Best method to learn reading/writing

[fin5prtw]

I've tried, and failed, a few different approaches with learning the thai alphabet.. I'm now looking at a couple of iPhone apps and giving them a try... Can anyone recommend a good (preferably free!) app or another method to learn? I've never been great at languages but I am starting to understand the local (southern) thai dialect fairly well and can speak enough to get by (with awful tones)... Hopefully if I can finally master the script I may be able to advance much faster... Tips and suggestions welcomed!!

Thank you

[Shiver]

I'm not a proficient Thai speaker, but for me the Rosetta Stone was/is pretty good. It is not comprehensive, as you'll realise if you use it, but it does cover spoken, written and reading etc in a way that feels more like a kids game than a chore in school. Some people really like the school approach and find it useful, but I don't fit that group, and prefer to learn when I feel like it, and absorb it better if I can set my own schedule.

I used Rosetta when I first got here, and got up to a level (I don't know, maybe level 10-12 in their system) in a couple of days. Years later I started from scratch and got to that level with zero errors (on multiple choice), which surprised me, so something must have stuck, even if my automatic recall isn't all that - it's stored in there somewhere. It's not the be all and end all, but I like it. I also did the 'high speed Thai' sampler as advertised on TVF a while back and thought that was good, but in a different way. I think it's about $150 or thereabouts. I promised myself I'd buy that and dedicate an hour a day to it for at least 5 days a week once I knew I could stay here permanently (visa reasons), which is looking less likely than ever at the moment.

[Richard W]

Have a chart of the consonants arranged in a grid by phonetic similarity, as one would for learning Sanskrit or Pali. This will make it much easier to remember the Thai classes.

Start with the common letters and vowels first. Take advantage of the fact that some consonants are modifications of others. These are the one that turn the 5 by 5 grid of ko kai to mo ma into a 5 by 8 grid with lots of missing letters. (Once expanded, three of the missing letters are so sala, so ruesi and so suea. Blames the Indians for that part of the mess. They didn't want a 5 by 6 grid with two gaps, now filled by obsolete kho khuat and still-relevant fo fa.)

Writing is going to have to depend on memorising of the spelling. While the vowels will largely take care of themselves, the consonants will have to be memorised. A knowledge of Sanskrit grammar is of very little help.

[SlyAnimal]

The Walen app is free + pretty good as it includes recorded speech of the letters etc.

Main thing with learning the Thai alphabet is constant repetition. Keep writing down + saying the letters out loud, and covering them up then writing them out + forcing yourself to read the letters (I think the Walen app has a test too which would help for this, but I can't remember).

If you do 1 or 2 hours per day, with say 10 new letters per hour (but also constantly keep revising the old ones as well), you could likely learn the alphabet + how to form basic words pretty quickly (Maybe in a few weeks).

[fin5prtw]

Thank you so much to all of you for taking the time to give such great replies, it's interesting to hear of your different approaches and if the methods you prefer.. I'm feeling more hopeful again now that I'll succeed this time!! I'll let you know how I get on in the not so distant future. Thank you again

[timmyp]

Have a chart of the consonants arranged in a grid by phonetic similarity, as one would for learning Sanskrit or Pali. This will make it much easier to remember the Thai classes.

I'm going to guess that you studied Sanskrit or Pali! I studied Sanskrit many years ago, and applying the same phonetic grid made loads of sense to me, but that seems like too much info for the non-Devanagari acquainted learner. So while I think it's a useful approach, I wouldn't recommend it to the average person learning Thai.

Learning to read and write is just a matter of putting in the time, which means constant review. Memorizing a bunch of stuff can really suck, but it's something you have to go through...

Make sure that you are learning to read and write the letters with the correct sound. If you don't have the aspirates and non-aspirates worked out, you need to get that straight or it's all going to get mixed together. If you don't conceptually get the tones, work on those before you tackle the alphabet. You don't have to master tones and aspirates, but you must at least get how they work first, then take on the alphabet.

[bearpolar]

The Walen app is free + pretty good as it includes recorded speech of the letters etc.

Main thing with learning the Thai alphabet is constant repetition. Keep writing down + saying the letters out loud, and covering them up then writing them out + forcing yourself to read the letters (I think the Walen app has a test too which would help for this, but I can't remember).

If you do 1 or 2 hours per day, with say 10 new letters per hour (but also constantly keep revising the old ones as well), you could likely learn the alphabet + how to form basic words pretty quickly (Maybe in a few weeks).

I have just came up on a lot offree time and i decided to dedicate a 1-2hrs a day everyday on learning thai..

Would starting with this app and learning the alphabet actually work? I do understand some thai as my wife is thai. i understand thai just as good as my youngest kid(2.5yo)

Or should i learn to speak/understand it better first?

[Gecko123]

Using a wall chart and getting a basic handle on how the tone rules work is a necessary step, but once you become familiar with the basics the best way I found to master the tone system was to simply practice recognizing tones by selecting a paragraph in Thai at your reading level and doing the following:

First line: write out in Thai script the sentence, leaving 5 lines between lines.

