#Thai from English

[lurkingteapot]

Free Thai language learning resources

I’ve been learning Thai for the past 20 months. This list is by no means complete or comprehensive, what works for me doesn’t have to work for you, etc etc. That said: I’ve used most of these and found them useful, I thought you might, too. Have fun!

Youtube channels with free video lessons:

There are tons of wonderful teachers on youtube; this is by no means an exhaustive list. The three channels listed here are comprehensive, long-running, and updated regularly; if you have other favourites, please reblog and append!

Comprehensible Thai is a channel that teaches Thai in Thai, from zero, via the comprehensible input method. They have videos from total beginner through upper intermediate/lower advanced levels available.

Learn Thai with Mod – Mod runs a language school that offers good, structured group classes; she and her co-teachers often upload short videos about specific aspects of Thai. The channel has been around for a long time and they cover a lot of topics, including grammar points.

Thai Lessons by New (Learn Thai one Word one Sentence) – lots of good vocabulary and situational phrases

Other channels I like:

Advanced Thai with Kruu Momm -- one of my favourites, Momm’s a star. Not included in the upper list only because this is definitely more of an intermediate-advanced resource.

Thai with Grace -- I knew of Grace via her polyglot channel and travel vlogs before I realised she also teaches Thai. Fun stuff.

Kat talks Thai -- I believe Kat is more active on instagram (@kattalksthai), but these are still really neat.

Perth Nakhun’s Basic Thai playlist

Honourable mentions because they’re interesting and can be nice supplements (yes, the video titles on these channels tend to be clickbaity, the content is useful, though):

Stu Jay Raj: Stu is a polyglot based in Thailand. His channel is a bit of a mixed bag, but he has a very interesting approach to languages and sometimes does foreign accent reduction / accent analysis sessions on his channel (with consent and participation of those whose speech he dissects).

Thai Talk with Paddy: Paddy is an Australian who learned Thai when he was a volunteer in Thailand, he’s kept it up. Fun things about language learning and culture

Listening comprehension

I’m assuming many folks on here who are interested in Thai already watch some Thai shows (yes I’m stereotyping but also this is tumblr), which means you’re spending time listening to Thai.

If you’re not:

Netflix, Youtube, WeTV, and Viki all have several Thai shows with English subtitles available. The Youtube channel of Thai broadcasting giant GMMTV has English subtitles on nearly all of their uploaded series, some series are also subtitled in languages other than English. one31 is another huge channel; they have English subtitles on some series and some series also have subtitles in Thai. There’s tons more – find a rec list and a Thai show that sounds like you’d enjoy it, chances are you’ll be able to watch it for free, legally, on youtube. You can use the youtube controls (or the ones on netflix) to turn the speed down to 75% —this can make it a lot easier to catch what’s being said. 50% gets so draggy that I personally find it almost harder to understand, but ymmv—give it a shot!

https://lingopolo.org/thai/ has real-life recordings for listening practice; sign-up is required but it’s literally just an e-mail-address, user name and password. Using the site is free.

https://www.activethai.com/ has a section dedicated to learning the tones (under ���Overview of Thai Tones”) including a self-test for listening that I found very useful.

Learning to read

I will always, always, ALWAYS recommend learning to read the Thai script. All available romanisations for Thai have drawbacks, and besides, you learned to read English with its “though through thorough tough thought”, you can damn well learn to read Thai. I promise it will help you improve your pronunciation (yes, really) and overall understanding of how the language works.

Learn-to-Read-Thai resources that seem comprehensive and like they should do everything in one:

Anki decks “Read Thai PHASE 1 - The Consonants“, “Read Thai PHASE 2 - Thai Vowels“, “Read Thai PHASE 3 - Consonant Classes” and “Read Thai PHASE 4 - Tone Rules” by Khruu Gaan (ครูกานต์). Anki is probably the most powerful spaced repetition software I have ever used. It’s free on all desktops and android. These decks have sound.

