Thai Language Profile
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| Thai | Difficulty: **** | Spoken Thai is soft and musical, and the
script is graceful . If you learn to read it, you will be alternately
praised and doubted by your fellow westerners, but appreciated by Thais,
many of whom speak passable English, especially in Bangkok. |
| Introduction | | Usefulness | Apart from traveling in
Thailand or on the borders of its neighbors, speaking Thai is not
particularly useful, but if you love Thai cuisine, you can find it
along with native-speaking Thai staff in cities throughout the world:
Tokyo, New York, Paris, Los Angeles, etc. Even in Bangkok, you do not
really need Thai to get around, but it is more rewarding and useful in
the rest of Thailand. Also if you ever want to learn the language of
Laos, you are already ¾ of the way there, since the languages are so
close. | | Beauty | The script, of south Indian
derivation, is beautiful, featuring graceful loops and rounded
characters, and the lilt of Thai is easier on the ear than the
sing-song of Mandarin, Cantonese, or the staccato syllables of
Japanese. At first listen, you will not realize even if someone is
angrily scolding you in Thai because the smiles and tones convey a
kinder sound than the meaning of the utterance. | | Chic
factor | Being an Asian language, and
being quite difficult, Thai should be very chic in the west, but not
many non-Thais speak the language unless they are married to a Thai or
of Thai descent. For this reason, you will probably be considered
unusual, suspicious, and/or chic if you speak it for no other reason
than that you love Thailand. | | Speakers | About 50 million. | | Countries | Total Countries: Thailand,
border areas of Laos, Burma, Cambodia, and small communities in North
American cities, particularly in Los Angeles, Portland, Atlanta,
Toronto, and New York City. | | Regional
Variations | There are several variations
especially in the north (Isaan dialect) and south, but the Bangkok
dialect is understood throughout Thailand and is the national standard
for schools, TV, newspapers, etc. | | Travel | Thailand is a beautiful,
exotic, and exciting country, from breath-taking mountains and
rain-forests to clean, sandy beaches. One of the best reasons to learn
Thai is the warm, friendly people, and the opportunity it provides you
to get out of the tourist-targeted Bangkok area and into the smaller
towns and villages where you can learn spoken Thai relatively quickly
through a combination of self-study, staying in a Thai home, and
avoiding the use of your mother tongue. Thailand offers entertainment,
a raucous nightlife, spicy, exotic food at bargain prices, and great
bargain shopping, be it jewelry, silk, etc. Also worth enjoying are
the beautiful, ancient temples. Knowing the language enables you to
visit sites on your own and at your own pace, without relying on
tourist guide interpretations in English or French. I highly recommend
that the language learner not spend the majority of their travel time
in Bangkok or Pattaya, because it is too easy and non-challenging to
find ! shop and hotel owners that speak English, Japanese, or German.
You also will meet far more fellow foreign travelers (who you will
inevitably speak to in English or German) and will not be motivated to
learn Thai as well as if you were in a smaller town (i.e.;Hat Yai,
Phuket) which requires you to learn Thai to get around town. | | Culture | Knowing Thai lets you
appreciate a rich and beautiful culture and a long literary
tradition.Learning to read Thai is a long process but its rewards are
great: being able to read the following gems even slowly are a good
enough reason to learn this language: The short stories of former
Prime Minister Kukrit Pramoj, considered to be the best in modern Thai
Literature, the 19th century works of Sunthon Phu, considered a poetic
genius in Thai communities.Phya Anuman Rajadhon, who died in 1969 and
was a major influence for the current crop of authors in Thailand, as
are the novels of Suwanee Sukhontha and the short stories of Khansing
Sinawk, with his tales of ordinary villagers braving impossible
elements. | | m | | Difficulty | | Phonemes | The vowel sounds are different
from English and take some practice in shortening their sounds and in
the dipthongs found in Thai (eua, euai, aui, uu, etc). Some of the
vowels are closer to French sounds and are not found in English at
all. The consonant sounds do not always correspond directly to English
values and are differentiated between voiced and unvoiced (with or
without a puff of air). Failure to pronounce these correctly can
change the meaning of the word completely. There are also several
letters representing the same sound (6
for F', 3 for P' and 3 different K'). And
finally, there are five tones in Thai, an aspect found in several
Asian and African languages that often confuses learners. There is
also a distinction of live and dead syllables pertaining to certain
consonants which is difficult to grasp. | | Syntax | One of the easier things about
Thai is its simple word order, much like Chinese. Verbs do not change
forms and nouns do not have genders or plural forms. There are no
