ศาลาชุมนุม

[Leandra1980]

Hi everyone

I hope I'm posting this in the right place, but I have a question:
Does anyone have a tip on how to learn Thai? Because I'm followng a Thai course via the NHA, a distant learning organisation in Holland, but I can't seem to get the Thai letters (well, if you can call them letters.....) in my head, I just can't memmorize them. Transcription writing: yes, Thai: no

Does anyone have a tip on how to learn the Thai letters by heart? Please I need help with this, i've asked my Thai teacher from the NHA, who is from Thailand herself, but she didn't have an answer for me either :S

I'm going to Thailand in November 2011 to visit my 2 sponsordaughters, who live in the North of Thailand and I would really love to be able to speak a little Thai by then and I want to write them in Thai as well, but I do have to be able to memmorize those Thai letters
I hope someone can help me with this!
Thanks a million in advance!

Leandra x

[David and Bui]

Leandra,

Welcome to Thai-language.com; we wish you the best of luck in your Thai studies.

My perspective on the alphabet learning issue may be radical. My position is that learning the Thai consonants in Thai alphabetical order is not a priority item for new learners. I believe a more effective approach is to learn the consonants in order of frequency of occurrence. And, don't worry about getting an exact listing in such order. There are clearly consonants which occur more often (ก ข ค ช ล ว ง ต ด and the like) and those which occur much less often (ฤ ฆ ฏ ฒ ฬ etc.). Many Thai school books for young learners take this approach.

You need to add the Thai vowels and these are more difficult to place in order of frequency, but they are fewer in number. Further, you need to learn the tone marks and a few others.

Memorizing the "alphabetical order" of Thai consonants is less important because we now have online dictionaries which do not require an alphabetical look-up in a paper book.

[John]

When I started learning Thai I worked hard at learning the letters, in order, but only have a general memory of the order now. So many letters are unused that one tends to forget in what order they occur. With computer based reference matierial it doesn't seem to matter much since I almost never look up words in a book.

[Leandra1980]

Thanks for the tips David and John, I'll try it that way!
Let's hope I'll be able to write and speak Thai a bit in November

Leandra x

[remiss]

I just finished these manee and friends lessons, great intro

http://www.learningthai.com/books/manee/index.html

[tod-daniels]

Sorry in advance this is long. (Stick with it, you might find it of value!)

When I started teaching myself to read Thai I took a very unconventional approach. I didn't learn (and still don't know) all the names of the consonants. Thai consonants are taught in picture-word form. In english it’d look like this A=apple, B=ball, C=cat. Thai consonants all have a corresponding word which usually (but not always) starts with the consonant.

I didn’t learn the consonants like Thais do. Instead I learned to read Thai by matching the various Thai consonants with their corresponding english sound like this;
6 sounds = english "T"; ฐ, ฑ, ฒ, ท, ธ, ถ
5 sounds = english "K"; ข, ฃ, ค, ฅ, ฆ
4 sounds = english "S"; ซ,ศ,ษ,ส
And so on right down the list of all 44 consonants. There's a LOT of duplication in sounds so it's not that hard to get a grasp on it.

Learning the Thai consonants the way I did, while it taught me to read pretty darned fast, has come back to haunt me now. I never learned the different consonant classes (until recently) and also (until recently) couldn't tell you the tone of a Thai word by sight alone.

I do agree learning the high frequency Thai characters (the ones used OVER and over in Thai) will give you better mileage learning to read Thai. Some characters aren't even taught to Thai kids anymore in school as they're not used in today’s written Thai.

Good luck, don't give up!!

I'm far from the sharpest knife in the drawer, so I know if I can teach myself to read and speak something which at least resembles Thai (with an American accent), I know you can do it too.

[foros2000]

สวัสดีครับ

I just started studying the Thai alphabet a few weeks ago and decided to use "memory mnemonics" or "memorable stories" to help me out. The stories make learning the consonants and consonant classes much easier for me. My first goal was to be able to "recognize" each letter and know what its corresponding object is. I made up stories in English that distinguish each letter which I wrote down. I also used stories to help me remember the 3 different consonant classes.

Here are some examples:
ก g-/-K chicken See the chicken’s beak on the right. The chicken has two straight legs and sits on the mid-table.

ข kh-/-k egg The egg has an embryo with a smooth outer shell. There is a string attached to the egg that swoops downward, to the right and back up. The egg sits high up on the shelf

ฃ kh-/-k bottle The heart bottle has a clockwise cork with a heart-shaped lip. It then traces a line downward, to the right and backward showing the contours of the bottle.This "love" bottle has a heart-shaped lip. The bottle is sitting in a bag with the egg and cymbals high up on the shelf out of reach.
etc....

I then used more "stories" to remember the consonant classes.

For me, the low-class consonants were all down at the "lake" swimming since it's hot out. The "mid-class" consonants were having lunch at a mid-size table and the "upper-class" consonants were sitting high-up on a shelf out of reach.

It helps if you shut your eyes and "see" the different objects either at the lake, at the dinner table or high-up on the shelf.

So here are my stories. When I close my eyes, I can picture all of the objects either at the lake, at the table or up on a shelf. This makes learning the consonants classes easy, since I'm just remembering a story that I can see in my mind.

Low Class consonants story:
Down at the low lake we have a water buffalo, a snake a mouse and an elephant on a heart chain. There is also a horse, monkey and an owl in the lake, since it is so hot out.
The monkey is flying a kite.
The tree’s roots are in the lake and the bell beside the lake is in case of a drowning.
Queen Mandodari carrying a tray of cookies and wearing a ring is being chased by a demon/giant and has just fallen in the lake. She nearly lost a tooth.
She sees a woman, an old man, a Buddhist monk, and a soldier holding a flag in the lake.
We see both a sailboat and a normal boat on the lake.

Mid Class consonants story:
The mid-table has a plate and bowl with chicken, turtle, fish soup and a basil leaf on top. The child has a crown on his head and a spear in his hand and refuses to eat the soup.

High Class consonants story:
High-up on the shelf we have an egg, bottle and cymbals in a bag. On the pedestal sits a little pavilion with a tiger and a hermit statue. There is a bee caught in a chest with a lid on top.

I could ask myself questions like :
Who are all of the "people" down at the lake?
Queen Mandodari, a woman, an old man, a Buddhist monk, a soldier

What are all of the "animals" down at the lake? What objects do they have?

That was just my technique for remembering the consonants and their classes. You can make up any stories that are "vivid" that pop into your mind.

I also have different "personalities" associated for the 5 tones:
Mid-tone : This is the robot humming in a monotonous flat mid-tone, slightly dropping off at the end
Low-tone : The dwarf hovering near the ground, short in stature
Falling-tone : The falling fairy floating up into the air and then falls dramatically downward.
High-tone : The giant with his head in the clouds
Rising-tone : The rising teddy bear swinging on the ground then up in the air

These same techniques are used for remembering Chinese tones in the book "Learning Chinese Characters, Vol. 1".

I hope this is helpful for you.

[lovely]

Is that hard to learn thai language?

I'm planning to take my vacation there,
Thailand is really a nice place to go this summer.


________________________________
anatomy of the human body

[Tgeezer]

Is that hard to learn thai language?

These same techniques are used for remembering Chinese tones in the book "Learning Chinese Characters, Vol. 1".
Only if you learn Chinese first!