Memrise course “Read Thai: A Complete Guide to Reading Thai“

Other resources I used (In hindsight, I feel like I should’ve picked one resource to learn to read from and stuck with it; I think I was rushing and made things more complicated than need be for myself with my hodgepodge mix-and-match approach. But hey, I can read now.)

https://www.activethai.com/ – the site I started with. Teaches the consonants separated by class and with sound. The only reason this is no longer my top recommendation is that I ended up using this alongside a resource that helped me memorise what the words used to represent the letters actually mean because the site itself didn’t tell me, and I wanted that easy way to have 44 vocabulary words ready as soon as you’re done learning your consonants, and it gives you access to neat mnemonics such as ไก่จิกเด็กตาย(เฎ็กฏาย)บนปากโอ่ง.

The chart on Wikipedia’s English article on the Thai Script

the reference section of Thai-Language.com

In order to better learn to read Thai written in different fonts (modern and handwriting fonts can be tough at first), the Thai Script typographical styles overview on Thai-language.com was a huge help, as was throwing simple phrases things into gdocs and messing around to see how different fonts made them look. This chart from sanukmaak.com also helped.

Speaking and pronunciation

The hardest one for any new language for most folks. For me personally, finding someone who speaks the language and is willing to correct me was an absolute necessity, but I know that’s not always an option. If you’re going it on your own, make sure you check out the resources above for learning to hear the tones and those sounds and sound clusters not present in your own language correctly first.

Things to try on your own:

shadowing: Whenever someone on a show utters a sentence you think might be useful, or provide a useful pattern, or something just sounds cool, rewind and try to speak along as they say it, trying to make it sound as close to their pronunciation as you can.

try to record yourself and listen back -- yes, it’s cringe af but it will HELP.

memorising short sentences and phrases: tying back to the section above, there's a ton of youtube videos that is "phrases to use in [situation]" that are great for targeted learning if you're up for it

self talk (cautiously! don't want to cement bad pronunciation habits)

if you’re linguistically inclined: looking up descriptions on how to make a sound correctly sometimes helps, as does watching videos of folks who’ve successfully learned the language.

once you’ve learned to read: find sentences to read somewhere (twitter, a textbook, whatever) and read them into your phone’s dictation engine. See if the software understands you correctly. Adjust as needed until it does.

Websites and apps to find language partners or (paid) tutors

Like any other app where you ‘meet people’, please exercise caution on these.

italki (mainly for finding tutors and teachers, but you can find language partners on the forums)

Preply (web/app) (for finding tutors/teachers)

hellotalk (app only, iOS/android) for finding language partners -- free to use basic features like messaging, voice rooms, etc; has annoying ads

tandem (app only, iOS/android) for finding language partners -- free to use basic features, has ads

any other app or website that’ll let you meet people, like local facebook groups (yes really), instagram, etc

(note: Neither hellotalk nor tandem allow users to sign up without selecting a binary gender. it sucks. I’ve seen people who managed to circumvent this on Hellotalk by signing up via apple ID (? I think), but it’s hearsay and I have not managed to do so myself.)

Books (a book) that are (is) worth spending money on imo

Higbie & Thinsan: Thai Reference Grammar. The Structure of Spoken Thai. Orchid Press: Bangkok, 2002. Yes, it’s ancient in textbook terms. It’s not perfect, but it’s still the best reference grammar for Thai I’ve come across so far, and I use it frequently.

Random bits and bobs

Stu Jay Raj has two videos in particular that I, as a phonetics-and-phonology-loving person, loved and found extremely useful and wished I’d watched before I started to try and learn the script: Thai Vowels for Dummies in 5 Min v2 - A System Impossible to Forget and Thai Bites Extended Edition - Transliterating Thai using IPA. I realise these may be overwhelming and less helpful for people with no prior phonetics or phonology training, but they helped me so much it’d feel amiss not to include them.

