Is there maybe a Thai restaurant or maybe you can find exchange students from Thailand at the local university (via notice board) or something for tandem language learning. Maybe they can help you with those problems?
Hey Lindie! I like to know about your progress. It inspires me! Take it easy and keep going! I would wonder if you try to learn about Portuguese Language, coudl be harder than spanish but it's a great and funny thing to do! Brazil is nothing that they're saying in the Europe, Asia or USA. Brazil is interesting, try it! :D See you there! Keep Going!
Hey, would you happen to have screenshots of your book you wrote down, I have been studying for about 1 month but only 30 minutes to 1 hour a day and it's taking me forevvverrrrrrr
Hey Lindie! Not sure if you're gonna read this, but just wanted to say: don't give up! The sense of fulfillment you get when you start reading words in Thai without thinking too much is priceless. I learned the Thai alphabet a few years ago solely through Thai Pod 101 and my advice would be to sloooowly learn each letter, following their 25 lessons on the alphabet. At first it will seem like you're cracking a code: What's the root consonant? Is this a long or short vowel? Oh wait, are there actually silent letters? What's the tone??? It takes a few days/weeks to get accustomed to the writing but once you're comfortable with it it's like you've gained a superpower honestly hahahah So yeah, good luck and carry on, you got this!!
Yeah I haven’t even started the letters. I’m taking the approach that we do to babies. Speak and figure out the words. Subtitles and watching media on slower speeds to try to match tones up while using a dictionary to see which words mean what
As a thai, I can remember it took me 2 years to memorize all 44 letters when I was in kindergarten 😅 and normally, it takes at least 3 years for thai students to learn all the thai reading & writing rules from school. The faster way would be remembering how each word is pronounced regardless of thinking about the rules (like the way we remember how each chinese character or kanji is pronounced). Some thais can’t remember the tone rules and they use this trick instead. Keep it up, Lindie! You can do this!
Wow! If it took a native speaker that much time then I shouldn’t hurry myself to “master” the alphabet! After all, it’s for fun!! Thanks for your comments
Yes I thought also, the grammar of thai surely is not that bad...right? If I know other tonal languages like Vietnamese and Chinese, would the main challenge be the writing. The grammar does not seem to be so bad...?
As a Thai person who good at this course during school time 😅 I agree that our alphabet and vowel rules are pretty hard to master even for Thai people as there are rules for everything from initial letter, vowel, tone mark ending letter, and each has quite complex rules but the good thing is there is no exception case unlike English. It might looks hard as first when you starting learn to remember alphabet since there are many repetitive sound letters and many have similar looks (common errors for every Thai users), but if you overcome these everything else is easy to understand. To put it simply Thai language is karaoke other languages (almost every words are borrowed😂 even my name are borrowed from hindi) Ps. Your pronunciation was all correct🎉 and sorry if my english is confusing 😅
As a person who loves languages and asia, i always say that Thai is the one of the most beautiful languages in asia! Compared korean or japanese (that i used to "speak" when i was younger), i can't even say hi, but it just sounds soooo good hearing it! Once i read that if royals around the world had a "code language" it would be thai, and i couldn't agree more!
Your English was perfectly easy to understand, despite a few minor errors in grammar :) You are very good at expressing yourself in our language and should be very proud! 🖖
Thai is definitely a language that requires a lot of dedication and motivation to learn. It's more frustrating that there are limited resources available, both free and new, to learn the langauge, and what printed resources are available tend to be dated. When I decided to start learning it, I looked into personal lessons right away because I knew with it being a tonal language, if I relied on self-studying, I wouldn't be able to tell if my pronunciation or intonation with the tones would be correct without someone telling me. Compared to Korean, Thai is definitely harder is some aspects, especially the alphabet and tone rules. I'm still have moment where I feel I'm still at a beginner level, then when I go back and look at A1 level lessons and realize that I already understand everything from A1 and A2.
As a self motivated Thai learner since Covid started, I can only say that time will be your friend and there will be many A-ha moments along the way. Aside from grammar, I listen to podcasts and now slowly I can begin to describe my own actions in my target language. By the way, your videos have been helpful in continuing my motivation. All the best.
Nagyon érdekes, hogy megmutatod, hogyan sajátítasz el egy nyelvet a nulláról! Köszönet érte! És azért is, hogy megmutatod, mennyire szenvedsz egy-egy dologgal. Sokat jelent az őszinteséged, hogy nem csak azt mutatod meg, mikor már folyékonyan beszélsz egy nyelven.
And yes the Thai Alphabet is so so so hard! But I really recommend “Read to Learn Thai in 10 Days” it is specifically directed to foreigners. Each chapter comes in digestible batches and the mnemonics for tones and the classes are so so helpful! Again….not managable in 10 days XD I think…
At first it was highly frustrating to learn the alphabets. But when I started being patient and not giving up, I started to have less problems with it. Resources and your own patience are crucial. Don’t give up! Also this yt channel is amazing for grammar : Thai with Mod
I'm only dabbling in Thai, but you're so right about the alphabet. For the most part, I have it down but it's still pretty hard. I literally spent a few weeks on Drops just doing the consonants until I got it lol Good luck with your studies!
You are moving a lot faster than most people who pick up Thai, naturally because you know how to learn a language, so don't worry just keep going. For learning tones I recommend getting a list of short Thai words making columns that have the word, the initial consonant class, the vowel length, the ending sound, and the tone marker, and "calculate" the tone rule in the last column. Do it a lot and the rules become second nature. There are only 18 after all.
When I started to learn Thai I learnt the majority of my Thai using TV series and TH-cam and so didn’t need to read. When I started to learnt how to read, it was a bit easier since I know what the word is supposed to sound like. But don’t give up, you can do it! :)
I swear, each time a language has easy grammar, the script and pronunciation are hard as hell. It's hard to find really good Thai resources, too (especially for free) Love seeing these updates, however! Hope you won't give up and take it easy with Thai :)
Like you, at first, I really struggled with learning Vietnamese. It was only when I decided to download Immersive Translate did everything change. Once I started using Immersive Translate every day to watch Netflix, that was when I started seeing results. I started to become more and more immersed in my target language, and my language skills even improved. I’m really glad I downloaded the plugin and couldn’t be happier.
Don't worry too much Lindie! I've lived in Thailand for 10 years and I still haven't fully grasped the language, there's just too much to learn but over time you'll find it easier to grasp on
I'm Thai and i agree that my language is hard lol. I am still learning English and just started German recently. It's hard but I hope you enjoy Thai language journey! Your pronunciation is on point too i guess because you already have learned Vietnamese before. In my opinion Thai and Vietnamese have similar tone. You can do it Lindie!
I am a Thai follower and have been following you for years. You were the first polyglot on TH-cam I knew and have been helping me explore the fun of learning new languages. Since I am a native user of the Thai language, I cannot say much whether this language is more difficult or not. But one thing I can assure you that once you have a grasp of how to read Thai, which I know could be quite challenging for people who are not used to the Abugida system (plus Thai incorporates tone into it), the next step of understanding how sentence structure in Thai work is not that difficult, it is quite intuitive I would say since the Thai grammar is superfluid. Still, there are a few important things to keep in mind, or I should say these are the fundamentals of how Thai grammar work, 1. Thai is a Topic+commentary language, so it’s not strictly SVO language (kind of like Mandarin) 2. Thai has a serial verb construction feature (to a higher degree compared to Mandarin) which can pretty much string a thought in a super long clause. And that's why there are a lot of highly descriptive compound words in Thai 3. Thai is a super high-context language. (since you are familiar with Japanese and Korean, it’s basically the same concept) so no need to repeat a redundant word and you can just leave out a lot of pronouns, subjects, or whatever if the context is clear. 4.The social hierarchy of Thai language is important, polite language, casual language, formal language etc (kind of the same concept in Korean and Japanese but not as strictly as these 2 languages as Thai is not conjugate level of language to the verbs or nouns but rather use extensive polite words and particles) Hope you have fun learning Thai and thank you for keep inspiring me to study languages.
