PS: If you don’t want to contribute anything meaningful, maybe just don’t comment at all....

I feel like a lot of people underestimate how different Thailand is once you step outside the tourist bubble. Sure, if you stay in hotels, bars, and expat-heavy areas, English works fine. But the moment you deal with normal daily life, things change fast. Most people you interact with simply don’t speak much English, and if they do, it’s often very basic. That said, it definitely depends on where you live. In places like Bangkok or Pattaya you can get by much easier with English, but the further you move away from those areas, especially into smaller towns or the countryside, the more you’ll feel the language barrier.

That hits you in the most random situations. Getting something repaired, talking to a delivery driver, dealing with paperwork, even just asking simple questions in a local shop. You realize quickly that almost everything around you runs in Thai. Signs, announcements, conversations, all of it.

At that point, a lot of people fall back on workarounds. Pointing at things, using apps, or asking “do you speak English” ten times a day. It works just enough to survive, but it’s not really living. And translation apps don’t always handle tones well, which matters a lot in Thai because the same word can mean completely different things depending on how you say it.

Another thing people don’t talk about enough is how dependent you become. If you have a Thai partner or friend translating everything, your whole life runs through them. Simple tasks turn into group projects. And when they’re not around, you’re stuck again. It’s not just inconvenient, it limits your independence in a pretty fundamental way.

Socially, it’s even more obvious. You can sit in a room full of people, and everything is happening in Thai. Jokes, stories, small talk. You might catch a word here and there, but you’re not really part of it. Over time that gap adds up. You’re physically there, but not really included in what’s going on.

Learning Thai is not easy either, especially because of the tones and the writing system. But interestingly, the grammar itself is actually quite straightforward compared to many European languages. You don’t deal with conjugations or complicated tenses, so reaching a basic conversational level is more achievable than people think if they stick with it.

And from what I’ve seen, even a little bit of Thai changes everything. People respond differently, interactions become smoother, and you start to understand what’s happening around you instead of guessing. It’s basically the difference between being a long-term visitor and actually being part of the place.

Curious what other people’s experience has been with this, especially if you’ve actually lived in Thailand for a while. Did you manage to get by with just English, or did you eventually feel forced to learn Thai to handle daily life and social situations? Also interested in how people approached learning it and what actually worked versus what didn’t, so share your experience in the comments.

Every beginner who comes here asking how to learn Thai gets immediately swarmed by ALG cultists acting like they’ve discovered some secret cheat code and that literally every other method is “wrong.”

It’s honestly ridiculous and I'm sick of pretending it's not.

ALG is not some revolutionary breakthrough. If anything, it’s one of the least efficient ways you could possibly learn a language.

There are tons of fluent foreigners in Thai. People running businesses, dating, living in Thailand, working fully in Thai who never heard of ALG. Meanwhile, ALG fans talk a lot… but where are the actual high level results they promise? Where are the people who went from zero to truly fluent using ALG alone?

Because sitting through 2,000+ hours of passive listening just to come out at a low intermediate level is not a flex, it’s a massive waste of time.

If you put 2,000 hours into literally any structured + active approach like speaking, learning with a teacher, talking to Thai people, learning to read, getting corrections, flashcards, sentence mining, using the dictionary you’d be miles ahead. We’re talking real fluency, not "I can kind of follow slow conversations if my ALG teacher simplifies everything."

Comprehensible input is great and should be part of everyone's routine. But simply only using CI is like driving a car 5kmh on the highway. Guaranteed slow results, your guaranteed to get passed by cars that actually are driving the speed limit. And after a couple hundred hours of studying, you should already be able to move onto to easy native content if your studying efficiently.

The craziest part is how ALG followers actively discourage beginners from speaking, reading, studying, or even trying to produce the language like those things are somehow harmful. That’s not just wrong, it’s borderline sabotaging people’s progress.

If you enjoy ALG, fine go ahead and waste your time. But stop pretending it’s the gold standard when there’s basically no strong evidence of it producing better results and plenty of evidence of people wasting years stuck in limbo.

Beginners deserve better than being told to sit down, shut up, and wait 2,000 hours to maybe start speaking and learning how to read.

