Learning Thai script

[Czarownica]

I must say that Thai script is a huge challenge for me. I've learnt hiragana and katakana in two days or so, I've learnt hangul in one afternoon, but Thai script remains a mystery to me. I just feel overwhelmed with all those characters and I don't understand this high-mid-low thing that I'm apparently supposed to memorize as well...

I really need to just sit down and learn it, I guess.

Anybody here wants to share their experiences?

[caparica007]

I've studied Thai and I haven't found their alphabet particularly difficult. I only studied for a few months, so I didn't progress much, but after studying Chinese characters I think everything else looks easy.

[BWL]

Thai script is complex because it was adapted from the ancient Khmer script (a totally unrelated language) and the Khmer script was adapted from an ancient Indian script called Brahmi.The result is a script that has a very complex relationship to the spoken language.

From what I understand (I'm not a native speaker but I used to live near the Thai border and had many Thai-speaking friends) the pronunciation of Thai has changed over the last thousand years and the reason so many consonants have high. mid and low versions is that the old sounds which were pronounced differently a thousand years ago are now pronounced alike but still use different letters. Also a lot of words were borrowed from Sanskrit so there are special letters that are used to write these words but the catch is that they are pronounced exactly as in Thai, only spelled with different letters because they are of Sanskrit origin

[Aishe]

It was, and still is, awful for me!

I'm familiar with most of the mid-tone consonants and all of the vowels, but the rest I can never really seem to grasp.

What makes it worse is that many of the characters sound similar and some characters can be combined to form something else completely, for example, there are a bunch of "s" sounds in Thai already, but the ท (a t type sound) and the ร (almost equivalent to an r) make another s sound!

[Meera]

Are there any links/sites to learn the Thai script?

[dylr88]

I been trying to practice thai scrpt through youtube videos andhttp://www.loecsen.com/mobiles/20-en-67-0-2-64-ipad-iphone-free-lessons-thai.html I still find it difficult though, but I find their language and writing interesting and would love to be able to learn more.

[tar_toei]

I just started to learn Thai and the first part is learning the Thai alphabet. It looks awesome when you look at it but it's hard to memorize all of them. I tried writing some of them and it's not hard to write it. What makes it difficult is to remember how to pronounce and combine to form a word out of those alphabet. This language is challenging because it's a tonal type.

[Piccadilly]

True, it takes some time to learn how to read and write Thai. As for nearly everything concerning languages, it is all about practicing. I had the opportunity to stay in Thailand for a longer duration, so i eventually learned how the writing system works. As soon as i figured out how it basically works, i tried reading everything in Thai that came in my sight: Road signs, menus, even car numbler plates. It might sound stupid to you first, but you should try to use Thai Karaoke programs, since Karaoke forces you to read really fast. It takes a lot of time to read a sentence or a word at first, but you get faster and faster the more you actually try

[Victor Leigh]

The first thing I really learned about the Thai script was the way it is written. The first letter of the Thai alphabet is 'ko' which is usually named 'ko kai' ie 'ko' as used in the word 'kai'. It took me a whole exercise book of writing this first letter of the Thai alphabet before I found out that I had been writing it the wrong way round. The Thai letters are usually written from the bottom up. This may also explain why Thai students write the English letters from the bottom up as well.

[aira]

The other day, my friend and I were talking about Thai actors and actresses, especially about Tou and Punpun. Then our conversation went to Thai language. With a romanized text, I still have a hard time reading it. We also discussed about Thai script.

I learned kana in one month (with kanji in between), while I learned hangul in a week. I find the Thai script very confusing. I want to learn it, but I am not sure where to start. Any suggestions?

[Wanda Kaishin]

I used Thai for Beginners. Excellent textbook imo. 

[PSyCHoHaMSTeRza]

I'm living in Thailand now and I agree that the script sometimes does not make much sense. The most difficult part for me is the fact that their sentences have no spacing.

Once you know the phonics though, it becomes so much easier. 

[Piccadilly]

This is very helpful, Ruedi uploads a lot of useful stuff.