I think you shouldn't be too hard on yourself. Just take it slow. I've been studying Japanese for the last year, and when I was learning the alphabet, i used to write the hiragana and katakana tables again and again. And with each lesson from Japanese pod 101, I kinda just got it eventually. Of course, Thai is really different, but i think dividing the letters in sections might help. And you'll get the rules and all eventually... 👍👍 Sending lots of love from India ❤️❤️
I actually discovered your channel while I was living in Thailand! I lived there for almost 2 years and I struggled with this language so much. I practiced speaking as much as possible, but everyone wanted to practice their English with me. I actually gave up learning the Thai script because it was so complicated. I even studied Thai at Patong Language School and I just pulled open the textbook they gave me and there isn't even any Thai characters in it!!! Everything is in the roman alphabet characters which made learning the language easier. I also have the book Thai for Beginners by Benjawan Poomsan Becker and I actually liked the setup of that book. However, the CDs that go with the book didn't work on my computer.. so that sucked. That book you do practice both the Thai script and the roman characters. I don't study Thai anymore, but just flipping through this book and my notes, I can actually recall quite a bit! I now just study French and Chinese. Your channel has been great for motivating me! Also... I feel Chinese is way easier than Thai! How!? What!? Why!? HAHA
Chinese is way easier than Thai?! How what why?! But to be fair the most challenging thing with Chinese is the writing system. I'm learning Thai while my sister is learning Chinese. So I tried learning the 100 most common Chinese words for fun. It was actually not so hard.. Maybe because I was already used to tones with my Thai learning. Even the strokes order didn't seem so strange to me. 😅
Lmaob this was literally my experience. It was actually kind of annoying that noone wanted to help but expected me to know the language. I'm also on Mandarin now but mainly focusing on Taiwanese dialect (😍)
I have seen your videos learning many languages. Finally my language! I hope that you have a fun time learning Thai. I know that it's not very easy path (even thai people thinks it's hard subject in school.) You did a great job in this video!
I tried several free resources like you to learn Thai... and after a big migraine, two options: It's too hard for me or I have to change my approach. As I have a bad temper, I hang on but I took the option of 1:1 course on Preply. It's much more comfortable (for me) to have someone explain and correct me. And I found a tutor who speaks both English and French (my native language) so he tries to find "equivalences" for certain pronunciations. I know you have more experience in lingustic learning than I do but the 1:1 lessons could perhaps help you at least for the basics.
Hello Lindie! I would love to see a video where you talk through what it is like to be at each level in a given language. Comparing A2/B1/B2 etc, explaining what it’s like to try to navigate languages from each of these levels. In my language learning I always feel like I am waiting for some magical turning point where I’m “better” but i never get there cause the post is always moving! It feels really hard to measure progress. I think some insight into the levels would be so helpful. I feel like seeing you talk about this would be so awesome.
Thank you for sharing. This shows that learning a new language is not easy; it takes so much courage, motivation and determination. I can say that you showed us the dark side not to discourage us , but to tell us that we all go through baby steps and mastery needs time.
Hi, Lindie! I'm your Thai follower, and I've been learning different languages for a while, just like you. I know that learning the Thai alphabet can be difficult, but once you've mastered it, the rest of the language is relatively simple compared to other western or European languages. I also noticed that your tone and pronunciation are quite impressive, in the previous videos. Please don't give up! Our language is interesting, and it will open up a whole new world to you once you become more familiar with it. If you need help learning Thai or have any questions about it, please feel free to reach out to me. I'll do my best to help. Good luck!
Yes!! This exactly what I want to know. Can I learn Thai if the grammar is not so complex. But the language is just mostly about getting the writing system...hope it's not impossible :(
@@sheeliekittie9298 Hi, it’s definitely possible! In terms of speaking, it’s easy to pick up. Other than the present tense, there are no other tenses in Thai which makes it simple to communicate ideas. However, Thai is a tonal language, and it’s important to master this aspect, more or less so that people can understand you without any problem (most of time your speaking will still be understood even if your tone is not 100%). Also, one of the most important things I don’t see Thai learners do when starting is to pick a context where they will be using the language. Because Thai is a contextual language, meaning there are various usages of words across different contexts. Formal and informal language also depends on who you’re addressing such as, younger or older people, family, friends, monks, or Thai Royal members, including in writing and reading (even Thai people themselves don’t know all the words for every situation). For example, if you initial goal is to speak casually with friends or simply to get by in Thailand, then learn those relevant words for those situations first. When starting, be specific about your goals. You can definitely start speaking it first while learning the writing system at the same time or later. The important thing is to find the right resources/teacher that can provide you with proper and relevant information. Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions :)
@@phonlakritlapjaturapit7970 it is beautiful though...I think I would first like to learn the basic phrases. And then I would try reading and writing. Do you speak any other languages and are you currently reside in Thailand?
Don't be discouraged, Lindie! At first, Thai also seemed to be the hardest language ever to me, but that was mostly due to the lack of good resources for self-study. I'm an independent-style learner as well, but I eventually gave up and decided to hire a teacher to get me started and it's helped immensely. It was especially hard to read some words because some Thai letters are not pronounced, but are written anyway because of spelling rules. Once you get used to the seemingly impossible alphabet, spelling, and tone rules, it gets easier. Thai grammar is not overly complicated, nor is the vocab. Trust me, learning Thai tone rules is much less complicated than memorizing the pinyin and the tone of every single hanzi or applying all Hungarian cases.
Hey Lindie, love the content. Recommendation : treat Thai characters like Chinese. What I mean by this is that once you’re reviewed all the possible characters, don’t bother trying to memorize them NOW. Jump straight into words, and just for now use romanization AND the Thai. Then for review, write out the words with a mind for what characters you’re writing. Thai is famously complicated and it’s not per se phonetic bc Thai is a very old alphabet. So bc the romanization is also not per se reliable, don’t forget a TTS software for all words / Forvo (native speakers record the words themselves)
I think what work the best for me it is not to make a language learning plan per se, but an overall guideline so I can switch or accommodate easily if needed. But good Luck, Lindie! The beggining is always the hardest!
Please dont give up. Its not as difficult as you think. I learned by ignoring the alphabet consanants and tones etc and concentrated on learning phrases and vocabulary and listening to pronounciation by Thais. I may not be fluent but at least I can communicate which is the important thing.
There are some native English speaking TH-camrs, who can speak Thai fluently. I believe they live in Thailand. Maybe they have some videos about the Thai language :) Just search for them on TH-cam, you will find them for sure :)
keep going!! As Thai, surely English is much more harder haha. I think Thai is like Chinese, you remember the words then just say it and you still can communicate. Also, Thai ppl is so generous and openminded with visitors so we sure try to understand you and you will find it a lot easier than your thought. 😉
The Teach Yourself website has a couple of free resources for Thai. Zero idea how good they are, as I have not officially started Thai yet. Sad to hear you are struggling. I start Thai in December. I am now in a pre-study phase. I watch at least an hour of Thai TV every day and I have figured out how to say a handful of things on my own. Always knew the script was going to be difficult, so I am working my way through slowly. I only know about 10 consonants so far, but I know them pretty well. Hopefully, I will have all the letters down before getting into Thai in 2 months. 加油！頑張れ！You got this。
I had that same reaction as you when I first follow through that thaipod101 alphabets video 😂 Then I signed up for their 7 days free trial on their website just to access to the remaining lessons on the alphabets and catch up to all of them before the trial ends lol. It's been a few months of me learning Thai and I'm more than comfortable with the writings already and trust me it just takes times get used to them. Currently still mastering the tones and I can just say that since I really like watching Thai series, that helps A TON in my language learning journey especially for speaking purposes. I wish the best in your journey to learning this beautiful language!
Don't give up Lindie :-) it happens when you start learning any language I guess. Since I am a fan of channel, feel free when and if you need to practice your conver :-)
God bless you for even trying though 😂 you’re doing so well (I’ve watched the other videos since this one too) but this makes me grateful I’m only learning Korean lol
I'm learning Thai too. First of all, start with listening exercises . You will get discouraged if you start learning through reading and writing. Thai has one of the easiest verb conjugations; there is barely any. With that it makes it so easy to learn through listening and light reading (you know glancing through a sentence, not to learn how to read and write but just to have a feel of it)
As someone who has been studying Thai for the past year and a half, as well as Lao which is super similar to Thai but with less resources for learning, I feel your pain. 😅 A few of the Thai letters still throw me off sometimes and I have yet to master the tones. However, I want to encourage you in that even though I haven’t mastered the tones or the high-mid-low classes for the consonants, I’ve still be able to communicate and have even been told my pronunciation is very good. So I feel like if you need to for sanity’s sake, you can put those parts on the back burner for a little while. Obviously I’m still planning to work on mastering them myself, but I have to take my sweet time with it.
