grammar is far more complex, there's more vocabulary to learn, and spelling is inconsistent..

Agreed, though it is apparent that both languages are very distant from each other not only geographically, but linguistically - thus for native speakers of each language, the other will be really difficult to learn.

Many years ago, I had a chat with a well traveled linguist on which languages he considered were overall the most difficult to learn? His answers were enlightening.

1. Japanese. The most difficult. Reasons; Highest complexity writing method requiring 3 alphabet systems Kana (Hiragana, Katakana) plus a subset of the Chinese Kanji character system. He felt that it was for all purposes impossible to learn a full Japanese language skill set ( read, write, speak, listen) to a professional level without actually living in Japan for 5-10 years.

2. Thai. 2nd most difficult. Reason. Next highest complexity to Japanese. Alphabet includes 44 consonants and 33 vowels as the product of 3 archaic languages with no commonality to western writing methods in any way. Grammar apparently simple, but the tone system, proper vocalization of sounds, and inclusion of speaker and listeners social status in vocabulary variation choice makes up for this. National dialect variation is so wide as to create dialects that have as much commonality as English and French languages - consider Thai/Laos Isaan, Southern Thai, and Thai/Laos/Cambodian dialects...

All of the above accounts for the poor Thai language capabilities of most westerners living in Thailand, and for the poor English language capabilities of the Thai.

By way of comparison, Arabic is a simple language to learn for English speakers.

[Prettygirl051469]

7H4T5 7uR3 ?

[Marcus Souksi]

Hello everybody , just a few thoughts from my point of view . I'm born by Thai parents but I don't have a Thai nationality , meaning I was born and raised in the US so English is my first language.

When I was young , my parents would always communicate with each and everybody in the family in English , they do talk to eachother in Thai but not to often.

I'm recently living Thailand and am working under a work permit like other "farangs" do . To say...it's difficult to learn Thai language as the alphabets are more in numbers , really complicated with the symbols above/under and the wrong pronounciations will completely change the meaning of a word. I've been here for a couple years now and I have managed to speak the language quite fluent , I can read and understand it properly but I don't think I would ever master it. Typing in Thai is difficult for me as well as some religous words and symbols.

I'm not saying that English is easy because I already know it but from my point of view , the Thai language is way more complicated. I'm a jounalist at present , I do translations of Thai news articles / TV programs everyday and I know how much of a pain it is to compare the language.

Edited December 9, 2013 by Marcus Souksi

[12DrinkMore]

7H4T5 7uR3 ?

Y0V M34N 7H4T5 7RU3?

[hellodolly]

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...

I would also like to add that in adition to being tonal if you have any kind of hearing problems it just gets worse. The tone in Thai can give the word a whole new meaning. Where as the different tones in English are used more to stress the word than have a completely different meaning.

[NoshowJones]

Thai ,i am in my 60s and still cant speak it properly ,but i picked up english when i was only about 2/3 years old.

Thai is definitely the most difficult to learn, 44 I think, letters in the Thai alphabet, 26 in the English, in Thai, different tones for the same words meaning different things, many words sounding similar, pai, mai, dai etc. Maa means dog, horse, come etc in different tones. If Thai language was not tonal, and was like learning French, Spanish etc. I would be fluent in Thai right now.

[Luke FOSTER]

It depends. If you are from Thailand then English will difficult for you than Thai.But if you are from USA or England then English will easy to learn.

[Marcus Souksi]

7H4T5 7uR3 ?

Yup , thats true : )

[JCauto]

English is a far more difficult language in my opinion. I am talking about getting to a basic level where you can engage in reasonable conversation, rather than reading newspapers and books mind. The reasons are:

1. Grammar. Thai and other related languages (Lao, Khmer) are incredibly easy from a grammar point of view. I can't imagine how a non-Native English or other Romance language speaking person can figure that out.

2. Pronunciation. While tones throw a lot of people off, I found them not to be a problem. I just repeated what I heard and let my sub-conscious sort it out. As I'm closer to monotone in my speaking, the tones don't matter so much, and the Thai seem to be able to pick up what I get wrong based on context.

3. Opportunity. The Thai are happy to speak with you (or at least they were when I was learning it, but this was 24 years ago and in Isaan) and will spend inordinate amounts of their own time to do so since it seems to amuse them and, well, they have more time available. Plus, they're very social people and if you've got the right attitude then you can quite easily gain the chance to practice, usually while eating great food and drinking pseudo-whiskey with bucketloads of soda. Mind you, again, it helps greatly to be in rural areas for this to be the case. Or hanging with tuk-tuk drivers, bargirls and the rest of the Bangkok underclass...

