Learn to read Thai - Tutorial 1

The Great Language Learning Lie

When we are very young we are in possession of what is known as a Language Acquisition Device. This function in our brain allows us to pick up whatever language is being used around us in a perfectly natural way.

Unfortunately, this function in the brain doesn't last too long and by the time most of us start to learn a second language it has gone completely.

The absence of a Language Acquisition Device means that a second language cannot simply be 'picked up' naturally, as our first language was.

It's as simple as that. We can't even remember learning our first language because we didn't need to 'learn' it in a traditional manner. It was simply acquired. However, learning a second language does require a lot of learning. It requires enormous amounts of concentration and effort.

The problem with this simple truth is that language teaching is a business - and it is a very competitive business. Millions of students around the world are learning English (and other languages) and it is also good business teaching English speakers how to teach English.

Everyone wants more business, and to get it they simply lie. If you look around language teaching businesses, they all claim to have some unique and fantastic method that requires less effort for students learn.

I've seen all sorts advertised: Left brain, right brain, whole brain, Mozart effect, etc etc.

Many Thai students seem to be convinced that these claims are true. They go from one language institute to another, hoping that the latest and greatest 'method' will be the key to learning English.

It never is. They arrive at first filled with expectation only to realise two classes later that the latest place is no different to the last place and then they get dejected again. It's sad to see.

Learning Thai is no different. Every programme and book you see advertised will claim that their method of learning Thai is 'easy' or 'fun' or more effective than other methods. This is because they want to make money by selling their product.

There is no need to buy anything, apart from a couple of basic books and some elementary teaching materials used by Thai kids when learning to read Thai.

Just start off with a few basic words and gradually increase your vocabulary and knowledge, building on what you have already learnt.

That's what I have tried to do here, using real life examples of signs in Thailand. I don't claim to have any magic methods to teach you how to read Thai, or any fancy systems of mnemonics to remember the Thai characters.

All I ever had was the motivation and determination to be able to read Thai to a basic level. All students need to be motivated otherwise they are just wasting their time.

If living in Thailand - or even just visiting - I can't think of a more useful skill than being able to read some Thai. For the life of me, I will never understand foreigners who have lived in Thailand for a long time yet who have never made any effort to read - even a little.

If it was difficult, maybe I could understand. The reality, however, is that it isn't difficult. All you need is some motivation. If you are motivated enough, anyone can learn.

Don't waste your money on expensive courses that claim to make the process easier. Everything here is free, and the books and materials I recommend are cheap.

If you can't understand something, it is probably because I haven't explained it very well. If that is the case, please write to me and I will try to do a better job. Your feedback is important.

Introduction

These tutorials are aimed at people who currently have zero knowledge of written Thai, but who wish to learn. The objective is to teach people who currently have no ability how to read signs and menus, etc. This is not intended for intermediate or advanced readers of Thai. Reading books and newspapers, etc., is beyond the scope of this exercise.

The benefits of being able to read Thai should be obvious. It gives you freedom in Thailand and allows you to be more dependent; not having to constantly ask Thais where buses are going, etc. You can also read messages on your girlfriend's phone from her Thai boyfriend.

If you live in Thailand, or make regular visits, and can't figure out why being able to read some Thai might be useful, you have come to the wrong web site.

It's good walking into hole-in-the-wall restaurants, browsing the menu written on the wall, and ordering from there. Thais never expect foreigners to be able to read their language, even though they know some foreigners speak a few Thai words.

Probably the best thing about being able to read Thai, though, is that is gets you away from god-awful transliteration. This is the practice of writing Thai words using the English alphabet, which is known to Thais as 'Karaoke' language.

If you are trying to speak Thai from a phrase book which uses this type of transliteration and no one understands you, it is because the transliteration used in these books is hopeless. You only start to become aware of how hopeless it is once you start to understand how written Thai works.

The Thai written language - just like English - is made up of vowels and consonants. There are more consonants than English (44 compared to 21) but quite a few are used only very rarely. There are more vowels than English but Thai vowels are much more consistent than English vowels.

'But' and 'put' use the same English vowel and should rhyme, but they don't. For these two different vowel sounds, Thai has two different vowels. 'Book' and 'boot' should rhyme, but they don't. For these two different vowel sounds, Thai also has two different vowels. In this respect, written Thai is far superior to written English.

Technically, English only has five vowels but the inconsistencies with pronunciation mean there should really be a lot more. I am telling you this so you understand why there are lots more Thai vowels but don't let anyone convince you it is a more difficult language to learn just because it has more characters.

Written Thai can be both easy and difficult. Pure Thai is a monosyllabic language and thus most words are quite straightforward. However, there are lots of pitfalls. The written language doesn't incorporate spaces so all the words in a sentence are joined together. There is no capitalisation and no punctuation.

Many vowels are voiced but not actually written, while some are written but not voiced. Sometimes there is a special symbol to indicate that they aren't voiced, but sometimes not. There are rules to learn (just like English) and there are certain things that you need to know (just like English).

How does a foreigner know that Leicester is pronounced Lester? They just need to know and this can't be taught.

Any English speaker can learn to read some basic Thai. It is not Chinese, Japanese or Arabic.

I'm planning to do this in bite-size chunks. I haven't got time to write everything I have learnt, and spewing out everything at once would only put people off. If you were teaching someone how to read English you might start with C-A-T and explain what sound the different letters make.

I'm going to do a similar thing. Already, with that example, you can see why English is such a difficult language for foreigners to learn. If you explained to someone that the 'C' in 'cat' makes a 'K' sound, they would then have problems the first time they met the word 'ceiling'.

You would then have to explain that sometimes a 'C' makes an 'S' sound but then they would have problems the first time they met the word 'cello'.