A few tips from an intermediate thai learner, I think you should focus on practise speaking and listening at first and learn the thai script however focus on all the vowels and most common consonants and you will learn to recognize the lesser used ones later (ex. ส and ท is usually the most commonly used for s and t respectively while ถ is sometimes used and I have never seen ฑ.) I would recomend to ask a thai teacher for the used letters. the hardest part in thai is the script and the easy part is the grammar according to me. Here is some thai movies that I recomend you watching: Bad Genius (the movies and series) and girl from nowhere. Thai series have become more popular in SEA region and is according to me a good way to learn how to speak naturally and intresting to watch too.
Hi Lindie, I would definitely recommend, if you haven't already, read the Cracking Thai Fundamentals by Stuart Jay Raj. It's helped me a lot when learning the tones and alphabet and has some generally interesting concepts in there. Also, although I know you're very experienced in learning languages but when its comes to Thai, I would try and focus more on the speaking and listening rather than spending too much time try to learn the tone rules though reading and writing. For me, it started to connect a bit more that way around. Good luck with your journey!!
Hi, Lindie! So I’ve started learning Thai some months ago and maybe I can share some tips. I also used thaipod101 to learn the alphabet (I used their 7-days free trial to get access to the whole series on the alphabet) and it’s honestly the best resource I’ve seen on that. The class system and the rules are daunting, so I don’t recommend trying to learn everything by heart right away. First of all, to learn the class of each letter I recommend color-coding them in your notes. In my case, I wrote all the high class consonants in red, the middle class consonants in green and the low class consonants in blue. It helps a lot when I’m trying to read anything. As for the endless rules, I suggest you actually learn the spelling of some words and, if you know what class the consonant belongs to, it will be actually easier to learn the rules from there. For example, knowing that มา (to come) is pronounced with a middle tone and มาก (very) is pronounced with a falling tone, you aready know that low class consonants have a middle tone in live end syllables and that they have a falling tone in dead end syllables with a long vowel. I don’t know if I’ve made myself clear, but I hope it helps. Thai is a beautiful language, don't give up!
I am in around 5 hours in and I went through mid and low consonants and long wovels, checked the tone rules and i am confused. So I changed my approach, so currently just reviewing all the letters (not memorizing them) and starting to learn simple words and their spelling. This helps me to memorize the letters muuuuuch better.
When I watched your previous video where you said that you will start with Thai again I came across with a video from Stuart Jay Raj - Thai vowels for dummies in 5 min. It was really helpful to learn the pronunciation with his system, give it a try! Totally recommended
Hey, I totally get you. I did the BananaThai course you were talking about. And yes it was quite expensive but it actually helped me alot. Also for some it might be to slow or detailed but i really liked it. You don't just learn the Consonants and Vowles but also tone rules and like exepsions e.g when the vowle just randomly disappears (because why not?) Thai's were really having fun creating their writting system :) But I think you can totally do it once you get through the writing part and understand it and after that its really just practicing reading a lot. SO don't give up just yet. :)
very difficult language but equal in its beauty. สู้สู้นะครับ 😁 a few more thoughts… the consonant classes and tone rules are indeed a huge barrier to entry! especially since there’s no standardized romanization so it’s really difficult to transcribe. i made a flow chart, a few different graphs, and color-coded visualizations to give my brain different ways to keep track of the interaction between consonant classes, dead/alive syllables, and tone markings. also, when making my first set of flash cards (just my first 100 vocab or so) i would make myself not only repeat the translation of the word, but it’s consonant class AND tone, so that i started associating them in my head. it is just a slow process to internalize the system. there’s some good resources out there too to help with different learning styles, im happy to share more of what i’ve been using in my thai learning journey! it’s soooo worth it, thai is just so beautiful 💗
Speaking of 'giving up', I did give up using a book of 'Italian In 3 Months', because of lots of excercises lol. I will complete it in the future. Meanwhile I am using apps and TH-cam.
It is so hard to grasp I agree! I actually started learning it here in Korea so it was in korean 😅 I did two lessons a week for a month just learning the alphabet. I found reading it easier to understand in korean cos of the ending consonants and อ being similar to ㅇ. But the levels and combinations tell the tone but there's so many exceptions... omg it's a challenge. But don't give up! If you get the reading but not the tones at first that's a great start, adding the tones comes with time and experience ^^ I can take a picture of my korean book explaining it if you want 😄
EASY THAI from the EASY LANGUAGES videos recently starting making videos again! So that would be a recommendation from me, for listening practice/comprehension, and they're super fun to watch too: th-cam.com/video/NiLPjd5NhfE/w-d-xo.html I watch so many linguists/polyglots that know several languages and admire them so much...watching them pick up a language in a few weeks/months and it just blows me away, because as much as I love languages, I just can't do that, no matter how much I want to, and try to. It took me years to learn Spanish (when CONSTANTLY being told by online resources that "Spanish is one of the easiest languages to learn, Spanish can be learnt in 6 months, etc). It just bummed me out, feeling I was progressing so slowly. I've been learning Thai for about a half of a year now, and the "I don't want to give up" feeling of hopelessness you are feeling here, is how so many of your followers like me feel (with most any language)...slowly learning, struggling just to grasp the basics. It's a slow journey, but as long as I learn more everyday, improve speaking pronunciation everyday, and learn a few new words everyday...I'll get there. :)
You’ve got this! Maybe it will just take a lot longer than you’re used to. I started Japanese this week and it took me all week just to recognize and pronounce the basic hiragana. I can’t write them yet. And still can’t really pronounce Rs. But small improvements every day get us there.
From what I've heard, the writing is the hardest part when it comes to thai. I've been sort of trying to learn it for a while but never really commited to it because of how difficult the writing system is, for me personally. I don't struggle so much with the appearance of the characters but the fact that it's not read in a linear way is what made me throw the towel, and now I just try to pick up on vocab. I'm trying to approach it more from the speaking perspective first, because it's what I find easier, but also it's just a hobby for me so I don't feel the need to stress myself to achieve any goals at any point. I just think the language itself is very beautiful and probably worth learning, but I don't really have the motivation or the time at the moment to master it, so I'm at least keeping it around me by consuming media and picking up vocab that way haha, I find it more enjoyable. Either way, this is not a discouraging comment whatsoever, I wanted to say that I am rooting for you Lindie, and I hope you can achieve whatever goals you set for yourself (big or small, it doesn't matter). I will be patiently waiting for more updates on your thai learning journey and hopefully you will find a way of studying that works for you🥰
I'm an American who studies languages for fun, Thai being one of them. My best language after English is Russian. Compared to Russian, Thai feels very easy and straight forward for me! It seems very hard at first but I think that it's not so bad (aside from the writing system). In my opinions, tonal languages are not as hard as people think; just repeat words exactly as you hear them spoken.
So Lindie, the reason these programs leave out some letters because they are not used. It’s there to cause confusion because for ฃฅ these 2 not even the thing they represent is spelt using the letters, it’s completely obsolete. Other letters are only use in a few rare words some even only have one word. So it cuts down to make it easy and useful and you don’t have to learn ฒฌ because you won’t use it, ever if you’re not learnng thai literature. This is why the best technique is learn through vocabulary… even for the rules
getting used to the tonal rules is hard, but definitely doable. one suggestion I have is to learn the Thai letters in the Indic grid (if you read Hindi/Devanagari, I mean how the alphabet is organized in a grade by place in the mouth and whether it's aspirated or not, etc.) rather than in a list. sure, a few of the Thai letters won't fit into the grid, but this isn't really a problem since Thai writing is related to Indian scripts. the point is that you can easily see how different rows of the grid belong to different levels, so that the association isn't entirely arbitrary. also, learning the rules for when a tone occurs (3:07) is fine, but make sure to find lots of example words so that the rules don't seem so abstract. best of luck!
Definitely try the channel Kruu Waree. It really helped me while learning the alphabet and lot of writing/reading rules. There are good cheatsheets for the tones rules. There's a table for that I believe. Please don't give up. I'm so happy you learn a language I'm learning. I can't afford any course so I've been learning by myself since day one. Write a lot if you wanna get used to all those new letters and signs. 💪🏾
i use to live in thailand. had horrible thai but if I was you look up Chiang Mai Thai. Bangkok folk generally like it and its much softer and slowly spoken. From my recoloction from 10 years ago some basic things are different jiaw instead of Ka but the basics are pretty similiar and may help you get a foothold on the language. Also Thai think its really cute if a foreigner speaks with Isaan or Chiang Mai accent. Ohh dont get discouraged with Thais laughing at you they are pretty open and many wont like the fact you are learning Thai. Dont know how common it is but a lot of Thais really dont like it because I geuss it makes it harded for them to trash talk you to your face but its pretty common. Good Luck
I thinking you’re thinking waaaaaay too hard about this. You don’t have to understand this stuff from a theoretical level. Just start learning different words and phrases and slowly building your knowledge base. Reading comprehension and all those phonological quirks while come with time so trying to master it now is just going to frustrate you.
it's really hard for a foreigner especially the use of word like pronunciation and spelling if you study deeply on my language you will find that the spelling and pronunciation of some words are very complicated and confused. as I'm Thai, I'm glad to hear that you are learning my language but don't worry about that because some Thai also can't spell and pronounce some words correctly. You just keep going to learn I think you can do it!