I would encourage you to learn the basics of reading also. This helped me a lot in understanding words, and placement of words within sentences. As I often found myself sitting on some form of transport and looking out the window, it provides more opportunity to improve your understanding throughout the day.

My caveats are that I'm pretty good at language I guess, and learned Hebrew as a child so I think got used to the idea of weird characters and sentences without spaces. But even those whom I knew who weren't so lucky managed to overcome their barriers with effort. I would also suggest taking 4 weeks and doing a daily language course that includes reading, and not having work distractions during this time if you can manage it. I found having this foundation enabled me to get going quickly, and with that and being a social person I was able to have basic conversations within 6 months. The improvement it provided in terms of quality of life and enjoyment of the country was exponential as a result. Good luck!

[Mooner]

Someone mentioned about foriegners speaking English badly and being able to understand them meant Thai was a harder language.

I think its because English speakers are more introspective and have more foresight than their Thai counterparts so we work out in our heads what someone might be saying.

If your in a restaurant here and you ask for khao souwai it doesnt take a rocket scientist to guess what you are trying to say.

Instead you get a blank look

I mean

[mickjn]

Thai is much harder

[silent]

Really Thai should be easier but listening to my Thai wife teaching 2 babies after having had 3 back home, I seem to remember the English was started with identifiable sounds like goo goo ga ga and went from there in progression to the abc's.

Just to amuse myself one day, for excitement I found a jungle sound track on you tube of monkeys that sounded very close to what I was hearing. So now I'm spending my time learning to be a better farang getting drunk while listening to it and trying to learn the language so we can all end up communicating better. It's just that there really doesn't seem to be any logic.

[Katherine007]

For daily use, Thai is not hard. It's just very flexible. Surprisingly, there are no grammar in Thai language (just some principle and rough explanation). You just have to go with it and see if it's understandable or not.

In fact, English hard !! But, wait!!

English is hard but more possible to be learnt. English has rules and grammar and book that can strictly describe the pronunciation and everything.

These day, Thai linguists are still in search for the origin of Thai language. They try hard to establish Thai grammar but they are not very success. Thailand has a very mysterious history and so does the language.

Edited December 9, 2013 by Katherine007

[slapout]

Some Thai can pick up on the English language quickly as can some native English speakers in learning to speak Thai. If you arer brought up with both languages, as my children were, thus I use their assisment.

Spoken Thai is misunderstood between native Thai speakers,much more than is English between native English speakers.

Now granted neither of them are experts on languages, although the eldest does speak, read and write 10 languages (not a misprint) and the youngest only 3, possibility 4. But having listened to this debate numerous times, I have come to the conclusion, that its the student, not the language that is the root of the problem.

[wolfmanjack]

Thai ,i am in my 60s and still cant speak it properly ,but i picked up english when i was only about 2/3 years old.

Thai is definitely the most difficult to learn, 44 I think, letters in the Thai alphabet, 26 in the English, in Thai, different tones for the same words meaning different things, many words sounding similar, pai, mai, dai etc. Maa means dog, horse, come etc in different tones. If Thai language was not tonal, and was like learning French, Spanish etc. I would be fluent in Thai right now.

I agree. I stayed in puerto rico for 1 month and by that time I could look at the newspaper and get the gist of what the stories. I have been in thailand for 14 years and still do not know more than 1,000 words speaking and maybe 10 words i recognize written.

[wolfmanjack]

Someone mentioned about foriegners speaking English badly and being able to understand them meant Thai was a harder language.

I think its because English speakers are more introspective and have more foresight than their Thai counterparts so we work out in our heads what someone might be saying.

If your in a restaurant here and you ask for khao souwai it doesnt take a rocket scientist to guess what you are trying to say.

Instead you get a blank look

I mean

Sometimes i get the same result when asking for a bottle of water. I always turn to my kids and ask if i pronounced it that bad and they tell me I was correct and the waitress is just stupid.

Maybe the poster that said thais do not listen when a falang speaks thai is correct.

[thaimite]

That may be, also native English speakers may be more flexible in their understanding
I remember being in Vietnam with an Indian born Singaporean. He was trying to buy some souvineers and the Vietnamese shop keeper asked me why my friend could not speak English. To me both were easily understood but I had to 'translate' between them

sent from my Internet aware non fruity mobile device

Edit Typos corrected

Edited December 9, 2013 by thaimite

[Ulic]

Far far more words in the English language but Thai is tonal with many words sounding the same. The same is true of Vietnamese,

Indonesian, among others. But relatively few words. So if you are a musician type with a good ear Thai is relatively easy.