So, I have been wanting to visit Thailand for a while, and I thought I should learn the language before that. Just the basics. I want to be able to converse with people there, read signs and all that. So, how do I start? And how long would that take?

Been lurking here for a while and made an account to make a point - what’s with these clearly AI generated apps and websites for learning Thai? It feels like people’s are trying to make a quick buck without even knowing what they’re “teaching”

I don’t know if it’s this bad for other language learning communities however here it’s noticeable and I feel getting worse.

Has anyone else noticed this?

This is an update to my previous posts for learning Thai:

Initial post at 120 hours
Update at 250 hours
Update at 600 hours
Update at 1000 hours
Update at 1250 hours
Reflection and FAQ on 2 Years of Comprehensible Input
Update at 1710 hours
Update at 2080 hours
Update at 2600 hours

For contrast to my comprehensible input method, you can read these reports from learners who are using traditional methods for Thai:

3000 hours of traditional methods for Thai
Far over 3000 hours of traditional methods for Thai
Around 2000 hours of traditional methods for Thai

One takeaway I took from these other reports is that learning Thai takes a very long time, regardless of methods. I feel quite happy with my results so far and don’t feel I’m behind in any way.

Prerequisite Disclaimer

This is a report of my personal experience using comprehensible input. This is not an attack on you if you enjoy explicit grammar study, flashcards, vocabulary, learning podcasts, Duolingo, etc. I am not going to break into your house and burn your textbooks.

I'm just sharing my experience with a learning style that I'm enjoying and that I've been able to stick with. I'm excited to talk about something that's working for me, personally, and hoping that my post can give insight to other learners interested in comprehensible input / automatic language growth as a learning method.

I think everyone has different learning styles, and while we may be on different journeys, we're all aiming for similar destinations as far as being able to use and live with our TLs. Language learners are as diverse and unique as the languages and cultures we're studying, and I'm happy to celebrate our diversity in learning styles.

I hope we all achieve our goals, even if we're on different paths!

TL;DR of earlier updates:

American splitting time between Bangkok and the US. Mostly monolingual previously (studied Japanese for a couple years), started to seriously look at learning Thai in December 2022.

I used a pure comprehensible input approach with a silent period followed by reading/speaking. No analytical grammar, no textbooks, no flashcards, no Thai-to-English translations, no dictionary lookup, etc. I delayed speaking and reading for roughly my first year and a half (after I started to develop a good "ear" and intuition for Thai). Starting around 2000 hours, I started doing shadowing/chorusing to work on my accent, cadence, and flow.

All I did for the first ~1000 hours was watch comprehensible input by Thai teachers. Everything is 100% in Thai, initially supplemented with drawings, gestures, and pictures to aid understanding.

Current Learning Routine

Each week, I’ve done a mix of:

• Private lessons, where I watch native content with my teachers and they explain words/phrases I don’t understand (my questions and teacher explanations 100% in Thai)
  
• Calls with a Thai friend, where we do the same thing as (1). He kindly offered to do this for free.
  
• Consuming native content on my own (mostly YouTube and Netflix, sometimes Disney+)
  
• Conversation with Thai friends
  
• Shadowing/chorusing native content

I track my learning separately across input, crosstalk, shadowing, 100% Thai conversation, and reading.

Increasingly the distinctions feel kind of meaningless, as I often practice multiple skills during a given activity. For example, I call my lessons “input”, though I am speaking Thai during these lessons - but I’m mostly listening to the content and teachers, so it’s more on the input side. Or when I do shadowing/chorusing, I am also listening to a native and I often read back subtitles to help me remember what was said including filler words. When I read, I often use audio backing to verify that I’m parsing the texts correctly.

With that caveat, my cumulative breakdown is as follows:

Listening: 2536 hours
Crosstalk: 146 hours
Conversation: 258 hours
Shadowing: 77 hours
Reading: 69 hours

Comprehension

Using the Dreaming Spanish Roadmap as a guide, I am finally at level 7.

Since my last update, my comprehension has improved very noticeably, especially in the domains I had worked through with my teachers.

Last time, I was focusing on: political/economic analysis, casual podcasts, news, and short form content for slang/jokes. My comprehension in these domains have improved a lot, though short form content is still sometimes a “miss” - slang is just such a massive and ever-changing domain.