I feel your pain. The good news is that Thai, despite all it's difficulties, is like any other language in that more practice equals more rewards and after a while the difficulties become less important that the more normal problems of learning more vocabulary and sentence patterns. It's good that you've become aware of the difficult aspects of Thai, but you shouldn't be discouraged by them. 😃 So lets call them "aspects of Thai" rather than "difficulties." Phonetic: t/d & p/b have a third possibility, letters which are neither t or d, neither p or b, but something in between. 32 vowels. Long and short vowels. Phonemic: Most words are monosyllabic, similar to Mandarin but with polysyllabic loan words from Sanskrit and Pali languages for political, scientific and religious terms. L shifts to N in final position. some letters shift to their unvoiced form in final position. consonant blends with R are almost never pronounced with R, although they are often taught this way. (khrap kun- thank you is pronounced khap kun) 5 tones. Grammar: measure words. adjective follows noun. Isolating grammar similar to Mandarin. Writing: 44 consonants. 32 vowels. vowels not written linearly, but above, below, before or after the consonant, according to the vowel itself. Old writing system with some fossilization of spelling. complex but pretty regular system of tonal spelling. Letters written bottom to top. One thing I like to say to Thai people is "Phut passa Thai yahk nitnoi, sagot passa Thai yahk mahk."- speaking Thai is a little bit difficult, spelling Thai is very difficult. Reading and writing Thai is kind of hard, so it's important to focus mainly on speaking and listening in the beginning. That being said, Thai people really respect a foreigner who can write Thai, with good reason. One of the first things I did when I moved to Thailand was memorize how to write the Thai alphabet by brute force and bloody repetition. Of course, once I had it down, I resolved to write a few sentences, then realized I didn't know any vowels yet. "Complete Thai" was my primary textbook and I completely recommend it, Though it may be out of print.
i took a thai vlass for like 2 months and we spent the whole time learning how to read/write, along w basic vocab and grammar soooo yeah thai is Hard, but i highly recommend learning what each of the consonants *means* because i found that mnemonics to determine what class they were in was easier when i could picture middle class consonants at a picnic lol vowels are still super hard for me tho. triphthongs..... not easy
Tones were more challenging for me. Especially when you have a history in another tonal language, your mind drifts to their tones which may be different or in a different order.
Hi Lindie, I would recommend focus on speaking and listening first. When you have some basic vocabulary, it would be easier for you to start to take in how the Thai words are read and the rules might start to make sense. It is always so hard to start with the rules and alphabets when they are super complex. In my opinion, there are only two ways of getting the pronunciation rules through: one is memorize all the rules and hopefully you can think of the rules and pronounce them correctly; the other one which I recommend is: find a word or several commonly used words for each rules and get yourself familiarize with them, as time goes by, you will start to get a hang of it. Hope it helps. Good luck. : )
I took banana thai schools five day thai challenge and it was okay. But the hardest part is mastering the tones . But I am not giving up. Because I want to at least be aime a lower intermediate like in korean. I achieved that with one and half years . 🥺😵💫
NOTE: Most Thai learners say it is best to learn how they say sentences instead of learning word by word. Actually, this is true bc in thai they don't say everything and tries to make the short sentence as much as possible So they mostly miss half of the word while speaking, on the contrary, we try to use every possible word to make the sentence as clear as possible for listener l recommend you can use videos with subs. this can be useful to hear and read at the same time. my patience didn't get along with this way but l will use it again when l start to relearn thai bc this way is useful even tho hard but still useful Also learning the most common words is best bc they go with them inside getting into a complicated one For example ม่าย ( no ) บอก ( to tell) ดู ( to see)
I can assure you that Thai alphabet is one of the biggest hurdle together with tones, but since you already know chinese, I guess tones is not that bad and you pretty much doing great on the tones so far. Once you past those 2 big milestones, the process gets easier and more like learning other asian languages. The biggest problem is that the writing system is borrowed from an Indian language that works entirely different with a good chunk of sounds that do not exist in Thai. In modern Thai, there are only 21 consonant sounds (28 if you account for letters that alter tones), but the writing has 44 consonant letters. My advice is to try to find one romanization system that works for you and stick with it since I think there are a few of them out there and there is no one standardized way for it. Thai gets a lot more fun once you get to learn the saying and conversation stuffs. For inferring tones information, it's actually easier to just remember them word by word, especially those that begin with low class consonant, and get accustom to it. The rules can be just at the back of your head. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes a lot easier to predict. Mid and High class consonant behave almost exactly the same except for one thing that is High class consonant become rising tone without tone marker. Low class consonant is the one that requires some work despite being the bigger pool of consonants.
Thai es lindo y divertido. Yo aún tengo struggles con los tonos, pero poco a poco you get used to it, I promise ;) y una vez que pases esa barrera, creeme, tailandés y millón veces más fácil que Coreano jajajaj lo juro.
I'm Thai and I know the language is definitely messed up with consonant classes and vowel length and end consonant and tone mark. And don't let me start with exceptions... But there is a general rule. Keep that in mind but don't worry about it too much. Learn the words and their tones and you should get used to them. Think of Thai syllables as English words where you kinda have general rules but you have to remember how each word is actually pronounced. Good luck!
Im using learn thai the rapid method you can find some of there lessons here on you tube its vulgar but it works the letters stick. will also make you a good youtube video
I learned the khmer script a few years ago (which thai script is derived from) and I found it really helpful downloading a khmer keyboard layout and learning to type. Maybe that strategy could help you, too?
With operating systems a bunch of them don't have QWERTY/QWERTZ for Russian. So I would improvise with Serbian or Bulgarian keyboard settings and just switch over to the non-QWERTY Russian keyboard for a few missing letters.
@@jeffkardosjr.3825 Yeah Windows has terrible support for Khmer as well, but luckily there are some organizations that have put out fonts and keyboard layouts you can download manually
![เปิด อาณาจักร หมื่นล้าน "สาระตั้ม" l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3XE0nPF4YkQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Sign up to my free monthly newsletter to track my Thai progress here: landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/a5i1z4
Is there maybe a Thai restaurant or maybe you can find exchange students from Thailand at the local university (via notice board) or something for tandem language learning. Maybe they can help you with those problems?
The most difficult part of Thai is its pronunciation.
If u could comprehend it, other aspect such as grammar is easy.
Hey Lindie! I like to know about your progress. It inspires me! Take it easy and keep going! I would wonder if you try to learn about Portuguese Language, coudl be harder than spanish but it's a great and funny thing to do! Brazil is nothing that they're saying in the Europe, Asia or USA. Brazil is interesting, try it! :D See you there! Keep Going!
Salvador looks like Africa, São Paulo looks like USA/Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro everyone knows, Rio Grande do Sul looks like Germain and therefore lol!
Hey, would you happen to have screenshots of your book you wrote down, I have been studying for about 1 month but only 30 minutes to 1 hour a day and it's taking me forevvverrrrrrr
Hey Lindie! Not sure if you're gonna read this, but just wanted to say: don't give up! The sense of fulfillment you get when you start reading words in Thai without thinking too much is priceless. I learned the Thai alphabet a few years ago solely through Thai Pod 101 and my advice would be to sloooowly learn each letter, following their 25 lessons on the alphabet. At first it will seem like you're cracking a code: What's the root consonant? Is this a long or short vowel? Oh wait, are there actually silent letters? What's the tone??? It takes a few days/weeks to get accustomed to the writing but once you're comfortable with it it's like you've gained a superpower honestly hahahah So yeah, good luck and carry on, you got this!!
Thank you for sharing this beautiful message. You are wonderful
😲 WOW! I salute you 🥰👏
Yeah I haven’t even started the letters. I’m taking the approach that we do to babies. Speak and figure out the words. Subtitles and watching media on slower speeds to try to match tones up while using a dictionary to see which words mean what
As a thai, I can remember it took me 2 years to memorize all 44 letters when I was in kindergarten 😅 and normally, it takes at least 3 years for thai students to learn all the thai reading & writing rules from school. The faster way would be remembering how each word is pronounced regardless of thinking about the rules (like the way we remember how each chinese character or kanji is pronounced). Some thais can’t remember the tone rules and they use this trick instead. Keep it up, Lindie! You can do this!
