A friend is beginning to learn Thai and was wondering if there is an Android app or windows program that pronounces the letters as they are typed. He looks up printed material frequently by using a Thai keyboard, so it seems that having an app that would speak the letters would be a fairly painless way for him to learn. He's good a recognizing the shapes, but he doesn't know what to call them.

 

Anyone know of such a thing?

 

Thanks!

Not clear what your friend's objective is here.  Is he/she trying to learn to read Thai, in which case there's a new, free reading course at http://thai-notes.com ? Is he/she simply wanting to learn how to pronounce Thai, in which case a book which uses the Haas or Poomsan Becker system of transcription would provide a much faster and easier learning curve, preferably backed up by a CD, and ideally backed up by a native Thai-speaking teacher.

 

If the friend wants to hear how a word is pronounced, then Google translate is reasonably good.  (It's pretty useless at translation, though.) http://thai-language.com also have sound clips for most common words.

 

(Simply pronouncing the individual letters does not let you build up a word.  Consonants change their pronunciation according to whether they are at the start or end of a syllable.  Vowels may or may not be written in the "logical" position relating to their spoken previous consonant.  Many vowels and diphthongs are made up of multiple characters.)

22 hours ago, Oxx said:

Not clear what your friend's objective is here.  Is he/she trying to learn to read Thai, in which case there's a new, free reading course at http://thai-notes.com ? Is he/she simply wanting to learn how to pronounce Thai, in which case a book which uses the Haas or Poomsan Becker system of transcription would provide a much faster and easier learning curve, preferably backed up by a CD, and ideally backed up by a native Thai-speaking teacher.

 

If the friend wants to hear how a word is pronounced, then Google translate is reasonably good.  (It's pretty useless at translation, though.) http://thai-language.com also have sound clips for most common words.

 

(Simply pronouncing the individual letters does not let you build up a word.  Consonants change their pronunciation according to whether they are at the start or end of a syllable.  Vowels may or may not be written in the "logical" position relating to their spoken previous consonant.  Many vowels and diphthongs are made up of multiple characters.)

 

http://thai-notes.com

 

My Norton is highlighting this as a dangerous site.  This seems to be more for annoyance than installing harmful code but still suggest people think before accessing.

Looks like an extremely useful site and my Firefox WOT app (web of trust) has nothing naughty to say about it. I'll let you know when the Russian porno sites  start filling my screen.

 

On 12/17/2016 at 8:49 PM, Oxx said:

Not clear what your friend's objective is here.  Is he/she trying to learn to read Thai, . . .

 

The goal is learn the Thai alphabet "painlessly", I guess. He does the typing using in-screen keyboards, so the thought of a speaking KB came to mind. In my 'net searches I ran across such things for Thai learners of English meant, I think, for children, but not the reverse.

 

I did mention thai-language.com to him before, but thai-notes is new to me. And, so far, at least harmless.

 

Thanks to all!