Learn to Write in Thai
I hear people say how hard Thai is because there are so many letters in the alphabet though really there is only 44 constanents and 21 vowels and 5 tone markers. So really that's only 60 you've got to remember and practice. English has 52! So it's only 8 more come on. Sure our alphabet has 26 letters but there is still upper case and lower case you have to learn to write. Writing Thai is just basic memorisation and if you've already bought the Learn Thai Alphabet in a day ebook then using the Thai Alphabet Stencils book you should be able to not only say the letters but write them too.
Remember if you are a VIP member of this site you will be able to download this book and others for free in the VIP members only area. But if you don't want to get VIP membership you can still purchase the book seperately by going to the Thai Vocabulary website and buying it for $9.
A lot of people have asked my why I don't send the printed out book so I'll explain that here. Firstly the Alphabet stencils book is just a bonus book the the Thai vocabulary training worksheets. I'd have to print out both books bind them which costs about 100 baht a book. Then I'd have to send you the book there goes another 100 baht including registered post. So now I'd be going to the post office sending out books for 20 baht a day. And I'd have to sell the book now for $20 hardly a deal. So for $9 you can download the books print them out for $2 and you've got you're own Thai language training course.
Here's a video I made to show you how the Alphabet Stencils book works.
The shapes to remember are more complex than the english letters, e.g. a complex vowel sound can be made up of several glyphs, but the glyphs do not produce that sound if read one-by-one.
There are also rules about implied vowel sounds, tone based on consonant group, placement of the glyphs (within a single syllable group the glyphs are not always placed left-to-right), a.s.o.
I think you need to be some sort of savant to learn all this in a single day.
I know several people after reading the book at http://learnthaiinaday.com they were able to read Thai words after just a few days.
Learning to read is not hard, the rules almost tell you the sound and the tone, and after a while you will recognize many of the words by sight. However learning to write (or type) correctly is a lot harder because there are many ways to spell the same sounds but only one correct way, and you just need to memorize spelling thousands of words the rules do not really help.
It’s true reading is so much easier than writing, things are not as they appear, i’m a terrible speller in English when it comes to Thai i’m even worse.
I think I would need a lot of convincing to learn to read and write Thai and the translator on Facebook is worse than useless. However I have learnt one thing written in Thai ‘5555’. Probably not in any of your books though.
Not to mention that thai is phonetic, and largely, for the most part, pronounced as written. I was helping a thai with his English and was graphing out sounds – it turns out that English is the more complicated, with vowels and sounds that change (rules? We never really learned ‘rules’ besides grammar and ‘i before e,’ etc.)
For instance: home, oven, offer – why does the vowel ‘o’ not have the same sound? There are some rules in the pronunciation of English, but to really get to the nitty-gritty one has to figure them out themselves.
Yes, thai has all of those consonants and vowels, but English has them all already – and we don’t have to use three or more different forms of the same consonant to pronounce it right – we have clusters as well, that once again, seem to have no rules included: thin, there, bathe, math.
Yes, I’m one of those who learned the thai alphabet in a matter of days, but to finish and be able to read words, etc., I didn’t see what the hype was about, other than being startled by the increase in letter forms.
If you want to panic, check out the Isaan script of the old days in Siam, or the Lanna script for that matter, and then freak out – but Thai? No, not worth it.
so you think it’s not worth reading thai or maybe I read it wrong? Without being able to read Thai I wouldn’t have hooked up as many threesomes in Thailand as I have.