Wow! If it took a native speaker that much time then I shouldn’t hurry myself to “master” the alphabet!
After all, it’s for fun!!
Thanks for your comments
Yes I thought also, the grammar of thai surely is not that bad...right? If I know other tonal languages like Vietnamese and Chinese, would the main challenge be the writing. The grammar does not seem to be so bad...?
As a Thai person who good at this course during school time 😅 I agree that our alphabet and vowel rules are pretty hard to master even for Thai people as there are rules for everything from initial letter, vowel, tone mark ending letter, and each has quite complex rules but the good thing is there is no exception case unlike English. It might looks hard as first when you starting learn to remember alphabet since there are many repetitive sound letters and many have similar looks (common errors for every Thai users), but if you overcome these everything else is easy to understand. To put it simply Thai language is karaoke other languages (almost every words are borrowed😂 even my name are borrowed from hindi)
Ps. Your pronunciation was all correct🎉 and sorry if my english is confusing 😅
yes I m from India nd I thought that her name is like Hindi name 😂😂
As a person who loves languages and asia, i always say that Thai is the one of the most beautiful languages in asia! Compared korean or japanese (that i used to "speak" when i was younger), i can't even say hi, but it just sounds soooo good hearing it! Once i read that if royals around the world had a "code language" it would be thai, and i couldn't agree more!
Your English was perfectly easy to understand, despite a few minor errors in grammar :) You are very good at expressing yourself in our language and should be very proud! 🖖
Thai is definitely a language that requires a lot of dedication and motivation to learn. It's more frustrating that there are limited resources available, both free and new, to learn the langauge, and what printed resources are available tend to be dated. When I decided to start learning it, I looked into personal lessons right away because I knew with it being a tonal language, if I relied on self-studying, I wouldn't be able to tell if my pronunciation or intonation with the tones would be correct without someone telling me.
Compared to Korean, Thai is definitely harder is some aspects, especially the alphabet and tone rules. I'm still have moment where I feel I'm still at a beginner level, then when I go back and look at A1 level lessons and realize that I already understand everything from A1 and A2.
As a self motivated Thai learner since Covid started, I can only say that time will be your friend and there will be many A-ha moments along the way. Aside from grammar, I listen to podcasts and now slowly I can begin to describe my own actions in my target language. By the way, your videos have been helpful in continuing my motivation. All the best.
Nagyon érdekes, hogy megmutatod, hogyan sajátítasz el egy nyelvet a nulláról! Köszönet érte! És azért is, hogy megmutatod, mennyire szenvedsz egy-egy dologgal. Sokat jelent az őszinteséged, hogy nem csak azt mutatod meg, mikor már folyékonyan beszélsz egy nyelven.
And yes the Thai Alphabet is so so so hard!
But I really recommend “Read to Learn Thai in 10 Days” it is specifically directed to foreigners. Each chapter comes in digestible batches and the mnemonics for tones and the classes are so so helpful!
Again….not managable in 10 days XD I think…
At first it was highly frustrating to learn the alphabets. But when I started being patient and not giving up, I started to have less problems with it. Resources and your own patience are crucial. Don’t give up!
Also this yt channel is amazing for grammar : Thai with Mod
I'm only dabbling in Thai, but you're so right about the alphabet. For the most part, I have it down but it's still pretty hard. I literally spent a few weeks on Drops just doing the consonants until I got it lol
Good luck with your studies!
I litterally learning remember a little bit of alphabet using this app then next challege started to be hard😭😭
You are moving a lot faster than most people who pick up Thai, naturally because you know how to learn a language, so don't worry just keep going. For learning tones I recommend getting a list of short Thai words making columns that have the word, the initial consonant class, the vowel length, the ending sound, and the tone marker, and "calculate" the tone rule in the last column. Do it a lot and the rules become second nature. There are only 18 after all.
I completed the Dutch Course on Duolingo recently, and your videos have played a goal role in my motivation. Thanks!
When I started to learn Thai I learnt the majority of my Thai using TV series and TH-cam and so didn’t need to read. When I started to learnt how to read, it was a bit easier since I know what the word is supposed to sound like. But don’t give up, you can do it! :)
Thank you as always, Lindie! 😃 I'm planning to start Thai very soon, so can't wait to see how your journey goes. Good luck!
I swear, each time a language has easy grammar, the script and pronunciation are hard as hell. It's hard to find really good Thai resources, too (especially for free) Love seeing these updates, however! Hope you won't give up and take it easy with Thai :)
Like you, at first, I really struggled with learning Vietnamese. It was only when I decided to download Immersive Translate did everything change. Once I started using Immersive Translate every day to watch Netflix, that was when I started seeing results. I started to become more and more immersed in my target language, and my language skills even improved. I’m really glad I downloaded the plugin and couldn’t be happier.
Don't worry too much Lindie! I've lived in Thailand for 10 years and I still haven't fully grasped the language, there's just too much to learn but over time you'll find it easier to grasp on
I'm Thai and i agree that my language is hard lol. I am still learning English and just started German recently. It's hard but I hope you enjoy Thai language journey! Your pronunciation is on point too i guess because you already have learned Vietnamese before. In my opinion Thai and Vietnamese have similar tone. You can do it Lindie!
I am a Thai follower and have been following you for years. You were the first polyglot on TH-cam I knew and have been helping me explore the fun of learning new languages. Since I am a native user of the Thai language, I cannot say much whether this language is more difficult or not. But one thing I can assure you that once you have a grasp of how to read Thai, which I know could be quite challenging for people who are not used to the Abugida system (plus Thai incorporates tone into it), the next step of understanding how sentence structure in Thai work is not that difficult, it is quite intuitive I would say since the Thai grammar is superfluid. Still, there are a few important things to keep in mind, or I should say these are the fundamentals of how Thai grammar work,
1. Thai is a Topic+commentary language, so it’s not strictly SVO language (kind of like Mandarin)
2. Thai has a serial verb construction feature (to a higher degree compared to Mandarin) which can pretty much string a thought in a super long clause. And that's why there are a lot of highly descriptive compound words in Thai
3. Thai is a super high-context language. (since you are familiar with Japanese and Korean, it’s basically the same concept) so no need to repeat a redundant word and you can just leave out a lot of pronouns, subjects, or whatever if the context is clear.
4.The social hierarchy of Thai language is important, polite language, casual language, formal language etc (kind of the same concept in Korean and Japanese but not as strictly as these 2 languages as Thai is not conjugate level of language to the verbs or nouns but rather use extensive polite words and particles)
Hope you have fun learning Thai and thank you for keep inspiring me to study languages.
I think you shouldn't be too hard on yourself. Just take it slow. I've been studying Japanese for the last year, and when I was learning the alphabet, i used to write the hiragana and katakana tables again and again. And with each lesson from Japanese pod 101, I kinda just got it eventually. Of course, Thai is really different, but i think dividing the letters in sections might help. And you'll get the rules and all eventually... 👍👍
Sending lots of love from India ❤️❤️
I actually discovered your channel while I was living in Thailand! I lived there for almost 2 years and I struggled with this language so much. I practiced speaking as much as possible, but everyone wanted to practice their English with me. I actually gave up learning the Thai script because it was so complicated. I even studied Thai at Patong Language School and I just pulled open the textbook they gave me and there isn't even any Thai characters in it!!! Everything is in the roman alphabet characters which made learning the language easier. I also have the book Thai for Beginners by Benjawan Poomsan Becker and I actually liked the setup of that book. However, the CDs that go with the book didn't work on my computer.. so that sucked. That book you do practice both the Thai script and the roman characters. I don't study Thai anymore, but just flipping through this book and my notes, I can actually recall quite a bit! I now just study French and Chinese. Your channel has been great for motivating me! Also... I feel Chinese is way easier than Thai! How!? What!? Why!? HAHA
Chinese is way easier than Thai?!
How what why?!
But to be fair the most challenging thing with Chinese is the writing system.
I'm learning Thai while my sister is learning Chinese. So I tried learning the 100 most common Chinese words for fun. It was actually not so hard.. Maybe because I was already used to tones with my Thai learning.