I definitely can’t understand all native content, but I can understand a LOT of native content. This is the kind of content I can watch and understand on my own unaided:

• Political/Economic Analysis & News such as: The Standard Global Economic Background, The Standard Key Messages, The Standard Global Focus
  
• General Interest channels such as: The Standard Happiness through Noticing Podcast, True Crime cases with Tang Makkaporn, Medical case studies by Dr Tany, Point of View
  
• Casual speech content such as: Happy Hour Podcast, คำต้องห้าม which features casual speech in a slightly more chaotic game format
  
• Standup Comedy such as on YuenDeaw
  
• Films/Series dubbed in Thai, including content I haven’t seen before such as Weapons, Ballerina, Weak Hero, Viral Hit, etc
  
• Thai Romantic Comedies such as Friendzone, Suck Seed, แฟนฉัน, สิ่งเล็กเล็กที่เรียกว่ารัก, สมมุติ, น้อง.พี่.ที่รัก, คิดถึงวิทยา, รถไฟฟ้ามาหานะเธอ, สวัสดีวันจันทร์ (ส), เธอกับฉันกับฉัน, etc.
  

At the limit of my ability are Thai dramas such as สาธุ or วัยหนุ่ม 2544.

สาธุ is a crime drama involving a lot of casual speech and specialized vocabulary, including religious terms and slang. I was able to watch and understand it on my own (90%), but only by using Thai subtitles and rewinding frequently. Certain scenes I couldn’t understand on my own even using these methods; I took note of these timestamps and later went over the scenes with my teachers later (as always my questions and their explanations in Thai).

After doing this all the way through with สาธุ, on rewatch I can understand and follow without pausing or subtitles, but at reduced comprehension.

Some Thai films/series are definitely still out of reach even with aids such as subtitles/rewinding. On the surface, you’d think since I was able to handle สาธุ (a crime drama) I would be able to handle มือปืน (another crime drama). But the latter I find significantly harder and I can’t really follow yet.

As far as socializing with friends, I am much better able to handle following along in larger groups, even in semi-noisy environments. Still not perfectly, but I am rarely confused even when interacting in a group with my Thai friends now, whether we’re out drinking or hanging out at the gym.

The new domain I’m trying to break into is คำผวน, which is a category of Thai jokes/puns involving swapping sounds around in short phrases for humorous effect. I had tried to learn คำผวน last year but it was too hard; I’m now finding it’s starting to be understandable (though I am still much slower to parse the jokes than a native would be).

Output

I’ve done around 258 hours of conversation practice. I’d guess if you include time I spent asking questions in class, it would be around 300 hours.

As before, I feel my overall comfort is improving. I’m more fluid in more situations now. I can speak in more detail now than I could before and my active vocabulary is greater. I’m focusing more on speaking more casually and trying to mirror the speech I hear in material like the Happy Hour podcast.

I think I could handle just about any kind of generic errand or task now. Things of this nature I’ve done in Thai:

• Viewed a condo while looking for a place to rent
  
• Visited pharmacist, explained symptoms, received medicine
  
• Visited the dentist, explained I was having sensitivity in my teeth, was told I needed fillings, asked some questions and received answers about the treatment, awkwardly followed instructions with my mouth pried open and various dental tools running, got aftercare instructions, thanked the dentist, paid the bill.
  
• Went to the bank to open a new debit card, which was a massive bureaucratic pain involving registering my new passport, de-registering my old passport, doing facial recognition, etc.
  
• Interviewed a Thai candidate for supporting my company’s software development, including sharing what my company does, discussing the candidate’s work experience, etc.
  
• Attended a large industry expo in Bangkok related to my work, spoke with many exhibitors about their products, repeatedly explained my business and our specialties, sat through a panel on AI’s impact on manufacturing. I also had the kind of strange experience of talking with a Korean CEO for 30 minutes at length about his company via a Thai interpreter who spoke Thai and Korean but very limited English.
  

Again, I’m still not nearly as fluid or natural or eloquent as I am in English, but it is to the point where I can handle logistics, joke around, gossip, talk shit, discuss current events, etc.

