Learn How To Read Thai - Feedback Comments

Feedback

The following are some comments that I have received about these tutorials.

You introduced a new word, นวด, and described it as "... nuat with a falling tone is the Thai word for 'massage'."

A red flag went up in my mind and I questioned the falling tone. Low class consonant, closed/dead syllable, shouldn't it be high tone?

So I went back to basics, reviewing consonant class, syllable ending and, (drum roll) vowel length. I had completely overlooked the fact that -ว- is a long vowel. With low class consonants vowel length makes a difference. Low/long/closed = falling.

That is now cemented into my mind like it never was before and that's because I had to figure it out. If you'd simply stated why it was pronounced with a falling tone I might have just passively accepted that without the specifics registering in my consciousness.

Thank you! You write so clearly and I'm learning so much.

Thank you for your guide to read Thai. It was quite easy to follow and complete. Shows that the right teacher and material is all you need.

Read your article on the language too and an insightful and most helpful piece of information it was Indeed. Personally I am going for “speak thai like a thai” but have not figured out how to crack that nut yet.

I sincerely hope you will finish the lessons. Not that I know what is missing, maybe an example of handwriting or something. To me they appeared complete.

Well whatever you do, know you made my day!

I'm enjoying your tutorials "Learn to Read Thai" very much.

I began self-study last summer in preparation for our current stay in Samut Prakan. Working with the texts of Mary Haas has been a challenge.

What I like most about your tutorials is that you clearly explain things that I managed to figure out on my own, confirming that I got it right, and answer other things that were still puzzling me. You seem to explain things the way I do, putting us easily on the same page.

I found your site while looking for information on noun classifiers and am very happy I did.

At the outset I figured I'd always have a tin ear for nuances in tone, so I would settle for knowing how to read and write. I memorized the alphabet and the proper pronunciation of the words corresponding to the consonants, and the vowel marks and combinations.

Then I discovered that I needed to learn the three classes of consonants in order to have a clue as to pronunciation. That came easy because I already had the alphabet down pat.

With all that and the general tone rules, I'm having a much easier time writing and speaking Thai. Now it all makes sense. I may be able to read Thai and do a decent job of reading it out loud but still have no idea what I've said, but that will come.

My wife and I have been here three weeks now and I'm having a ball everywhere we go just deciphering signage. It's a real hoot.

So thank you for easing my study of this language quite foreign to me.

Hi Phil,

Just wanted to send a quick message just to send a huge thank you for the tutorials. I was finding the alphabet a bit mind boggling but this broke it all down and helped me to understand. Have recommended this to a few friends too.

Thanks again.

Hi Phil,

My name is Vinny and I work at a college in Staffordshire, England. I have been following your tutorials on how to read Thai and may I just say these additions are fascinating to me.

Although I knew the 44 consonants really well which took me a month to learn, I did not know any vowels and by coming across your site, it has got me reading and writing. The site is clearly well written and very easy to follow although some thought has to be used sometimes lol.

I would just like to say a big thank you for un-locking a part of my brain and giving me the knowledge to accomplish this goal of reading/writing/speaking Thai.

With respect and kind regards, Vinny.

Phil,

First, let me thank you for your wonderful tutorial. I am currently using Rosetta Stone to learn spoken Thai, but as the program writes all the words in Thai as well, I thought it might be better to learn to read Thai first, to help with my pronunciations. Your tutorial is the absolute best that I've found on the web. My Thai girlfriend tells me that your explanations very accurately describe the sounds being voiced.

One suggestion I might propose is to add a "Next Lesson" and "Previous Lesson" at the bottom of the page for slightly better ease of navigation.

Again, thank you for all your work on these tutorials.

Warmest regards, Geoff

hi phil

i just want to say thanks alot for your online course on how to read and write thai. having tried a thai speaking class, i was abit depressed about my ability to learn thai (each class was 3 hours- far too long). i am tone deaf so decided to give reading and writing a go and once you get over the fear of learning a new alphabet, it is amazing how quickly you pick it up. your lessons are fun and short but also informative. brilliant.

best regards james

Hello

The course Reading thai is very good, the best I read!. Thank you very much for it. Great work!

Regards

Kent

Hello Phil

Just wanted to say thank you for your excellent read Thai tutorials. I just wish I found it before wasting money on 20 hours of terrible Thai classes! Tutorial 10 seems to be cut off. Perhaps there was a problem with the upload. The only suggestion I have is that you should put more space between the explanations of words. Sometimes you start writing an explanation for a word below that is in the same paragraph as the explanation for the word above. It gets confusing, I hope you understand what I mean.

Once again, thanks a lot!

Regards, David

Your Thai lesson site is wonderful

I really, really prefer your gradual approach to the "picture book" mnemonic used by others.

The only thing I'd say is that teaching to write might also help stick the letters in our minds.

Thanks again, so much.

Well, I just finished reading all of your Thai alphabet lessons. I must say, they are very well written and easy to follow! I'm a linguistics major in the USA, and I'm currently studying Thai. I used your site as a review, and it cleared up so many questions that I had! I love the fact that you show pictures of real signs, as well.

Also, I never understood the tone rules. But you put them into charts, and that helped so much! Now I think I can say that I can actually read Thai!

Anyway, thanks again for the great tutorials. :)

Mari

Thank you for your helpful Thai language tutorials

Hi Phil,

I just write to say a big thank you to all of your effort to make Thai learning easier and accessible to people. So far your website is the best source I could find on the Internet that teaches me very clearly how to read and write Thai. I'm staying in Singapore and have browsed for Thai language classes. However, the schools here only offer conversational courses for beginners, which means they don't teach us how to read and write Thai. They use only the inconsistent transliterated writing. That's why I feel very grateful and lucky that I found your website.

Yours sincerely,
Jennifer

Nice website

Hi Phil,

I started to learn Thai about 6 weeks ago.

I started by trying to teach myself with material that is on-line and after about 10 days came to the same conclusion that you reached about transliteration and figured I had to learn to read Thai. I then came across a woman in Bangkok who teaches Thai.

I have just stumbled upon your website and am up to tutorial 7 - it helps to fill in some gaps.

Looking forward to working through more of the tutorials.

Thanks,

Paul
(In Australia)

I just started using your tutorials, and I wanted to thank you for all the effort you have put into them. I have not had much success in learning to speak Thai, so I thought it might be a good idea to learn to read and write it at the same time. It does seem that this method is helping me a lot more than simply trying to learn to speak. I also practice my writing. I may never have to write very much in Thai, but it helps me to remember what I read. Thanks once again.

Fred

Dear Phil,

Just dropping you a line to say "Hi" and also to thank you for the "Learn to read Thai" segment of your website. It has been a great help to me. Been "hitting" that part of your site for awhile so I thought I'll just say "thank you" for that. Oh the rest of your site is great too; a repository of info for those seeking a move to Thailand like myself (and not a half masked attempt to push "escort services" and the like).

Cheers!
Rick

I've started to use your site to help me learn Thai. Thank you so much for putting it all together, it's certainly the best resource that I've found online so far. It is very well put together and structured, I'm picking it up very quickly!

I'm living in Thailand for a year doing some voluntary work teaching English among other things, and am trying my best to learn Thai within that space of time!

Thanks once again for the website - it's great!

Matthew