ศาลาชุมนุม

[Madotsuki]

Hello, community~

A little background of me – I've from the US, and my family and a lot of my identity is associated with Thai. But sadly, my language skills aren't great. I understand the Thai spoken to me and on TV very well, but I just cannot remember my words back, so I struggle communicating it unless it's a reply. I also never learned how to write Thai. I stumbled upon this community and I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to communicate better with my family and those who can't speak English very well.

My nickname is หมีอ้วน or fat bear. I am always familiar with the romanized version of it, Meeon. Funnily enough, I have been pretty much skinny my whole entire life now, so it's ironic.

Anyway, nice to meet you all!

[David and Bui]

Welcome to Thai-language.com. This site has lots of material for language learners. Please feel free to look around and ask the community any questions you might have.

Best of luck in your studies.

[Thomas]

I also never learned how to write Thai. ...

My nickname is หมีอ้วน or fat bear. I am always familiar with the romanized version of it, Meeon. ...

Anyway, nice to meet you all!

Hi Madotsuki,

nice to meet you.

To start with this: When I learned Thai initially I summarized my problems often in the way that initially I could not discern อ้วน (uan) from หวาน (wan = sweet) when it was spoken. This improved only once I could read Thai.

Perhaps I should add that I'm not a native English, or AE, speaker. There is a lot of discussion about good romanization systems. This site here uses one directed to English speakers. This system gives หมีอ้วน as meeR uaanF. A system used in Thailand, RTGS, would use mi uan.

Not to start a discussion about romanization systems, or phonetic guides, but your "Meeon" (and comparing this to uan, wan, and my original problems) gives me the impression that learning to read Thai could improve rather quickly also your facility to understand spoken Thai better (and to recall terms, and to use dictionaries etc.). So, why not to start to learn to read and write Thai letters?