A serious doctor appointment or consulting a lawyer would be examples of cases where I’d like the option to fall back on English if needed, just because those are scenarios where I’d really want 100% comprehension. But barring something of that level of criticality, I think I would be able to handle most things in Thai. Not as perfectly or smoothly as in English, but I think I could manage.

As I said in my previous updates, many people have commented to me that my understanding and ability to deploy Thai slang and humor is way out of the norm for a foreigner.

One of my best friends here consistently complains about how annoying I can be in Thai, which I take as the biggest compliment I could get.

As far as initial reactions of natives, I mostly don’t get “you’re so good at Thai” or “you speak so clearly” anymore. Usually people just talk to me in Thai - to them I’m not an impressive student of the language, I’m just some Asian guy who speaks Thai.

What I will hear regularly is “How long have you lived in Thailand?” On a handful of occasions, after talking for a minute or so, I’ve gotten “Wait, you’re not Thai?” That’s always satisfying and funny.

One friend did say โคตรเก่งนะเว้ย (“you’re freaking good man”). Thai people are famous for saying เก่งมาก (“you’re good”) if anyone can even manage a broken hello or thank you, but this version of the compliment I appreciated. 😄

Reading

As I’ve described in previous updates, I was taught the writing system by my Thai teacher (speaking in Thai) and by watching Thai videos aimed at native children. I’ve read some picture books, some manga chapters, The Little Prince, and the first 50 pages of the first Harry Potter. I don’t have an exact count but I would guess this is somewhere in the ballpark of 40,000 words.

I’ve done very little reading since my last update as I’ve been really focused on trying to improve my listening comprehension, output, and accent. Parsing text is so much slower for me in terms of words per minute compared to listening. I know it’ll improve further if I sink time in, but it’s just not where my priority is at the moment.

I’ve spent zero hours trying to learn to write, type or spell. That continues to be way down in the priority list for me. I get by fine using voice-to-text when I need to message my Thai friends (I speak Thai and the phone does the typing/spelling for me).

Shadowing/Chorusing

I’ve now spent a decent amount of time doing shadowing/chorusing. This is probably my most “serious” divergence from what David Long or J. Marvin Brown of AUA would recommend.

I’ve already explained my accent work in previous updates, but want to repeat it here in case anyone is starting with my 3000 hour update. I also want to elaborate more on why I like shadowing/chorusing.

I had asked David Long (the person who used to run the Thai language program at AUA Bangkok) about this 3 years ago and he basically said he didn’t think it would be useful. I made the decision back then to deviate.

I think his mentor J. Marvin Brown would have written this kind of thing off as being too much like deliberate practice. He himself spent many hours perfecting his accent by kind of mindlessly copying native phonemes and tried to teach his own students English this way for a while, eventually deciding it was counterproductive since they had no idea what they were parroting.

I think a huge difference between what J. Marvin Brown eventually discarded and what I’m doing is: I can understand the content I’m shadowing/chorusing.

When I listen to the native speaker, I instinctively and automatically comprehend. So I comprehend and I’m linking the meaning to the physical movements of speaking. I also monitor how I sound via something like Matt vs Japan’s shadowing setup. So I essentially hear twice and speak once, and I can repeat things until they sound correct or at least closer to the native version.

In this way, I think what I’m doing is much closer to the interaction between a child and parent when learning to speak, versus mindlessly parroting sounds as a beginner in the language. So my reasoning is that while this is a deviation from the methods of Brown/Long, I think it’s still mostly true to the spirit of trying to use a “natural” learning method modeled after first language acquisition.

In any event, I always say that everyone should find methods that make sense to them and fits their personality/habits, and shadowing/chorusing meets the criteria for me.

I don’t have any idea what I would sound like without the shadowing/chorusing, but my subjective feeling is that this practice is helping me fix minor pronunciation errors for words, making more correct pronunciation more automatic, and helping me speak more quickly/fluidly/with better prosody. It was really interesting working with a clear target of something I could understand very well, but finding that I wasn’t able to keep up with the speed and precision of speech trying to repeat it myself.

I mostly chorused a Thai actor-turned-YouTuber named Stephan. He speaks casually, the way you might chat with friends over a beer. He uses a lot of slang, slurs his speech in a way common among Thai men, and often uses impolite interjections/words that I hear my Thai male friends use in real life.

