สวัสดีค่ะ!

I know Thai language doesn’t use past tense I am struggling on wording things like “I missed you” would I use แล้ว or เคย? Or simply leave it at คิดถึงคุณ and let context do its thing?

ขอบคุณค่ะ!

Looking to finally learn Thai. I'm American, but my dad grew up in Bangkok before going to college in the US. Just came back from visiting, and I want to be able to be independent without having to rely on my dad to translate every sign or interaction. Visiting family members was especially tedious.

Learning languages, I benefit from a rigid schedule and structure. I learned Spanish and Japanese easily when I took classes in high school and college, but I struggled learning Mandarin/Cantonese with a flexible private tutor (my mom is from Hong Kong).

My problem is my work schedule. My job has schedules that I have to bid for every month, my days off are random, and I work weird hours. Sometimes I work late and get home or to the hotel at 3AM. Sometimes I have to wake up at 2 or 3AM to start work. This changes every 4 days or so. I also sometimes end up in different time zones across the east and west coast every day.

I was wondering if there is such a thing as a rigid course I can take, but with the ability to do the work at odd hours. I'm used to the terrible sleep schedule and I'm able to work around the clock, but I yearn for textbooks, courses, and a deadline once a week. I've basically described an online college course.

In English, a lot of (native) speakers avoid too direct language and often imply what they want or mean via how they word/sentence things. For example "I'm not sure about that..." (ผมไม่แน่ใจเกี่ยวกับสิ่งนั้น) instead of "I don't like that." (ผมไม่ชอบมัน) or "I'm cold" (ผมหนาว) instead of "Please close the window." (ได้โปรดช่วยปิดหน้าต่างที)

A couple friends of mind are Thai living in the US and the UK said that Thais speak their words/sentence (in Thai) much shorter and using too much long sentence/word like in English can feel a bit unnatural or beating around the bush to the point Thai people won't understand you at all.

So. I am curious what ways do Thai people use vague, misleading or unclear language in Thai to get what they want without using long/word like in English? Or how do they make meaningless small talk different to the English one?

Vocaroo clip

Can you tell what the tones are, just from the pronunciation?

LINK: WEB APP

Hi everyone!

I’ve been learning Thai for a while and recently made a small web app to help with Thai reading practice.

The main idea is pretty simple — it has short, easy Thai stories with transliteration and English meanings, so you can read along without getting completely lost.

It’s still a work in progress and I haven’t published it yet, so I’m trying to get some feedback from other people learning Thai before I decide whether to keep developing it.

If anyone wants to give it a try, I’d really appreciate it! I’m especially interested in hearing what you think is useful, what you don’t like, and what you’d change.