Resources I recommend AGAINST using when starting out

drops/hello words -- seems like their Thai courses have been created using machine translation that wasn’t sufficiently proofread. They will assign you nouns in places of the corresponding verb or false cognates, and that’s within the first 10 or so lessons. Might be useful once the level where a learner can tell “ah, yeah, that’s … not right” has been reached? idk.

transcription as generated by google translate: BURN IT WITH FIRE. it’s a transliteration, i.e. 1-to-1 representation of 1 Thai letter = 1 Latin letter (extended), it’s not phonemic, it’s not going to help ANYONE (and those who can make sense of it presumably already read Thai and would be better off with just Thai script). Just. Stop.

Google translate as a dictionary: still shitty but not AS bad as the transcription function. Still, for the love of all that you hold dear, please, save yourself the pain and confusion and just use thai2english or thai-language.com instead.

---

And that’s that from me, friends. Yeeting this into the void before I second-guess myself more. Please append additional resources!

Edited to fix a couple of typos and errors on 2023-06-15

[guzhufuren]

so i went through last 6 months of bl actor Mek Jirakit's twitter

in between of saying this kind of things (all of which scream that he was born to be a tumblrina please we need to steal him from there pleasee) he posts about racism against thai people, Palestine, gay and trans rights, criticism of ai, videos of platonically kissing his bros on the lips, extremely emo tweets about love and broken heart, his metal music and sometimes asks fans to rec him their favourite cookbooks

[annabelle--cane]

with the training of a decade of formal language education I now have a strong enough grasp of spanish to read french and feel like I've been awake for three days and am having a stroke

[moerusai]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Man Suang is a movie to watch multiple times to unpack all the lies and twists and unreliable narratives, to appreciate the performances and choices that each actor makes to stay true to their character among such a big ensemble cast.

Even then, there are still nuances to catch with every rewatch (trust me, I'm on my fifth).

The lackluster English subtitle (partly due to the translator's negligence, but mostly due to the subtlety being lost in translation) certainly doesn't do the dialogues and the storyline justice.

So I think some of us, especially those from Western cultures, could do to sit down and contemplate a movie so rooted in a specific culture before sharing, frankly, insensible opinions on it.

[avichor]

this has yet to come up but i forego honorifics when writing characters whose language uses them ( mostly korean or japanese ) just because it's implied they're using proper honorifics when speaking in the language, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

[thebroccolination]

So there’ve been two important subtitles in Between Us that Thai speakers (not me) have offered different and more nuanced translations for.

The first one is in episode two before their kiss by the pool. The subtitle in iQiYi and SWS’s uncut membership episode reads: “Kiss me.”

According to Thai speakers, what he actually says is more like, “Can I kiss you?” or even, “I’m going to kiss you, okay?”

The second example is in episode seven before they go into the bathroom stall. The subtitle reads, “Can I?”

According to some Thai speakers, what he says is literally along the lines of, “Please give (me),” or, “Can you give to me?” Basically he’s asking permission again, and I’m guessing by Team being the one to close the bathroom door behind them that it wasn’t phrased in a way that Team’s silence left Win unclear on whether Team consents or not.

Basically, if you’re in doubt about what’s being said or whether someone’s doing something dubious by the subtitles, check with a Thai speaker before you make a judgment call, because the subtitles are sometimes the dubious one, not the character. It’s just good to keep in mind that Thai and English have some major differences, and it’s possible that the translator isn’t a native English speaker or else they’re overworked and not thinking about the potential consensual problems that crop up in the difference between “kiss me” and “can I kiss you”, especially if they’ve got a lot on their plate to work on, y’know?

[miss0atae]

Random Thoughts about Century of Love ep 1:

First of all, I have to say when I saw the first 5 minutes of the series, I felt like it has the same vibe as To Sir, With Love. Turns out I wasn't entirely wrong because both series have the same director and screenwriter. You can really see they have a unique hand. I'm not really good at talking about the art of filming and it's harder to talk it in another language than my own, but I feel like their type of cinematography is easily recognizable: the color or the light used are very vibrant. It gives an oneiric atmosphere especially when the story was in the past.