definite articles. Helper words such as ekaung show relationships between words, including tense of verbs, so there
are no possessive forms of a noun, nor verb tenses to memorize. Many
common verbs are combinations of two short words which are easy to
learn. For example, au ma=bring (literally, take come) and au bpai=take
away (take go), au=take, and bpai=go. | | Vocabulary | Not easy, but also not as
difficult as you may expect, at least 25% of the words are
recognizable as borrowed words from English and French, as well as
some from Japanese and Chinese.&Not every word in Thai carries a
tone, which makes them easier. The remainder of the vocabulary is as
difficult to learn as any non-Indo-European language because they bear
no resemblance to words you already know, plus you have to remember
which syllables use which tones. The use of noun classifiers for
counting certain objects, (dishes, animals, etc.) which is found in
several Asian languages, and complex rules governing politeness forms
and how to tell time are also difficult for the beginner. You also
need to learn the numerical order of the Thai alphabet in order to
look up words in a good Thai dictionary. | | Ortograph | Thai is not particularly
orthographic because some letters are pronounced as completely
different sounds (i.e. Y or N, S or silent, S or T) depending on
whether it is at the beginning or at the end of a word. These
difficult rules are even more confusing when you look at a Thai text,
because the words are not separated, so unless you already recognize
the word, you do not know where it begins and where it ends, and thus
you do not know how to spell it. The only solution I have found for
this catch-22 is to get used to seeing the most common vocabulary in
script, so that you recognize it by the context of the sentence, this
will help you isolate the new words that you do not know, and how to
spell them. | | Overall
difficulty | I rate Thai as ****,
quite difficult to learn, but not as difficult as some languages
(Chinese, Japanese, etc). Thai has five tones and has complex rules
governing which sounds use which tones , but the Thai script is easier
to learn than Chinese or Japanese because there aren't 2,000 to 3,000
ideographs that you have to learn, and Thais are quite friendly to
someone trying to learn their language. I suppose the more difficult
task is to have Thais successfully correct your mistakes, because you
can get along fairly well while making quite a few. | | Time
needed | If you are exposed to hearing
and seeing Thai for nine months to a year, you will be able to speak
and generally understand what is being said and to read signs, but to
read and write it properly will take at least another two to three
years. Reading the irregular script is difficult, but it is not as
difficult as Thai people may tell you, I have had several people in
Thailand (native and westerner) tell me that the written script is too
difficult/different for a non-Thai to learn, which is an exaggeration
and of course, not true. | | m | | Learning
material | | Books
and tapes | To learn the script quickly I
suggest:
Easy Thai, by Gordon H.Allison, Charles E.Tuttle Publishers,
1995.
Thai System of Writing, by Mary R. 1971, she is also the editor of the
best Thai dictionary available for learners (see below).
For a good introduction of the spoken and written language:
Teach Yourself Thai, with cassettes, by David Smyth, Hodder &
Stoughton, 1995.
Colloquial Thai, with CD, by J. Moore and S.Rodchue, Routledge,
1994.
For a fun introduction to Thai slang:
Making Out in Thai, by John Clewley, 1994.(slightly explicit
vocabulary)
Two indispensable dictionaries for the learner are:
Robertson's Practical English-Thai Dictionary, Charles E. Tuttle
Publishers, 1995.
Thai-English Student's Dictionary, by Mary R.Haas, Stanford University
Press, 1964. | | Schools | I would recommend a good
home-stay program where you would live with a Thai family. There are
several available, including some that you can set up while in
Thailand yourself, but whether you study at a school or stay with a
family, make sure you stay in Bangkok or the central provinces area,
so that you do not pick up a regional variety of Thai. And make
certain that you will stay with a Thai family and not an ethnic
Chinese family, as happened to an acquaintance of mine. You want
native speakers of Thai as your homestay family.I know of one program
which will set you up with a Thai family in Bangkok and enroll you in
Thai classes five days a week for 4 to 6 weeks with longer stays
available.From what I have heard, they are quite reliable, but you may
want to shop around first: Languages Abroad, 502-99 Avenue Rd,
Toronto, ON, Canada, M5R 2G5
This school will also arrange for you to study Thai in Thailand and/or
arrange a homestay with a Thai family:
Taiyo Schools: http://come.to/studyThai or this page
I personally advise against simply hiring a native speaker to tutor
you in Thai, unless you know exactly what and how you want to learn
it.You also need to make sure the tutor has taught Thai before,
because speaking a language and teaching one are quite a world apart. | Links
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