Even the strokes order didn't seem so strange to me. 😅
Lmaob this was literally my experience. It was actually kind of annoying that noone wanted to help but expected me to know the language. I'm also on Mandarin now but mainly focusing on Taiwanese dialect (😍)
I have seen your videos learning many languages. Finally my language! I hope that you have a fun time learning Thai. I know that it's not very easy path (even thai people thinks it's hard subject in school.) You did a great job in this video!
I tried several free resources like you to learn Thai... and after a big migraine, two options: It's too hard for me or I have to change my approach. As I have a bad temper, I hang on but I took the option of 1:1 course on Preply. It's much more comfortable (for me) to have someone explain and correct me. And I found a tutor who speaks both English and French (my native language) so he tries to find "equivalences" for certain pronunciations. I know you have more experience in lingustic learning than I do but the 1:1 lessons could perhaps help you at least for the basics.
Hello Lindie! I would love to see a video where you talk through what it is like to be at each level in a given language. Comparing A2/B1/B2 etc, explaining what it’s like to try to navigate languages from each of these levels. In my language learning I always feel like I am waiting for some magical turning point where I’m “better” but i never get there cause the post is always moving! It feels really hard to measure progress. I think some insight into the levels would be so helpful. I feel like seeing you talk about this would be so awesome.
Thank you for sharing. This shows that learning a new language is not easy; it takes so much courage, motivation and determination. I can say that you showed us the dark side not to discourage us , but to tell us that we all go through baby steps and mastery needs time.
Hi, Lindie! I'm your Thai follower, and I've been learning different languages for a while, just like you. I know that learning the Thai alphabet can be difficult, but once you've mastered it, the rest of the language is relatively simple compared to other western or European languages. I also noticed that your tone and pronunciation are quite impressive, in the previous videos. Please don't give up! Our language is interesting, and it will open up a whole new world to you once you become more familiar with it. If you need help learning Thai or have any questions about it, please feel free to reach out to me. I'll do my best to help. Good luck!
Yes!! This exactly what I want to know. Can I learn Thai if the grammar is not so complex. But the language is just mostly about getting the writing system...hope it's not impossible :(
@@sheeliekittie9298 Hi, it’s definitely possible! In terms of speaking, it’s easy to pick up. Other than the present tense, there are no other tenses in Thai which makes it simple to communicate ideas. However, Thai is a tonal language, and it’s important to master this aspect, more or less so that people can understand you without any problem (most of time your speaking will still be understood even if your tone is not 100%). Also, one of the most important things I don’t see Thai learners do when starting is to pick a context where they will be using the language. Because Thai is a contextual language, meaning there are various usages of words across different contexts. Formal and informal language also depends on who you’re addressing such as, younger or older people, family, friends, monks, or Thai Royal members, including in writing and reading (even Thai people themselves don’t know all the words for every situation). For example, if you initial goal is to speak casually with friends or simply to get by in Thailand, then learn those relevant words for those situations first. When starting, be specific about your goals.
You can definitely start speaking it first while learning the writing system at the same time or later. The important thing is to find the right resources/teacher that can provide you with proper and relevant information.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions :)
@@phonlakritlapjaturapit7970 really I would love to learn thai! But really seems too hard :(
@@phonlakritlapjaturapit7970 it is beautiful though...I think I would first like to learn the basic phrases. And then I would try reading and writing. Do you speak any other languages and are you currently reside in Thailand?
@@sheeliekittie9298 Aside from Thai and English, I also speak Mandarin, Spanish, and currently learning Korean. I’m living in Canada.
How about you?
You'll get there Lindie. Of course I'm not an expert, but patience is the key! Slow and steady. You'll be fine
As a Thai, I'm glad that you're learning Thai😭 Keep going, Learning Thai is hard but it's not impossible! p.s. sorry for my English😓
Don't be discouraged, Lindie! At first, Thai also seemed to be the hardest language ever to me, but that was mostly due to the lack of good resources for self-study. I'm an independent-style learner as well, but I eventually gave up and decided to hire a teacher to get me started and it's helped immensely. It was especially hard to read some words because some Thai letters are not pronounced, but are written anyway because of spelling rules. Once you get used to the seemingly impossible alphabet, spelling, and tone rules, it gets easier. Thai grammar is not overly complicated, nor is the vocab. Trust me, learning Thai tone rules is much less complicated than memorizing the pinyin and the tone of every single hanzi or applying all Hungarian cases.
heyyy, i hope is not to late to ask, but where did u take classes with your teacher?
@@isabelasanchez9698 Hey! I took online classes. I found her contact info on a website that collects teacher profiles.
เยี่ยม เป็นกำลังใจครับ. It takes time to learn Thai, keep going.
Hey Lindie, love the content.
Recommendation : treat Thai characters like Chinese.
What I mean by this is that once you’re reviewed all the possible characters, don’t bother trying to memorize them NOW.
Jump straight into words, and just for now use romanization AND the Thai. Then for review, write out the words with a mind for what characters you’re writing.
Thai is famously complicated and it’s not per se phonetic bc Thai is a very old alphabet. So bc the romanization is also not per se reliable, don’t forget a TTS software for all words / Forvo (native speakers record the words themselves)
I'm really looking forward to these vlogs. also curious on your Japanese updates
loving the learning vlogs lindie 💕💕💕
Don't give up! I'm sure it's going to be so satisfying when you finally get there 😄
I think what work the best for me it is not to make a language learning plan per se, but an overall guideline so I can switch or accommodate easily if needed. But good Luck, Lindie! The beggining is always the hardest!
I believe in you!
Thai is difficult for sure, but you will understand it in due time!
Keep it up!
Please dont give up. Its not as difficult as you think. I learned by ignoring the alphabet consanants and tones etc and concentrated on learning phrases and vocabulary and listening to pronounciation by Thais. I may not be fluent but at least I can communicate which is the important thing.
There are some native English speaking TH-camrs, who can speak Thai fluently. I believe they live in Thailand. Maybe they have some videos about the Thai language :)
Just search for them on TH-cam, you will find them for sure :)
Thai is absolutely brutal. I wanted a break from Spanish & I sent myself into a complex world of pain haha
Don't give up because it's difficult. Give up only if it doesn't bring you joy :)
But anyway, you are capable of doing anything you want!
That's so cool to see you start learning Thai at the same time as me. Don't give up! It will become easier (hopefully ahah).
keep going!! As Thai, surely English is much more harder haha. I think Thai is like Chinese, you remember the words then just say it and you still can communicate. Also, Thai ppl is so generous and openminded with visitors so we sure try to understand you and you will find it a lot easier than your thought. 😉
The Teach Yourself website has a couple of free resources for Thai. Zero idea how good they are, as I have not officially started Thai yet.
Sad to hear you are struggling. I start Thai in December. I am now in a pre-study phase. I watch at least an hour of Thai TV every day and I have figured out how to say a handful of things on my own. Always knew the script was going to be difficult, so I am working my way through slowly. I only know about 10 consonants so far, but I know them pretty well. Hopefully, I will have all the letters down before getting into Thai in 2 months.
加油！頑張れ！You got this。
The good thing is that you can learn as quickly or as slowly as you want. I know you can do it!
I had that same reaction as you when I first follow through that thaipod101 alphabets video 😂 Then I signed up for their 7 days free trial on their website just to access to the remaining lessons on the alphabets and catch up to all of them before the trial ends lol. It's been a few months of me learning Thai and I'm more than comfortable with the writings already and trust me it just takes times get used to them. Currently still mastering the tones and I can just say that since I really like watching Thai series, that helps A TON in my language learning journey especially for speaking purposes. I wish the best in your journey to learning this beautiful language!
Don't give up Lindie :-) it happens when you start learning any language I guess. Since I am a fan of channel, feel free when and if you need to practice your conver :-)
เรียนเป็นระบบดี คุณเก่งมาก เรียนได้เร็วมาก สำเนียงไทยชัด
God bless you for even trying though 😂 you’re doing so well (I’ve watched the other videos since this one too) but this makes me grateful I’m only learning Korean lol
Your videos are really great and useful for me. You are my biggest idol 🥰🥰🥰
Don’t give up! Despite power cuts, frustrations I believe you will achieve a breakthrough learning Thai! 👍
I'm learning Thai too.
First of all, start with listening exercises . You will get discouraged if you start learning through reading and writing.
