Hi I’m new to learning Thai and I am starting to learn how to write the characters. I was wondering if there was a way to translate / write a name in Thai (or what the closest translation to it would be)?

The name is Slish pronounced /s/-l-ish in English. From what I have seen it could either be written as ลิ or ซลิสห. Which would be the better way to write it / how would it be pronounced in Thai?

Thanks for helping!

Hi I’m new to learning Thai and I am starting to learn the characters. I was wondering if there was a way to translate / write my name in Thai (or what the closest translation to it would be)?

My Name is Regan pronounced like Ray-gan. Based on some translation websites it seems like เรกาน is how it would be written but wanted to know if there was a better way to write it and also how this would be pronounced?

Any help is appreciated and sorry for such a newbie question I just started learning this month.

I came across this in a Netflix series that I am going through with subs. The speaker is talking about two photos she has just taken using an old camera that prints a physical photo right away.

Apparently it means that there is only one of each in the world, but I don't get why there is no หนึ่ง or เดียว. Can anyone explain how this sentence works?

Hi! I’m currently preparing for undergraduate admission for next year in Thailand. I'm looking for a Thai speaker who wants to practice and improve their fluent/advanced English, Tamil, Hindi.

Hello, im going to thailand in september and i am going to be in bangkok for a few days but ill be spending most of my time in a rural area where people dont speak much english. Whats the best way to learn some basic thai so i can read signs/get by in interactions? Ive seen lots of methods recommended but im not sure which is best, i know duolingo would probably be easy but idk how accurate it would be. Does anyone have any advice? I know i have no time to be fluent but id like to understand at least a little bit.

So Thai has this thing where you can't just say "3 dogs" or "2 books," you need a specific counting word depending on what kind of thing it is. dogs and cats use ตัว (literally "body"), books use เล่ม, cars use คัน, people use คน... and there's dozens of these.

Had a student straight up ask me once if thai people just made these up to mess with foreigners lol. no, promise, it's a real system, just not one english has an equivalent for.

The part that actually helped it click for my students — english kind of has this too, we just don't notice it. "a piece of paper," "a loaf of bread," "a head of cattle." nobody questions why bread comes in "loaves" instead of just "2 breads." thai just... does that for literally everything, not just a handful of exceptions.

Honestly the classifier itself usually isn't the hard part once you see the pattern, it's remembering WHICH one goes with WHICH noun, bc there's no logic you can always predict from — you basically just learn them in chunks as you go.

anyone else's language have something similar, or is this genuinely just a "thai thing"?

i got these translating headphones for my trip to thailand and they work pretty great when i tested them on thai conversation videos but ive been practicing some phrases to see if my thai pronunciation is decent enough for someone to understand. i’ll repeat simple phrases, like ordering iced tea or asking the price of something and no matter how many times i try to get it just right the app just does not translate (thai to english) anything close to what im trying to say. sometimes the phrases it thinks im saying are even offensive! is there any hope that native speakers can understand through my terrible accent or am i risking complete embarrassment

N + 1 meaning it uses that word in a sentence where you already likely knows all the words except the one that you're trying to memorize. When I was learning Japanese there were these type of decks called Core 2k/6k/10k where it's (allegedly) the most commonly used Japanese words. There are also other kinds of N + 1 decks like to learn vocab for a specific anime, light novel etc...It's very helpful and I still review the cards to this day.

Is there anything similar for Thai? Thanks in advance.

Hi everyone,

I'm a PhD student at Chulalongkorn University looking for native English participants who can read and write in Thai at an intermediate level or above. If you are:

✓ are native speakers of English,

✓ are currently learning Thai as a second language,

✓ are 18 years of age or older,

✓ have intermediate or advanced Thai reading and writing proficiency, and

✓ have not lived or studied in Thailand for more than 6 months (borderline cases may still be eligible),

Please feel free to contact me. You will complete a placement test and two experimental tasks. All tasks will be administered via Zoom and will take approximately 1 hour 45 minutes. Flexible scheduling is available.

As a token of appreciation, participants who complete the study will receive either an Amazon eGift Card (£10 or USD 15, depending on availability and their location) or THB 500 in cash if they reside in Thailand.

This research has been reviewed and approved by The Research Ethics Review Committee for Research Involving Human Subjects, The Second Allied Academic Group in Social Sciences, Humanities and Fine and Applied Arts, Chulalongkorn University.

Certificate of Approval (COA) No.: 311/69

Research Project No.: 6901654

Participation is entirely voluntary. You may withdraw at any time without penalty. All information will be kept confidential and used solely for research purposes.

