'teach Yourself Thai' Course/ Book.

[Richb2004v2]

Has anyone used the ‘Teach Yourself Thai’ book? If so, is it worth buying? This range of books are used by the Uk Open University, and I have used them before, finding them to be very good. They are however not cheap, and I would prefer an endorsement before buying. I saw the book for sale outside Thailand recently, but haven’t spotted it in Thailand. Alternatively could anyone recommend another similar self study course?

Thanks.

[onebir]

Has anyone used the ‘Teach Yourself Thai’ book?

There's quite a detailed review here:

http://thaiarc.tu.ac.th/thai/review2.html

He says

'I am left with rather mixed feelings: in brief, following this teach-your-self course has helped me to learn some Thai, but after 6 months, my knowledge is far less than what I expected – which perhaps speaks more of my limitations than those of the book.'

I have similar feelings after years of learning mandarin - so it would be useful to know if the reviewer had studied other tonal languages

quite a few more reviews if you google...

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=teach+you...-8&oe=utf-8

[mittheimp]

Its probably the best Thai language book available for beginners - although there isn much competition. Its pretty good for learning the script - which definitely helps with learning the overall language. The ideal way to learn though would be using that book with a Thai speaker (preferably someone who has some idea about teaching) but of course this isn't always possible.

[meadish_sweetball]

Teach yourself Thai was the first book that really helped me understand the cornerstones of the Thai language.

Before that, I had tried to use the limited phrases available in Lonely Planet and a near-useless pocket dictionary I bought (of which there are many in Thailand, buyer beware) which tried to represent Thai in Roman letters but did not even have a system for separating tones.

'Teach yourself Thai' has a fairly life-like type of dialogue suitable for foreigners who are planning to stay longterm in Thailand - expats and frequent tourists. The greatest use I had of the book was memorizing these dialogues to a T and spending lots of time with listening comprehension.

I had some issues with it though:

1. The reading/writing part advances rather quickly and would need more careful explanation.

2. The transcription system is quite weird and will not be useful for transcribing Thai in any other situations or purposes than that of this book itself. The author's idea was to create a transcription as close to RP English pronunciation as possible, so the sound-letter correspondence is as bad as in English spelling.

This can be seen as an advantage if you are a.) English and speak with an accent close to RP, or have a fair idea of what RP English sounds like b.) Can not be bothered learning a transcription system that is closer to the International Phonetic Alphabet.

3. For a beginner, once past the two-three initial chapters, the dialogues are quite rapid. In actual fact, they are not, they are slower than most regular conversations... so in retrospect I can see why they tried to find a middle ground where everything is pronounced clearly, but the rhythm of the dialogue still flows in a natural way.. ideally, you should learn how words are pronounced carefully in isolation as well as how they are tied together in everyday speech.

All in all, I do recommend it.

[kriswillems]

I've also bought this book and it's not that bad. In fact, it's better than other books I bought. It starts easy and the complexity gradually increases in a logical way. Some other books try to teach you every little detail at once while other books don't show enough detail (and don't teach you the writing system). This book is somewhere in the middle and I think that's great

For me it was nearly impossible to only study Thai language from a book, because I didn't get any feedback on my pronounciation and there was nobody to correct me when I misunderstood something. It took quiet a while to forget about the things I studied wrongly.

Now I changed my approach and I learnt to read and I am following a course. This approach seems to be much better than studying from a book.

The transcription system is very confusing and it's quiet hard to forget the transcriptions. When I think about a Thai word the first thing that pops up in my mind is the transcription in English. It's hard to change this to Thai script. If I would start over again I would try to study all the Thai letters first.

The transcription system is also only interesting for native English speakers. If you're a native speaker of another european language with a German root(scandinavian languages or German or Dutch) or a Roman root(French, Spanish or Italian), the transcription system used by Thai language books written in English is rather confusing.

[jaithai]

I'm using this book as well as "Thai for Beginners" by Benjawan Poomsan Becker. Both take you through stages using conversational dialogue as well as introducing written language. I liked Beckers book well enough that I recently ordered her software and her Intermediate book. The Becker series seems to dispense with the transliteration toward the end of the first book. I understand that the software program allows you to turn it on or off as needed. Good!

As others have cited, proper pronunciation is the biggest hurdle. I've made friends of the owner and waitresses at my local Thai restaurant (since I am living in farangland) and now they all help me with my "homework" whenever I come in.