Second line: Identify the tone of the word and make a tone mark for each word. It is important to force yourself to identify the tone before checking a dictionary. If you really can't figure out the tone, check the tone in the dictionary.

Third line: write out the transliterated pronunciation of the word. Eventually, you can drop this step.

Fourth line: translate into English the meaning of the Thai sentence.

Simple example to illustrate method:

Line one: ผม/ไป/โรง/เรียน/ทุก/วัน (would normally not use backslash unless you were still having trouble differentiating between words)

Line two: rising/middle/middle/middle/high/middle (would normally use tone markers rather than tone names)

Line three: pohm pai rong rian tuk wan

Line four: I go to school every day.

I was able to make rapid progress using this method. Do this for a while, and very quickly your confidence in reading and recognizing tones with improve dramatically.

Edited May 12, 2015 by Gecko123

[siam2007]

going to a language school is always the best option in my opinion, as there will be somebody who actually evaluates your pronounciation and your entire progress. I learned reading and then writing in MaeSai from an Expat who not only speaks, reads and writes Thai perfectly after living in TH for more than 30 years, but as well has a complete knowledge of every single Thai character and its history.

Then I continued at a very old-fashioned but highly effective language-course in Chiang Mai. The teacher treated all of us like 6-year old Pratom-1 students, but her approach was very effective (and who knows, maybe we deserved to be treated like 6-year-old skul-Kitz ^^ )

[SlyAnimal]

I have just came up on a lot offree time and i decided to dedicate a 1-2hrs a day everyday on learning thai..

Would starting with this app and learning the alphabet actually work? I do understand some thai as my wife is thai. i understand thai just as good as my youngest kid(2.5yo)

Or should i learn to speak/understand it better first?

Yes I think it would help, you'd need to be writing out the Thai letters by hand as well for the muscle memory + it especially helps if you're inclined towards kinesthetic learning. But the app is really good for learning to identify and pronounce the letters by itself, and would be a big part of learning the consonants/vowels.

You'd need someone to help you in regards to putting the letters together into words (Your wife could help you with that), but after that the app has a similar system for learning words in Thai, which you could use to learn new words + practice writing in Thai at the same time (again I'd reccommend writing them by hand and getting your wife to check how well you did).

There are also tone rules for reading/writing, which I think the Walen app doesn't delve into, and your wife wouldn't be able to teach you (Native speakers usually don't know how to explain it, just as most Native English speakers have trouble explaining some grammar rules etc, despite inherently knowing the rules).

There are resources available which explain the rules though, a search for "Thai tone rules" should yield multiple image results which you could print out that explain what class each consonant is + what tone is formed from what combination of consonant classes + vowels + tone markers.

As suggested above, a language school

is usually best for learning, since you then have an experienced teacher to guide and critique you. However if you're motivated to learn and can get your wife to give objective criticism, then you can go quite far just studying by yourself (e.g. Get her to be a bit strict and not too "nice" regarding your pronunciation. She's used to how you say things though so it's difficult for her to be objective).

For myself, I learnt to read/write myself when I first came to Thailand, I didn't have the Walen app, it would have made learning a lot easier. But I got a friend to help critique my writing when I learnt the alphabet, and otherwise just studied by myself. I didn't initially learn the tone rules, that came later (almost 4 years later lol), at which point I memorized the consonant classes in about 2-3 hours and learnt the rules in another 2-3 hours (Although for instant recall, you need to be applying the rules over a longer time period + reading/writing regularly).

And yes I recommend learning to read/write first and then learning more vocabulary, as then you'll learn better pronunciation than using phonetics & practice your reading/writing at the same time.

[bearpolar]

Yeah we're out of the country, wish i had been to a school or could go right now.

I guess i'll do a rosetta stone then work on the wallen app and continu in school once we're back.

Thanks.

[Johpa]

Just get the kids books with the picture of the chicken ( ก ไก่)and the egg (ข ไข่) and work at it. There is no substitution for putting the effort into rote memorization, a skill sadly maligned in our less than brave new world of education. Then focus on single words on signs and labels.

[bearpolar]

Im thinking of getting a children's book if i can't memorize the harder letters. I have been working on the popular book by benjawan becker and some help from www.thai-language.com (amazing site, i will soon donate to it for sure). The book is very good but outdated. Some letters they use are not used anymore, some letters are in a weird font that makes absolutely no sense. CH looks like a tall vase instead of a weird @ and some excercise make you write from their english letter spellings into thai which is way too hard because the way they use tones is not standarized and a lot of us never actually learn tones too deeply so i just skip those.

Overall its a good book if you're clever enough to know what section to skip over and go back to later. Like if you have not learned the whole alphabet, dont start learning the 20 ways to tell time

I still cant believe i can read more than half of the alphabet after a few days of work with this book. It's also really fun seeing how bad a lot of thais mispronounce words. I was certain shower was Ham-Nam and shoes long-kaow :>