Learning Thai, Your Great Adventure

Note:There is a newer version of this book available.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Learn Thai Alphabet and Learn Thai Numbers Web and iPad Applications are now live at www.learnthaialphabet.com.

The best Thai learning book ever! If you want to learn to speak, read and write Thai, then this is the book for you.

There are a number of books on the market that offer to help you to learn the language but this book is unlike any to date. Numerous illustrations, dozens of examples of sentences, phrases and idioms from a native Thai speaker will help you attain the skills necessary to start reading, speaking and writing Thai.

If you’ve ever tried to learn Thai before you will know how difficult learning the alphabet can be. Later, finding out that some of the consonants have multiple sounds (depending on their position in the syllable) can can put even the hardened learner off: this book will change all that.

With an illustrated story, we walk you through every letter of the alphabet providing word samples of all the consonants and a dialogue that links the alphabet together to ensure that once you’ve learnt it, you’ll never forget it.

It is best to learn the consonants by class but learning it this way doesn’t help you with the alphabet order, you need something else: this book has it.

The first thing you see is the consonant character staring right back at you out of the page. Once your eyes have adjusted, on the left page, you see simple dialogue written in word-spaced Thai. Thai script doesn’t have spaces, it has no hyphens, and little other punctuation, and can be difficult to learn, this is why we use word-spaced Thai. It enables you to see how the syllables, the words and the sentence is broken down.

Directly beneath this, is the Romanized transliteration. The transliteration means that even before you have learnt a single Thai consonant you’re reading Thai. You can see the shape of the letters, the tone of the word, you can see how they’re written and you can see the sounds that they make, straight away. We follow this throughout the entire story.

Secondly, on the page facing you, is exactly the same dialogue. This time it is written in Thai script exactly how it would be written: no spaces, no punctuation, this is real-life! This would be daunting for most but, with a quick glance to the left page, you have the word-spaced Thai to help you.

Once your eyes adapt and get used to reading the script, you’ll find that your ability improves and you’re soon reading Thai script from the right-page and have no need of anything written in the dialogue on the left.

Of course, we need to know the meaning of the words and the English translation is written directly beneath the Thai script. So, with minimal effort and no need to search, you have word spaced Thai, transliterated Thai, full Thai script and the English translation on the pages in front of you. No other book offers this.

There are many more tips in the book and it is laid out to help you learn in a logical manner, to help you to master the alphabet, and to help you to speak, read and write Thai.

Inside the book:

• the 6 basic rules that will make reading Thai easy!
• memory aids to help you learn the Tone Marks and to learn the rules for calculating tone: you’ll never forget it and will be amazed at how easy it can be.
• an 1800+ entry index (hyperlinked in the pdf version available from the website)
• useful phrases to help you through your time in the Land of Smiles.
• cultural information.

These, and much more, await you in Learning Thai, Your Great Adventure.

Russ is British and a professional writer, English teacher, sailor, and scuba diving instructor. He has a BA in English Language (1st Class Honours).

Duangta is Thai and an English teacher at a Thai state school. She has a BA in English Language and an M. Ed. in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language).

Quest is their series on learning Thai; and, Learning Thai, Your Great Adventure is the first book in that series.

Other books in the series are:

In addition, they have also created two Articulate Storyline applications to provide interactive learning of two areas of the Thai language:

1. The Learn Thai Alphabet web and iPad application: an app to teach you the Thai alphabet. It is web-based and works on the pc, Mac and iPad (2+), and Android (coming soon).
2. The Learn Thai Numbers web and iPad app. Also available on the pc, Mac, and iPad(2+), it will also soon be available on Android.

Both the apps and books are available from http://www.learnthaialphabet.com.