Learning Thai - best book/CD etc

[Guest]

Wonder if anyone with great success in learning Thai language has any suggestions on books or CD, etc.

Thanks in advance,

[olekunde]

you should choose a book with cd, since thai language is tonal.

to get it right from the start you should also learn how to write/read, so you will be able to pronounce the words correct and differ from the mid, low, high, falling and raising tones ...

in the beginning i thought this was hell until i heard (some of the) lao (dialects) has 6 tones and in mandarin there are 9 ...

[Guest]

(olekunde @ Sep. 01 2006,13:21) you should choose a book with cd, since thai language is tonal.

to get it right from the start you should also learn how to write/read, so you will be able to pronounce the words correct and differ from the mid, low, high, falling and raising tones ...

in the beginning i thought this was hell until i heard (some of the) lao (dialects) has 6 tones and in mandarin there are 9 ...

I didn't mention that I am Chinese and I speak mandarin. We were taught 4 tones so I don't know where you get the other 5 tones from . However, Harka does have 8 tones and it's my mother's native. It's really not that bad. You should experience what I have gone through when learning English, I thought you were singing all day!
Seriousely, thanks for suggesstions but any specific titles?

[rxpharm]

Here is a good website that lists a lot of resources to learn how to write and speak Thai.

Learning Thai

[olekunde]

We were taught 4 tones so I don't know where you get the other 5 tones from

yep, you're right. my bad. i meant cantonese have 9 tones ..

[Guest]

I bought the Thai for Beginners book and cd by Benjawan Poomsan Becker (they have 2 futher editions for intermediate and advanced). its great, good approach, covers speaking, writing and reading - the thai alphabet is phonetic and learning it helps with getting the tones right. begginer book gives you about 500 words. since you are mandarin speaker, tones will come naturally. costs about 800 baht with cd.

[Guest]

I think I will buy the same book/CD. On Amazon.com it gets a high score from readers too. I am hoping your theory about "tones" really applies to me. So far there is no evidence that's the case when I tru to learn from variouse web sites.

[Guest]

By the way, is it possible (or even recommended) to just learn the speaking Thai? I am trying to avoid the writing and reading. The characters seem to be pretty diffcult and I rather use the time learning to say more complicated things, than to read the basic phrases.

[olekunde]

it depends how good your want your thai to be. if you go by the books you will learn the language properly. if you take the learn-in-the-bar approach, you will end up speak isaan-thai, and the simple and rude way to speak thai. but i take it you want to learn the language only to impress the hookers?
if you want to settle in thailand and communicate with thai outisde the bars, i would definately take a class.
thais appreciate when farangs(or asians) do an attempt to speak thai, no matter what the bar hookers tell you, as long as they are polite. and as long as you dont speak the language fluently it's a good idea to use 'khrap' to end each sentence, and not use rude slang as "arai wa" or other swear words. this will not get you very far. but as an asian i guess you already know the score about face.

[Guest]

Check out Learning Thai

[Guest]

(olekunde @ Sep. 02 2006,16:45) it depends how good your want your thai to be. if you go by the books you will learn the language properly. if you take the learn-in-the-bar approach, you will end up speak isaan-thai, and the simple and rude way to speak thai. but i take it you want to learn the language only to impress the hookers?
if you want to settle in thailand and communicate with thai outisde the bars, i would definately take a class.
thais appreciate when farangs(or asians) do an attempt to speak thai, no matter what the bar hookers tell you, as long as they are polite. and as long as you dont speak the language fluently it's a good idea to use 'khrap' to end each sentence, and not use rude slang as "arai wa" or other swear words. this will not get you very far. but as an asian i guess you already know the score about face.

You are right about using khrap or kup at the end of a sentence.

Did you mean arai na?

If so this is not rude at all. The particle na has different meanings in different contexts but in the above it used to get someone to repeat the question or statement.

[Guest]

(ozzie @ Sep. 03 2006,13:57) Check out Learning Thai

Thanks a lot. I do roughly remember this topic has been discussed before.
By the way, about the face "thing" (and many others), I personally think people tend to over-analyze it. I don't even think it's an Asian only concept at all. It just so happened that in mandarin we have an "interesting expression" for a very common sence concept of "personal honor".
As for the motivation, I can't really put my finger on it. I am just facinated by the place and want to know her better from every possible aspect. I am not thinking of any practical purposes. I already bought both books and CD, I am not escaping reading altogether. I heard that it would somehow help the pronouciations.

[olekunde]

Did you mean arai na?

no, arai wa is a rude what to say arai na, means something like "fucking what!?"

[Guest]

try pimsluer

[dummy_plug]

I used the books Ozzie mentioned in the post he linked (coincidentally, my post) and thought it was very useful and easy to understand. I haven't put much effort or time into learning, so its been a slow go for me, but I think that if you focus you could really learn quite a bit just by using these tools.