If not it is difficult, if you are tone deaf, impossible to learn. That is my take anyway.

[LawrenceN]

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 agree. If your goal is to speak Thai badly, then don't learn to read. Learning the alphabet is not that bad. Big deal, a set of symbols that represent sounds. The hard part is re-training your brain to speak tonally.

The European alphabet is inadequate for the job of learning Thai. If you're going to retro-fit ABC to learn Thai, you need to invent new symbols or combinations to represent sounds that Thai has and English doesn't. Then you need to apply your new alphabet consistently. The temptation is always there to pronounce the new combination as you always have since you learned to read as a child, not the way you're supposed to use it in your newly invented alphabet. For example, let's say you learn the Thai word for "boil water" which you decide to represent as "tom." The word has an unaspirated t, not the th as in Thailand. The o is short. The m is fine as is. And we haven't even mentioned the tone yet. So tomorrow when you wake up, you're going to pronounce it the same as your friend Tom's name, because that's what you see, and no Thai speaker will understand what you're saying. So you've gone to all the work of inventing a new alphabet that only you know, which is a poor approximation of Thai sounds, which you probably can't apply consistently yourself, and you can't learn new vocabulary which is all around you every day, because you don't know how to read what's there.

It only looks daunting. You can learn the Thai alphabet in a few weeks. Get started, and stop imposing illiteracy on yourself.

[simonuk]

Difficulty of language is a matter of how different from your own it is. Therefore French and Spanish are easier for English speakers than Thai. English is as difficult for Thais as Thai is for the English. The main advantage for learners of English is the wealth of learning materials available.

[simonuk]

Difficulty of language is a matter of how different from your own it is. Therefore French and Spanish are easier for English speakers than Thai. English is as difficult for Thais as Thai is for the English. The main advantage for learners of English is the wealth of learning materials available.

[FWIW]

.it's difficult to learn Thai language as the alphabets are more in numbers ,

Sorry to be picky, but both Thai and English have one alphabet, as "alphabet" refers to the entire set of characters in its defined order.

Funny, as that is a mistake I often see a Thai make, but seldom a native educated English speaker.

[LawrenceN]

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.

You need a better teacher. If you can read a word, you can pronounce it correctly, including tone.

[LawrenceN]

and then the writing... all words attached, characters are not read in the order they are written... or not written in the order they are pronounced, your choice!

the alphabet... 44 consonants, 15 vowels!

the writing fonts!! sometimes I can't recognize a character I know because it looks so different in the font used - that's actually very frustrating.

and how many variants of t,d and k does one really need??

So Thai has seven more letters than English? We like to forget that English has 52 letters, not 26, because we have upper and lower case. So this comparison of "all those Thai letters" and "a mere 26" in English is a silly excuse and not true. Though the combinations of vowels are tricky for a beginner, I admit.

[Naam]

Thai is far more difficult than English - I can't even understand how someone can suggest otherwise.

A lot of Thais even don't master their own language.

if Thai is far more difficult than how come even small children can speak Thai but not English?

[FWIW]

.it's difficult to learn Thai language as the alphabets are more in numbers ,

Sorry to be picky, but both Thai and English have one alphabet, as "alphabet" refers to the entire set of characters in its defined order.

Funny, as that is a mistake I often see a Thai make, but seldom a native educated English speaker.

Hmm. Looking at LawrenceN's post, you could almost argue that English has two alphabets (upper and lower case), while Thai - which as far as I am aware has no capitalization, only has one.

dam_n. I need to get a life.

Edited December 9, 2013 by FWIW

[LawrenceN]

I would also like to add that in adition to being tonal if you have any kind of hearing problems it just gets worse. The tone in Thai can give the word a whole new meaning. Where as the different tones in English are used more to stress the word than have a completely different meaning.

I often hear that second sentence. It's not true, or, to be fair, not well stated.

The tone in Thai doesn't give "a word" a whole new meaning. It not only "can" change the meaning, it DOES change the meaning, because it's a different word, with a different spelling and pronunciation. It's an integral part of every word, or to be more accurate, every syllable. Does changing the 's' in sit to a 't' give the "word" a whole new meaning? Of course it does! It's a completely different word. That's what I mean by "integral." If you want to be understood speaking Thai, you have to convince yourself that tones matter. They're not stress, or nuance, or a way of hinting; it's truly another ingredient in what constitutes a word in Thai (and Chinese, Vietnamese, Navajo, and quite a few others).

Sorry for the nit-picking. Most of you probably already get it. This is really hard to get across to non-Thai speakers.