The 'A' in 'cat' is pronounced one way, but is different to the 'A' in 'about', which is more commonly known as 'schwa'. Thai is a lot more consistent than English although there are still of inconsistencies.

For beginners I recommend getting wall charts (link opens pop-up image) with the Thai consonants and vowels. This picture is of my first attempt at a wall chart when I first started learning and now I would write some things differently. These are made for Thai kids learning Thai and are very cheap and easily available in Thailand but they could be difficult to get outside of Thailand. Wall charts aren't essential but the ones I have stuck next to my desk have been a great help.

Resources for Thai kids learning Thai are excellent resources for foreigners learning Thai, and they cost next to nothing. Also worth getting are some kids' join-the-dots books (link opens pop-up image) for practising how to write Thai characters.

On your wall chart of Thai consonants you need to write the name of the character, what the initial and final consonant sounds are, and what class it is. The consonant class is only for tone purposes which I will cover later (if this is worth continuing). First, learn about what basic sound the word makes and start thinking about tones later.

It's important to remember that many Thai consonants change sound dependent on whether they start or end a word or syllable. In the Thai greeting sawut-dee, the 's' and 't' in 'sawut' use the same Thai letter. Books with bad transliteration ignore this fact and tell readers that the Thai word for 'police' is tamruaj. This is why so many phrase books are a complete waste of money.

Here's the first example and this is where I will finish today. I'm not planning to do this in any particular order apart from initially only covering commonly used letters. My other plan is to cover the characters in such an order as to build useful words. All will become clear soon and subsequent entries to this one will be quite short.

ก

Name in Thai: ก ไก่
Name in English: Gor Gai (chicken)
Initial: g (as in 'gate', not as in 'giraffe')
Final: k
Class: Mid
Usage: Very common
Comments: The basic shape of this consonant forms the basis for several other Thai consonants. The different characters may look the same - or similar - to beginners but the sounds they make are very different.

This consonant is often transliterated (when an initial consonant) as 'k'. This is one of my pet hates. Defenders of this practice insist that 'k' is an unaspirated sound (like a hard 'g', and not a soft 'g' that is pronounced as a 'j'.) whereas 'kh' is an aspirated sound (like a 'k').

My opinion is if it sounds like a 'g', why not just write 'g' and eliminate any doubt? If we applied this rule to English words, the word 'khaki' would sound the same but any word beginning with a 'k' not followed by an 'h' would need to be converted to a 'g' such as 'ging' for 'king' and 'geep' for 'keep'. We would also need to write 'key' as 'khey' and 'gate' as 'kate'. It's crazy and very confusing.

When Thais transliterate words written in English back into Thai they do the same thing. As a rule, most aspirated 'k' sounds in English are not followed by an 'h'. The example 'khaki' was about the only one I could think of.

Therefore an aspirated English 'k' gets written as an unaspirated 'gor gai' and we start getting things like Guala Lumpur for the capital of Malaysia.

It really is a nightmare and the best possible thing you can do is to learn to read some Thai so that you can avoid transliteration.

Consonant Names

There are several Thai consonants that make the same sound, so each has a name to distinguish it from other similar sounding consonants.

The first part of the name is a word that begins with the consonant sound and rhymes with 'or'. The second part of the name is a word that begins with, or uses, the consonant in question.

As an example, there are two consonants that make a 'y' sound:

yor ying and yor yuk.

yor is purely the sound of the consonant so applies to both but the actual name differs. ying means woman, and yuk means giant.

Final Consonants

Thais hate final consonants. When they transliterate an English word into Thai they will write the final consonant using a Thai letter that corresponds to the English letter but in most cases they will use a symbol written above the letter (called gaa-run) to indicate it can be ignored.

With English words that have a final consonant sound that is a consonant cluster Thais won't even bother with one of the consonants and they will ignore the other.

For example, with the word 'sound' the 'n' in the final consonant cluster 'nd' will be omitted completely and they will write dor dek for the 'd' with gaa-run above it. The Thai pronunciation then becomes sao, reflecting exactly how it is written in Thai.

Once you start to understand how Thais transliterate English words into their own language you start to realise why Thais generally are such poor speakers of English.

Most Thai words end with a 'p' 'k' ot 't' sound but the final consonant sound isn't fully voiced. It's as if you start to voice the letter but then don't finish.

For non-native Thai speakers the sounds 'lot' 'lop' and 'lok' can be difficult to distinguish but it gets easier with practise.

Text Books

There are lots of books aimed at English learners of Thai but the vast majority are hopeless. The transliteration used is so bad that if you try to pronounce Thai words as they suggest, you will not be understood in Thailand in a million years.

Lonely Planet has a (thoroughly undeserved) reputation as being one of the best resources regarding anything to do with travel but their Thai phrase book is one of the worst - if not the worst - I have seen.

The two books below are highly recommended. I have these books and the two authors have taught me almost everything I know about the Thai language.

Their transliteration is a lot better than most so you stand a chance of being understood before you are able to read Thai. Much more importantly though, they take you on the first steps of learning to read Thai.

Once you can read Thai you can then put the transliteration systems where they belong - in the nearest garbage bin.

Recommended books

If you are serious about learning how to read Thai, I highly recommend the following two books. These two books taught me almost everything I know and I still use them almost every day for reference purposes.

Most of the phrase books and text books for beginners that I have bought sit on my bookshelf accumulating dust. They are next to useless and good only to fuel the fire, except that it is never cold enough here to need a fire. However, if a sudden cold snap happens to descend, I will be grateful to Lonely Planet.

If you want to learn how to speak Thai, learning to read Thai will assist your pronunciation enormously. If you are trying to learn to speak Thai from books that use hopeless transliteration systems you are wasting your time because Thais won't be able to understand you.

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