Thai has one of the easiest verb conjugations; there is barely any. With that it makes it so easy to learn through listening and light reading (you know glancing through a sentence, not to learn how to read and write but just to have a feel of it)
As someone who has been studying Thai for the past year and a half, as well as Lao which is super similar to Thai but with less resources for learning, I feel your pain. 😅 A few of the Thai letters still throw me off sometimes and I have yet to master the tones. However, I want to encourage you in that even though I haven’t mastered the tones or the high-mid-low classes for the consonants, I’ve still be able to communicate and have even been told my pronunciation is very good. So I feel like if you need to for sanity’s sake, you can put those parts on the back burner for a little while. Obviously I’m still planning to work on mastering them myself, but I have to take my sweet time with it.
Those power cuts got me language learning too 😂
Good luck by the way
A few tips from an intermediate thai learner, I think you should focus on practise speaking and listening at first and learn the thai script however focus on all the vowels and most common consonants and you will learn to recognize the lesser used ones later (ex. ส and ท is usually the most commonly used for s and t respectively while ถ is sometimes used and I have never seen ฑ.) I would recomend to ask a thai teacher for the used letters.
the hardest part in thai is the script and the easy part is the grammar according to me.
Here is some thai movies that I recomend you watching: Bad Genius (the movies and series) and girl from nowhere. Thai series have become more popular in SEA region and is according to me a good way to learn how to speak naturally and intresting to watch too.
Hi Lindie, I would definitely recommend, if you haven't already, read the Cracking Thai Fundamentals by Stuart Jay Raj. It's helped me a lot when learning the tones and alphabet and has some generally interesting concepts in there. Also, although I know you're very experienced in learning languages but when its comes to Thai, I would try and focus more on the speaking and listening rather than spending too much time try to learn the tone rules though reading and writing. For me, it started to connect a bit more that way around. Good luck with your journey!!
Hi, Lindie! So I’ve started learning Thai some months ago and maybe I can share some tips. I also used thaipod101 to learn the alphabet (I used their 7-days free trial to get access to the whole series on the alphabet) and it’s honestly the best resource I’ve seen on that. The class system and the rules are daunting, so I don’t recommend trying to learn everything by heart right away. First of all, to learn the class of each letter I recommend color-coding them in your notes. In my case, I wrote all the high class consonants in red, the middle class consonants in green and the low class consonants in blue. It helps a lot when I’m trying to read anything. As for the endless rules, I suggest you actually learn the spelling of some words and, if you know what class the consonant belongs to, it will be actually easier to learn the rules from there. For example, knowing that มา (to come) is pronounced with a middle tone and มาก (very) is pronounced with a falling tone, you aready know that low class consonants have a middle tone in live end syllables and that they have a falling tone in dead end syllables with a long vowel.
I don’t know if I’ve made myself clear, but I hope it helps. Thai is a beautiful language, don't give up!
I agree that learning some simple spelling makes learning the tonal spelling rules easier.
I am in around 5 hours in and I went through mid and low consonants and long wovels, checked the tone rules and i am confused. So I changed my approach, so currently just reviewing all the letters (not memorizing them) and starting to learn simple words and their spelling. This helps me to memorize the letters muuuuuch better.
When I watched your previous video where you said that you will start with Thai again I came across with a video from Stuart Jay Raj - Thai vowels for dummies in 5 min. It was really helpful to learn the pronunciation with his system, give it a try! Totally recommended
Hey, I totally get you. I did the BananaThai course you were talking about. And yes it was quite expensive but it actually helped me alot. Also for some it might be to slow or detailed but i really liked it. You don't just learn the Consonants and Vowles but also tone rules and like exepsions e.g when the vowle just randomly disappears (because why not?) Thai's were really having fun creating their writting system :) But I think you can totally do it once you get through the writing part and understand it and after that its really just practicing reading a lot. SO don't give up just yet. :)
very difficult language but equal in its beauty. สู้สู้นะครับ 😁
a few more thoughts… the consonant classes and tone rules are indeed a huge barrier to entry! especially since there’s no standardized romanization so it’s really difficult to transcribe. i made a flow chart, a few different graphs, and color-coded visualizations to give my brain different ways to keep track of the interaction between consonant classes, dead/alive syllables, and tone markings. also, when making my first set of flash cards (just my first 100 vocab or so) i would make myself not only repeat the translation of the word, but it’s consonant class AND tone, so that i started associating them in my head. it is just a slow process to internalize the system.
there’s some good resources out there too to help with different learning styles, im happy to share more of what i’ve been using in my thai learning journey!
it’s soooo worth it, thai is just so beautiful 💗
I feel like suffering with you and learning the Thai alphabet!
Come to Argentina!!! To practice spanish 🇦🇷!! Love u!!
Speaking of 'giving up', I did give up using a book of 'Italian In 3 Months', because of lots of excercises lol. I will complete it in the future. Meanwhile I am using apps and TH-cam.
It is so hard to grasp I agree! I actually started learning it here in Korea so it was in korean 😅
I did two lessons a week for a month just learning the alphabet. I found reading it easier to understand in korean cos of the ending consonants and อ being similar to ㅇ.
But the levels and combinations tell the tone but there's so many exceptions... omg it's a challenge. But don't give up! If you get the reading but not the tones at first that's a great start, adding the tones comes with time and experience ^^
I can take a picture of my korean book explaining it if you want 😄
EASY THAI from the EASY LANGUAGES videos recently starting making videos again! So that would be a recommendation from me, for listening practice/comprehension, and they're super fun to watch too: th-cam.com/video/NiLPjd5NhfE/w-d-xo.html
I watch so many linguists/polyglots that know several languages and admire them so much...watching them pick up a language in a few weeks/months and it just blows me away, because as much as I love languages, I just can't do that, no matter how much I want to, and try to.
It took me years to learn Spanish (when CONSTANTLY being told by online resources that "Spanish is one of the easiest languages to learn, Spanish can be learnt in 6 months, etc). It just bummed me out, feeling I was progressing so slowly.
I've been learning Thai for about a half of a year now, and the "I don't want to give up" feeling of hopelessness you are feeling here, is how so many of your followers like me feel (with most any language)...slowly learning, struggling just to grasp the basics. It's a slow journey, but as long as I learn more everyday, improve speaking pronunciation everyday, and learn a few new words everyday...I'll get there. :)
Thank you for sharing this is so interesting 🤨 😮
You’ve got this! Maybe it will just take a lot longer than you’re used to. I started Japanese this week and it took me all week just to recognize and pronounce the basic hiragana. I can’t write them yet. And still can’t really pronounce Rs. But small improvements every day get us there.
You look happy 10god🙏love from 🇪🇹 Ethiopian I also learn Korean and your my inspired
First 🙌🏾! Keep on pushing. You’re amazing 👍🏾. Talk Thai with Paddy has a video, “5 Tips to Read Thai in 1 Month”. I suggest checking it out! GL
Thank you ❤️
From what I've heard, the writing is the hardest part when it comes to thai. I've been sort of trying to learn it for a while but never really commited to it because of how difficult the writing system is, for me personally. I don't struggle so much with the appearance of the characters but the fact that it's not read in a linear way is what made me throw the towel, and now I just try to pick up on vocab. I'm trying to approach it more from the speaking perspective first, because it's what I find easier, but also it's just a hobby for me so I don't feel the need to stress myself to achieve any goals at any point. I just think the language itself is very beautiful and probably worth learning, but I don't really have the motivation or the time at the moment to master it, so I'm at least keeping it around me by consuming media and picking up vocab that way haha, I find it more enjoyable.
Either way, this is not a discouraging comment whatsoever, I wanted to say that I am rooting for you Lindie, and I hope you can achieve whatever goals you set for yourself (big or small, it doesn't matter). I will be patiently waiting for more updates on your thai learning journey and hopefully you will find a way of studying that works for you🥰
I'm an American who studies languages for fun, Thai being one of them. My best language after English is Russian. Compared to Russian, Thai feels very easy and straight forward for me! It seems very hard at first but I think that it's not so bad (aside from the writing system). In my opinions, tonal languages are not as hard as people think; just repeat words exactly as you hear them spoken.
If you have trouble with the Thai alphabet i would recommend "kruu waree all about Thai" she explains really well
Hope it helps ☺️
So Lindie, the reason these programs leave out some letters because they are not used. It’s there to cause confusion because for ฃฅ these 2 not even the thing they represent is spelt using the letters, it’s completely obsolete. Other letters are only use in a few rare words some even only have one word. So it cuts down to make it easy and useful and you don’t have to learn ฒฌ because you won’t use it, ever if you’re not learnng thai literature.