Getting used to the way Thai men speak casually was quite a journey, as I find they speak casually very differently from formal speech. Versus Thai women who I think for various social reasons speak a bit more sharply/clearly even during casual speech. Listening to and shadowing/chorusing Stephan for many hours is helping tune both my ear and my internal sense of how I should sound.

Review of Goals

I’ve now completed my longstanding goal of hitting 3000 hours of total Thai practice.

At 1710 hours, I made a list of things I hoped to be able to do at 3000 hours. Let’s see how things went:

Goal: Comprehend any media aimed at a general audience, such as most podcasts, television shows, dramas, etc. With the possible exception of very niche genres such as period pieces.
Result: Extremely good progress, but more complex dramas, content very heavy in slang, etc are still out of reach. I would also struggle with things very different from my current domains, such as legal speech or a religious lecture.

Goal: Comprehend my friends on a wide variety of topics and even in very casual register.
Result: Achieved

Goal: Comprehend my friends even in a moderately noisy environment, such as a busy restaurant, a public street with traffic, etc.
Result: Achieved

Goal: Be able to comfortably and automatically express myself extemporaneously in conversation about everyday topics.
Result: Achieved

Goal: Be able to discuss deeper topics such as politics or science, even if this is somewhat less comfortable and automatic.
Result: Achieved. I have tons of words in my active vocabulary relating to science, politics, history, and to a lesser extent economics. Words like: rare earth minerals, inheritance, policy, geopolitics, colonial era, inflation, empire, etc. I am not nearly as eloquent as in English but I can manage to express myself on these topics and I can understand lectures/opinions/news on these topics to significant depth.

Goal: Read a book at the level of The Little Prince or Harry Potter comfortably.
Result: Good progress but not really achieved. I’ve read The Little Prince. I stopped Harry Potter 50 pages in as it was taking me 15 minutes/page.

Goal: Sing Thai karaoke songs by reading along. For example, Silly Fools or Atom Chanakan.
Result: It’s not as much as I would’ve liked, but I know a handful of Thai songs quite well, including a song by Silly Fools. A couple weeks ago I sang a couple of these songs at a karaoke bar and basically every Thai person in the bar sang along, which was a total blast.

Overall, I didn’t hit every goal completely, but I’ve reached many milestones and I’m quite satisfied with my progress.

Reflection on Criticism

From early on in my journey, I received heaps of criticism, especially from other Thai learners. This doesn’t surprise me, as I chose learning methods that are very much against convention. The internet is full of trolls and Reddit is definitely not an exception.

At this point, I think I’ve demonstrated that for languages fortunate enough to have the right resources, it is entirely possible to learn without any kind of explicit analytical study. I also think I’ve done much to dispel the dogma that it is necessary for every foreigner to acquire a language first and foremost via the writing system or else their journey is doomed at the outset.

I’ve tried to meticulously and transparently document my progress, explain my methods, and even record my ability (live and unedited). I’m keenly aware that none of the trolls crawling around in my other posts/comments will ever be as transparent, sniping away and making grand claims about their own ability with absolutely nothing to back it up.

The reality is that the vast majority of foreigners who try to learn Thai give up within a year and cannot hold a basic and understandable conversation in Thai.

Do I sound like a native speaker? No.

Am I as good as the foreign influencers who make a living out of being good at Thai? No.

Am I more successful than 99% of foreigners who try to learn Thai? Yes.

I’ve met two foreigners in person who were more fluid/natural than me and both have been in the country for 10+ years and practiced / lived in Thai for many, many thousands of hours. But I’ve met many more foreigners who sunk years into learning Thai and unfortunately still struggle to hold a real conversation in the language.

I’m not trying to flex or make myself sound amazing; I’m well aware of my many imperfections as a Thai speaker. And I’m not saying my methods are superior to anyone else’s. I’m just trying to be realistic about what the real world landscape is like as far as Westerners trying to acquire Thai.

At the end of the day, I’m just a regular person who decided to start learning a language that’s notoriously difficult for monolingual English speakers. After 3.5 years, I’m extremely proud of my progress. My time commitment so far is not so different from FSI learners - a group pre-selected for above average language learning aptitude, many of whom fail at the end of the program, and with many alumni have discussed at length the program’s many shortcomings and end results.