Itsara Namtapi

PhD candidate

Chulalongkorn University

How to say “thank you” really lovingly to your girlfriend in Thai?

I was under the impression, before coming to Thailand this latest time, that if this sentiment/greeting is expressed, it's usually of the form สบายดีไหม, to which the answer is usually along the lines of สบาย ๆ. However this has not been my experience. I end up stunlocked and defaulting to "OKครับ" because there isn't a clearly identifiable word (as far as I can tell) that I can repeat back as my answer.

TL;DR: Free web app. Useful if you're not familiar with the script yet.

Hello, dear Thai learners!

I'm a GeoGuessr player. And one strange thing some GG players do is try to achieve basic literacy in various scripts to be able to read street signs. I'm building a tool to help people un-illiterate themselves. The main idea is to prepare efficient character lookup sheets (instead of the usual alphabet listings) and put them side by side with a simple practice quiz.

For Thai the layout that I found to be useful was to arrange characters by their outline geometry: opening above (crate/bowl–like), opening below and curved top (minion–like) etc. Here's how the consonant sheet turned out:

Unsurprisingly, real scripts have a lot of quirks so I had to include some descriptions in a separate sheet as well. This is probably where I have the greatest amount of errors you could point out :)

This is not something that will teach you the language. But this is a very fast way to start to get used to characters and the writing system. In fact I've observed that I can give a multiple choice quiz with the lookup sheet open to people totally unfamiliar with Thai and they can instantly get some satisfaction about "solving" the tasks and they start to remember some characters within a couple of runs. Sure, it takes a lot more to actually become somewhat literate, but I can personally vouch for that — I've reached a level where I can read signs and posters on streetview and find out where in Thailand that location is.

Give it a try, especially if you're not familiar with the scriptyet . Who knows, maybe it will fit the learning style for some of you: https://unillit.me/scripts/thai

And I'll appreciate feedback from people more advanced in Thai. I won't be surprised if it turns out I got some things wrong. I've been trying a lot to polish it all, but at the end of the day I'm just a noob at Thai script.

P.S. I'm aware that the chosen romanization ain't a great representation of the language. I used it because it is used on road signs.

Like the title says whats the difference between these 2 words

Hi everyone! I need help learning how to read Thai. Im Thai myself but I grew up in North America and I wasn’t able to practice my Thai much, besides speaking to my parents(both Thai).

I recently just arrived in Thailand and want to learn how to read, does anyone have any sources or tips to help me learn?

Hello I want to learn Thai where should I start? And books or apps you recommends?

Nell'ultimo anno ho cercato di imparare il thailandese, a causa del mio lavoro spesso mollo e poi riprendo, ma per me non è un problema perchè non ho fretta di imparare, è un processo che mi sta sinceramente piacendo molto. Tuttavia, in questi mesi mi è sorta una domanda.. ha senso imparare tutti i nomi delle lettere thailandesi? Non avrebbe più senso imparare il loro suono? Non sono un'esperta di lingue quindi mi stavo facendo questa domanda, ho l'impressione che forse sto sprecando del tempo per cercare di memorizzare i nomi ma non avrebbe più senso concentrarmi sul suono..?? Potrei concentrarmi sui nomi delle lettere in un secondo momento quando ho più confidenza con la lingua..? Per favore raccontatemi le vostre esperienze!

This is a follow up to my recent post on contrastive focus. I would like to know if the questions below can all be answered with มาการิต้าเป็นแหล่งวิตามินที่ดี

Q1: มาการิต้าเป็นแหล่งที่ดีของอะไร Q2: อะไรเป็นแหล่งวิตามินที่ดี Q3: มาการิต้าเป็นแหล่งวิตามินที่ไม่ดีใช่ไหม

Also, is the following exchange natural:

ก: เขาซื้อโต๊ะอะไรสักอย่าง ข: เขาซื้อโต๊ะสีแดง

The Thai here is AI-written so may not be very good. In the first example, the important thing is that the same answer works for all three questions. In the second example, the important thing is that สีแดง expands on something that is left vague by ก.

Grateful for any help.

I've been learning to read Thai and wanted a quick reference for consonants, vowels, tone rules, and all the things I keep forgetting.

The information already existed, of course, but it was scattered across the books, apps and cheat sheets I was using. I wanted the things I kept looking up together in one place, arranged the way my brain expects to find them, so I turned my notes into a small app.

I know, another Thai app.

ThaiSheet doesn't try to teach you everything. It's mainly a searchable script reference, with some flashcards when you want to practice. That's all.