This is why the best technique is learn through vocabulary… even for the rules
getting used to the tonal rules is hard, but definitely doable. one suggestion I have is to learn the Thai letters in the Indic grid (if you read Hindi/Devanagari, I mean how the alphabet is organized in a grade by place in the mouth and whether it's aspirated or not, etc.) rather than in a list. sure, a few of the Thai letters won't fit into the grid, but this isn't really a problem since Thai writing is related to Indian scripts.
the point is that you can easily see how different rows of the grid belong to different levels, so that the association isn't entirely arbitrary. also, learning the rules for when a tone occurs (3:07) is fine, but make sure to find lots of example words so that the rules don't seem so abstract. best of luck!
Don’t worry about how long it takes to read! It literally took me an entire week to learn Hiragana, Katakana, and some very basic Kanji.
Keep fighting! Any updates? Are we still learning Thai?
Definitely try the channel Kruu Waree. It really helped me while learning the alphabet and lot of writing/reading rules.
There are good cheatsheets for the tones rules. There's a table for that I believe.
Please don't give up. I'm so happy you learn a language I'm learning. I can't afford any course so I've been learning by myself since day one.
Write a lot if you wanna get used to all those new letters and signs. 💪🏾
don't give up please, thai alphabet is very hard to learn but you'll get there!
i use to live in thailand. had horrible thai but if I was you look up Chiang Mai Thai. Bangkok folk generally like it and its much softer and slowly spoken. From my recoloction from 10 years ago some basic things are different jiaw instead of Ka but the basics are pretty similiar and may help you get a foothold on the language. Also Thai think its really cute if a foreigner speaks with Isaan or Chiang Mai accent. Ohh dont get discouraged with Thais laughing at you they are pretty open and many wont like the fact you are learning Thai. Dont know how common it is but a lot of Thais really dont like it because I geuss it makes it harded for them to trash talk you to your face but its pretty common. Good Luck
I thinking you’re thinking waaaaaay too hard about this. You don’t have to understand this stuff from a theoretical level. Just start learning different words and phrases and slowly building your knowledge base. Reading comprehension and all those phonological quirks while come with time so trying to master it now is just going to frustrate you.
it's really hard for a foreigner especially the use of word like pronunciation and spelling if you study deeply on my language you will find that the spelling and pronunciation of some words are very complicated and confused. as I'm Thai, I'm glad to hear that you are learning my language but don't worry about that because some Thai also can't spell and pronounce some words correctly. You just keep going to learn I think you can do it!
I feel your pain. The good news is that Thai, despite all it's difficulties, is like any other language in that more practice equals more rewards and after a while the difficulties become less important that the more normal problems of learning more vocabulary and sentence patterns. It's good that you've become aware of the difficult aspects of Thai, but you shouldn't be discouraged by them. 😃 So lets call them "aspects of Thai" rather than "difficulties." Phonetic: t/d & p/b have a third possibility, letters which are neither t or d, neither p or b, but something in between. 32 vowels. Long and short vowels. Phonemic: Most words are monosyllabic, similar to Mandarin but with polysyllabic loan words from Sanskrit and Pali languages for political, scientific and religious terms. L shifts to N in final position. some letters shift to their unvoiced form in final position. consonant blends with R are almost never pronounced with R, although they are often taught this way. (khrap kun- thank you is pronounced khap kun) 5 tones. Grammar: measure words. adjective follows noun. Isolating grammar similar to Mandarin. Writing: 44 consonants. 32 vowels. vowels not written linearly, but above, below, before or after the consonant, according to the vowel itself. Old writing system with some fossilization of spelling. complex but pretty regular system of tonal spelling. Letters written bottom to top.
One thing I like to say to Thai people is "Phut passa Thai yahk nitnoi, sagot passa Thai yahk mahk."- speaking Thai is a little bit difficult, spelling Thai is very difficult.
Reading and writing Thai is kind of hard, so it's important to focus mainly on speaking and listening in the beginning. That being said, Thai people really respect a foreigner who can write Thai, with good reason. One of the first things I did when I moved to Thailand was memorize how to write the Thai alphabet by brute force and bloody repetition. Of course, once I had it down, I resolved to write a few sentences, then realized I didn't know any vowels yet.
"Complete Thai" was my primary textbook and I completely recommend it, Though it may be out of print.
i took a thai vlass for like 2 months and we spent the whole time learning how to read/write, along w basic vocab and grammar soooo yeah thai is Hard, but i highly recommend learning what each of the consonants *means* because i found that mnemonics to determine what class they were in was easier when i could picture middle class consonants at a picnic lol
vowels are still super hard for me tho. triphthongs..... not easy
Hi Linda thanks for video.
How long do you learn each language ?
Tones were more challenging for me. Especially when you have a history in another tonal language, your mind drifts to their tones which may be different or in a different order.
The Thai alphabet is ruthless. So much so that I gave up on it. All I do now is listening and speaking
Hi Lindie, I would recommend focus on speaking and listening first. When you have some basic vocabulary, it would be easier for you to start to take in how the Thai words are read and the rules might start to make sense. It is always so hard to start with the rules and alphabets when they are super complex. In my opinion, there are only two ways of getting the pronunciation rules through: one is memorize all the rules and hopefully you can think of the rules and pronounce them correctly; the other one which I recommend is: find a word or several commonly used words for each rules and get yourself familiarize with them, as time goes by, you will start to get a hang of it. Hope it helps. Good luck. : )
I took banana thai schools five day thai challenge and it was okay. But the hardest part is mastering the tones . But I am not giving up. Because I want to at least be aime a lower intermediate like in korean. I achieved that with one and half years . 🥺😵💫
Hello my friend how are you doing today
NOTE: Most Thai learners say it is best to learn how they say sentences instead of learning word by word. Actually, this is true bc in thai they don't say everything and tries to make the short sentence as much as possible So they mostly miss half of the word while speaking, on the contrary, we try to use every possible word to make the sentence as clear as possible for listener
l recommend you can use videos with subs. this can be useful to hear and read at the same time. my patience didn't get along with this way but l will use it again when l start to relearn thai bc this way is useful even tho hard but still useful
Also learning the most common words is best bc they go with them inside getting into a complicated one
For example ม่าย ( no ) บอก ( to tell) ดู ( to see)
EXCELLENT 👏👏👏
สู้ๆค่ะ keep fighting
I can assure you that Thai alphabet is one of the biggest hurdle together with tones, but since you already know chinese, I guess tones is not that bad and you pretty much doing great on the tones so far. Once you past those 2 big milestones, the process gets easier and more like learning other asian languages. The biggest problem is that the writing system is borrowed from an Indian language that works entirely different with a good chunk of sounds that do not exist in Thai. In modern Thai, there are only 21 consonant sounds (28 if you account for letters that alter tones), but the writing has 44 consonant letters. My advice is to try to find one romanization system that works for you and stick with it since I think there are a few of them out there and there is no one standardized way for it. Thai gets a lot more fun once you get to learn the saying and conversation stuffs.
For inferring tones information, it's actually easier to just remember them word by word, especially those that begin with low class consonant, and get accustom to it. The rules can be just at the back of your head. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes a lot easier to predict. Mid and High class consonant behave almost exactly the same except for one thing that is High class consonant become rising tone without tone marker. Low class consonant is the one that requires some work despite being the bigger pool of consonants.
諦めないで頑張ってください
Thai es lindo y divertido. Yo aún tengo struggles con los tonos, pero poco a poco you get used to it, I promise ;) y una vez que pases esa barrera, creeme, tailandés y millón veces más fácil que Coreano jajajaj lo juro.
I'm Thai and I know the language is definitely messed up with consonant classes and vowel length and end consonant and tone mark. And don't let me start with exceptions...
But there is a general rule. Keep that in mind but don't worry about it too much. Learn the words and their tones and you should get used to them. Think of Thai syllables as English words where you kinda have general rules but you have to remember how each word is actually pronounced. Good luck!
And I'm moving back there in 2 weeks. Thai is really difficult due to the lack of quality resources.
Nice and you are Drop Dead gorgeous ❤️
Im using learn thai the rapid method you can find some of there lessons here on you tube its vulgar but it works the letters stick. will also make you a good youtube video
I learned the khmer script a few years ago (which thai script is derived from) and I found it really helpful downloading a khmer keyboard layout and learning to type. Maybe that strategy could help you, too?
With operating systems a bunch of them don't have QWERTY/QWERTZ for Russian.
So I would improvise with Serbian or Bulgarian keyboard settings and just switch over to the non-QWERTY Russian keyboard for a few missing letters.
@@jeffkardosjr.3825 Yeah Windows has terrible support for Khmer as well, but luckily there are some organizations that have put out fonts and keyboard layouts you can download manually