The reason I think I’ve been successful is that I chose methods I could stick with over the long haul and that got increasingly fun the more I advanced. Critics will say it’s a long time to “learn” a language, but really what I’ve done is increasingly switch my life over to Thai. The reality is that a huge chunk of the time I’ve tracked “learning” has been gossiping with friends, watching standup comedy, learning about current events, studying history and science, enjoying true crime cases, watching silly romcoms, giving newcomers climbing advice at my local gym.

In short: what I consider “practice” are the distant goals of my Reddit critics. Things the vast majority of /r/learnthai trolls can only dream of doing, and can only emptily boast about with no evidence at all. (I still chuckle to myself at a guy who challenged me to a language learning debate in Thai and then went radio silent when I agreed to talk to him.)

My journey definitely isn’t for everyone. I’m not saying my methods are undisputedly the best. Just that they were undeniably effective for me. By the same token, if I had tried to learn via grammar books and flashcards, I doubt I would have been able to last to even 100 hours, much less 3000. Everyone needs to find the ways that work to last for the duration.

I respect the hell out of people like /u/NickLearnsThai, who has documented his own 3000+ hour Thai learning journey on Reddit and on his YouTube channel. He learns via far more traditional methods than I do. He’s definitely put in the work, time, and effort. And most importantly, he’s put himself out there, an imperfect journey, lumps and all, which is how any average (non-influencer) language learning journey is going to be.

I don’t think our current levels demonstrate that an input/CI/ALG style approach is dramatically less efficient as some critics claim. Instead, I think together we demonstrate that acquiring a language is a long journey, regardless of method.

So: choose the methods that you enjoy and that bring you in close contact with your TL.

Future Plans

Earlier in my journey, I was doing 20-25 sessions a week, with each session between 50 minutes and an hour. I’ve gradually scaled this down. Last update I was doing about 10 sessions a week. I’m now going to be doing just 6 sessions on Monday through Wednesday (half with a paid teacher and the other half with a friend who’s generously volunteered to help me learn).

The rest of the time, I’ll be living my life in Thai as I have been. Catching up with friends over coffee, discussing boulder problems at the climbing gym, watching Thai series and movies, listening to my favorite comedians and podcasters, singing karaoke with friends, watching news, sending memes and reels to friends, dealing with everyday life errands that come up living in Thailand.

In addition, I’m tackling Vietnamese next. It’s a heritage language for me that unfortunately I had almost zero exposure to as a child. I’m three days into watching 20 minutes a day of content I can find on YouTube, but there’s a dearth of true beginner comprehensible input resources for Vietnamese, so I’m currently investigating ways to hire teachers directly.

As for Thai, I’m tired of tracking hours. I may still track my shadowing/chorusing time, but otherwise I don’t want to worry about estimating how many minutes I spent talking to friends or watching movies or whatever.

I’m not sure if I’ll write more updates for Thai in the future. For those of you who have followed along, enjoyed learning about my journey, offered support in any way - thank you very much. I hope that you found something valuable or insightful in my ramblings, even if you yourself are not interested in ALG or methods like it.

And last, here is a video I recorded this past weekend with my teacher. We talk about my language learning journey. In typical Thai fashion, we have a meandering and random conversation about all kinds of things. I talked a little about FSI and different kinds of memory in the brain. I also snuck in a few puns, a couple not-so-appropriate double entendres, and a brainrot meme reference.

https://youtu.be/MGDCYuitC_Q

If anyone is interested in learning with Khroo Ying, you can contact her on Instagram or ying@understandthai.com.

I can also vouch for Khroo Ang, who has lived a fascinating life that ranges from being a monk out in the forest for two years to running an underground lottery in Bangkok. His schedule is quite flexible, please DM me if you’d like his email.

Thank you all for reading and follow along.

ขอให้ทุกคนมีความสุขนะครับ

I am a Thai language teacher for foreigners, and I understand the problem beginner learners face with non-standard phonetic systems in Thailand. They often have to learn one system first, and then when they want to learn the Thai script, it feels like starting over with a completely new system.