So San has lost his beloved love Vad / Wat and he has made a deal with the goddess Niwa to be able to wait for her reincarnation within a century. In exchange, he is afflicted by the power of the five shades stone each night (at midnight). He has to find her before the century end otherwise he will die in atrocious pain. He has been really patient, but unfortunately for him Vad / Wat hasn't reincarnated in a woman. Her reincarnation is a man named Vee and he has been attracted to San from the minute he saw him.

This first episode is here to set the plot and the characters. I'm not crazy about San. I understand why it must be complicated to discover that your long lost love is not the same as she was before. I guess, he never imagined that his love would be a man. I think it's going to take him a while to fully accept the change. Even if he already has erotic dreams with Vee. He would have preferred if he was a woman.

On the opposite side, I'm already fully in love with Vee. He is mischievous and seems to be an optimistic. The story may prove me wrong later, but I'm always drawn to people who smile a lot. We know that some of them hide the worst scars, so it's just based on what I've seen from this character in this first episode. Vee clearly has no problem being attracted to a man he has just met. Good for him.

The rest of the "shaman" family descendants are kinda amusing. We'll see what role they will bring. They made me think a lot of Tinn's family in Laws of Attraction (again same director and screenwriter).

I'm also really happy to see again See Parattakorn who plays Ton, Vee's friend. I really like his acting game in Laws of Attraction. I wonder if he is only going to play the friend or if he has a bigger role in the story.

Also, is Trai the fiancé of Vad/Wat will be reincarnated too and bring some drama into all of this?! I saw on MDL that the actor is listed with two names, so I may not be wrong and I can't wait to see what role he will have.

Thankfully, we'll have a second episode tomorrow, so I will see where it goes.

[offgunsimp]

Sean after Black angers him: What do I do?

Yok: Do something silly and mean, like take something he likes and not give that back.

Sean: hmmm

—*Later* —

Yok: YOU TOOK HIS BROTHER?!!

*Black punches Sean to the ground*

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Jews in my phone, I have a confession: I hate xmas, but there is one (1) xmas song which I unironically love.

If we could all get together for the combined chanukah and xmas party and play this song specifically (and it has to be this one), I would die happy:

[Video Description: Anuc Atittawan's rendition of "The Christmas Song." He stares directly at the viewer and his very thick accent makes it difficult to understand parts of his song /End of Description]

[idk-i-want-mcl-content]

Me rn:

(not mine)

[itwoodbeprefect]

it's a delightfully humbling experience to run across a video with hardcoded subtitle translations in two different languages and absolutely none of those (the spoken language or the subtitled ones) are even slightly related to the four languages i could somewhat claim to speak or the nice handful of others i can at least try to take educated guesses at. there is a wide open world out there full of words i don't know and likely never will, and not for lack of trying, but because we (humans) have SO many different languages the human lifespan just isn't long enough to learn them all. and i think that's incredibly cool, actually

[guzhufuren]

The Sign (2023)

genres: action, fantasy, mystery, romance, detective fiction

The story of the love between Phaya and Tharn who used to be mythological creatures Naga and Garuda in their past lives, and were forced apart. But fate intervened, and two men were reincarnated in new bodies. One of them has the ability to foresee future events that helps him save his lover. Now, they work together as partners in the Special Investigations Unit to uncover violent crimes and supernatural mysteries while their love is tested by mystical forces and past enemies.

episodes are being released on YouTube

[crovvlipso]

I wanna write crollow fics so badly, but my writing looks like AI generated.

[soliusss]

helping a customer with a heavy accent who doesn’t speak a lot of English VS helping a middle aged white woman

[goldfishgrahamcracker]

“Yuri wouldn’t betray us. It’s such an honest, loyal dog.”

“A dog? Do you want to be a dog forever? Or do you want to try holding the leash?”

what are these teenage girls on

[bellaroles]

Learning Chinese make me realize that how similar most of Thai sentence structure are to Chinese and they both also has that frustrating word omission but we're supposed to intuitively know whenever and whatever 😭