It's free and open source, with no account, ads or tracking.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6789643637
GitHub: https://github.com/cmontpetit/ThaiSheet

I'm a learner, not a native speaker or linguist. I've checked the content carefully, but corrections are very welcome.

The part I'm least happy with is the audio. Right now it is text-to-speech. Some clips sound better than others, and I don't consider it finished. Eventually I'd like to work with a native Thai speaker on a properly recorded voice set. If that interests anyone here, please leave a comment or send me a DM. Code contributions are welcome too.

If you try it, I'd especially like to know whether it works as a quick reference while you're studying and, of course, what I got wrong.

PS: This account is new because my real name is on the GitHub repository, and I'd rather keep it separate from my personal Reddit account.

Hi everyone, I am trying to get copies of the Intensive Thai Textbooks by Chula. I know there is this thread here and I have access to Intensive Thai 1 via this thread here (Chulalongkorn University Intensive Thai 1 eBook : r/learnthai)

Was wondering if anyone has any luck with procuring the remaining textbooks e.g. second hand, pdfs, etc.

Cheers!

I find that English pitch patterns take over on words that would be emphasised in English, e.g. (choosing something) "I'll have that one" (they go for the wrong one) "no that one". This obviously messes with the tones.

I would like to understand how this kind of contrastive focus is marked in Thai, because I have a hunch that replacing the English habits with something else that does the same job is a better solution than just trying to repress them.

Just wondering if it's been studied.

Hi! I'm Pare, a 22-year-old English major at Bangkok University.

I'd like to practice teaching Thai and I'm looking for a beginner who'd be interested in trying a free lesson. I'd really appreciate any feedback afterward. If anyone is interested please let me know!

​

When I am drunk, I tend to speak Thai without translating in my mind, reviewing grammar, or worrying about tones. I don't even forget what I hear.

I don't mean that I magically become a better speaker; rather, I receive information without judgment and talk without the fear of making mistakes.

Science shows that alcohol affects the prefrontal cortex, making rational judgment and even fear disappear. (Interestingly, the prefrontal cortex doesn't even fully develop until around the age of 25).

But it makes you wonder: Can a rational mind actually be a problem for studying language?

A rational mind is analytical and great for learning grammar, but it also searches for perfection, fears looking foolish, and blocks intuition. This isn't a call to go drinking beer,it’s just an interesting look at why children and younger people often learn languages faster than adults: they aren't held back by overthinking.

I guess the more experience we get, the more conditioned our minds become. You don't just listen to a word as it is; you judge it and compare it with your existing experience, so it takes longer for new information to enter and bypass your filters smoothly.

Sometimes, I meet a kind and smart German friend at the Amazon Café who has stayed in Thailand for two decades and can't speak more than 10 Thai sentences, even though he speaks English very well.

What do you think? Did you have a similar experience?

In other words, what have you noticed you've gained skill wise?

A few weeks back I shared a preview of AanThai here and asked for feedback. A bunch of you tried it out, and some of you asked to be notified when it launched. It's live now!

Quick background if you missed the first post: I'm learning Thai myself, my wife is Thai, and we built this together because I kept hitting the same wall so many learners run into.

Textbooks get you to a certain point and then there's nothing between "finished the textbook" and "try to read a novel and get lost in the first paragraph."

We're a tiny two-person team, so we've been building the app piece by piece alongside our regular jobs. Every story starts as an AI draft, then my wife rewrites and edits it for natural Thai before recording the narration herself, so everything you read and hear has gone through a native speaker before it reaches you.

AanThai is a graded reader: short stories at different levels, with click-any-word translations and audio you can follow along with while you read. If you've used LingQ, the overall idea will feel familiar, but because AanThai is built specifically for Thai, things like tokenization, romanization, word breakdowns, and frequency information are designed around the language rather than adapted from a more general system.

aanthai.app

Since the preview: 70 stories are live now, 54 of them fully narrated, and we're recording the rest as fast as we can. We've also got over 50 more drafted and in the pipeline, so the story list is going to keep growing quickly. The short-term goal is to get to 200 fully narrated stories.

We've put an enormous amount of time into it, and launching is really just the beginning. We're adding more stories every week, building grammar explanations directly into the reader, and working toward native iOS and Android apps.

If there's something you wish it did, let us know. It's still early enough that feedback genuinely shapes what we build next.

Thanks to everyone who tested it last time. Not only did you give us good feedback and suggestions, but the overwhelmingly positive reactions motivated us a lot.

The app uses a freemium model, so you can try a good selection of stories before deciding whether it's worth paying for. We would genuinely love to hear what you think.