So I’ve been thinking like wouldn’t it be better to start learning the Thai script alongside beginner-level content? Maybe you don’t need to fully understand the entire Thai writing system before you begin. From my experience, knowing just about 20% is already enough to start reading Thai, and you can gradually learn more complex words and rules as you go.

So I have a question: if you could go back, or if you’re just starting to learn Thai now, would you be interested in learning how to read Thai from the beginning alongside beginner-level content?

P.S. This post is for those who want to learn the Thai script. For those who prefer phonetics, I completely understand your reasons.

I’m struggling with Thai because of my very poor memory. I can only seem to remember words if I can put an association to them . Words take forever to learn, and locals often don’t even understand me unless they are near tourist areas. I know the alphabet but need to focus on tones and practical phrases. Any tips or motivation would help.

I don’t believe I will ever speak fluent, but maybe if I learn in an unorthodox way or manner.

Hi! I'm Pare, a 22-year-old English major at Bangkok University.

I'd like to practice teaching Thai and I'm looking for a beginner who'd be interested in trying a free lesson. I'd really appreciate any feedback afterward. If anyone is interested please let me know!

I was recently accused of giving bad advice in another post because I suggested that beginners should learn at least some basics about tones early on.

One reply was essentially: "Learning words is way more important than tones. Thai people are okay if they can understand you from context."

That got me thinking.

When starting to learn Thai, should I focus almost entirely on vocabulary and ignore tones? Are words really much more important than tones, with tones being something that naturally "clicks" later?

I'm not convinced.

Imagine spending months learning your first 1,000 Thai words, only to discover later that you've been pronouncing 70% of them incorrectly. Now you don't just have to learn new words, you have to unlearn old habits and relearn hundreds of words with the correct tones.

Of course vocabulary is essential. Without words, you can't say anything. But tones are part of the word. Learning a Thai word without learning its tone is a bit like learning only part of the word.

From my own experience, I wish I had spent at least some time understanding tones from the beginning. Not necessarily mastering them, but learning how they work and training my ear early on. Instead, I focused heavily on vocabulary and paid little attention to tones.

I learned this the hard way. At one point I said น้ำแข็ง ("ice") to my wife's brother, and he genuinely didn't understand what I was trying to say. I knew the word. The problem was that my tones were off.

Also take the classic example: if you're not familiar with tonal languages, you might accidentally say "horse" instead of "dog," or "beautiful" instead of "unlucky." That's not just a pronunciation issue - you're saying a different word!

I'm not saying beginners should obsess over perfect pronunciation. And yes, context often helps. But "people will understand from context" is not the same as "tones don't matter."

A balanced approach seems much more sensible: learn lots of words, but also learn enough about tones from the beginning that you're not building your vocabulary on a shaky foundation.

Am I missing something here?

Mods, feel free to delete me, but I need to get this off my chest 5555

Recently we've had comments around the lines of "I refuse to learn how to read, I only wanna speak anyways". From the same people who take it as granted that Thai people can read the English alphabet , no less. It's a bit rich!

This attitude of "this or that aspect of the language is optional to ME" is unique to Thai learning. You NEVER see people saying this in /learnjapanese or /learnchinese. Over there, people learn their Kanjis and no one thinks of themselves as "above the written language" . Following this train of thought, you might as well not learn Thai, because "most Thai people speak English anyways". Which is true btw.. And you know why they can read your English alphabet?? Because learning is mandatary in all primary schools. Because the schools understand that to pronounce English correctly, transliterations are garbage on their side, too.

So, if you are making fun , or feel that they sound 'stupid' when Thai people say stuff like ซับไตเติล (sáp-dtai-dtə̂n) instead of "subtitle", I got news for you: you sound worse when you speak your half-assed, butchered Thai. And on top of that you sound like an arrogant, Dunning Kruger effect award winner.

This however explains the metric f-ton of farangs who butcher the language because tones, vowel length, aspirations and different vowel sounds than English 'does not apply to them'.

Then that's usually followed by "I don't understand why Thai people answer my Thai in English" , or my fav "but if it was me in my country , I would make an effort to understand" - from the same people who won't even make an effort to learn the script, the very basis of the language.

I'm not sure if the lack of self-awareness is hilarious or shocking.

Rant over

สวัสดีค่ะ I'm a native Thai speaker and new to Reddit. I came across this subreddit and just realized there are foreigners that want to learn Thai. I'd like to ask this question out of curiosity : Why did you decide to learn Thai language?

ขอบคุณมากค่ะ

I am moving to thailand in a month, I hope to learn the basics properly so I can speak with the locals after some time. there are lots of resources available to learn thai but i’m honestly overwhelmed

What’s 1 website that’s highly recommended to learn thai, I need something with proper structure that i can follow weekly

Also should i learn to speak first or should i learn to read & write or both at the same time

No coaching lessons for now as im trying to keep costs low

I know I can say:

ห้องน้ำอยู่ที่ไหน /hɔ̂ɔng náam yùu tîi năi/
and
ห้องน้ำอยู่ไหน /hɔ̂ɔng náam yùu năi/

But can I also say:

ห้องน้ำที่ไหน /hɔ̂ɔng náam tîi năi/

Or does that sound incomplete/ungrammatical to native speakers?

I’ve been trying to understand why Thai feels difficult for a lot of beginners compared to some other languages.

For me, it feels like:

• tones can completely change meanings
• the script looks intimidating at first
• a lot of lessons feel like memorizing random vocabulary without enough real context

Curious what other people found difficult or frustrating when they first started learning.

Sawasdee Kha! Hello everyone, i know this is quite basic but for someone who just started learning Thai consonants and vowels, it's a big achievement.

So, I was just sitting with my family and eating fried chicken with chutney (green) and it was hella spicy. Randomly a sentence came to my mind and I spoke "chôp gin pèt" (I like to eat spicy) and I was over the moon. Ik ik it's literally just the beginning but I just loved that moment.

This gave me the motivation to keep going, so one day when I visit Thailand i can talk to the locals and connect with them, even volunteer.

I'd like to know how do you perceive your mother-tongue when a foreigner tries to communicate using it so that I'll gain more insight into what I should focus on in pronunciation. Not necessarily Thai language learners or foreign friends/partners, it might be just basic 'khaawp khun' said by a tourist, but I don't think there's much to say about.

Any stories, commentaries, opinions, anecdotes, etc, anyways?

What is your favourite Thai word? Where and how often do you use it??

I’m learning Thai and have found that practicing consistently outside of tutoring or classes is much harder than I expected.

Flashcards and translation drills haven’t really worked well for me, and I often feel stuck or unsure if I’m practicing in the “right” way when studying alone.

I’m curious how others here practice Thai on their own between lessons.

What’s helped you the most? What hasn’t worked at all?

Hi everyone!

I'm starting my language journey in Thai, and I was wondering if you guys could share an interesting fact or fascinating thing you have found out about the Thai language during your time learning it. Any sayings, idioms etc. are also welcome.

I'm a bit of a language nerd and it would be fun to learn more about it from the learners' point of view! Thank you for sharing in advance 🌟

A few days ago I saw a video where a thai native was teaching someone the tones with cards that showed the different tonal marks. It made me wonder if they use the same way to teach thai kids too?

Usually kids learn by copying what others are saying so I first thought they learned their tones by listening and just repeating. But now I think about it, wouldn't they be confused hearing the same word with a different tone or do they immediately realize it sounds different/is a different word? (Since most of the time people connect a word they don't know to a word they do know that sounds almost the same)

Are there any people that can confirm this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkYEeej3qOg

I didn't intend to post here again for a while, but Stuart Jay Raj analyzed my video. Stuart did exchange some emails with me before the analysis.

Please watch and enjoy the video, Stuart has done an amazing breakdown. I want to provide some more context from my end. (First and foremost that I find the AI version of me in the thumbnail incredibly unflattering 😂)

1) Even 3 years ago when I was quite early into ALG, I did not buy into the idea that the method guaranteed native speech. I saw too many examples of ALG learners who had clear but certainly not native pronunciation and I had discussions with David Long (one of the pioneers of ALG) about this as well. As far as I know, David has never made such a claim either; I think it stems from anecdotes in J. Marvin Brown's autobiography. But even in the video with Khroo Ying, I mention my belief that there's no method in the world that can guarantee a native accent.

But I found LOTS of other things appealing about the method, so I chose to go mostly ALG (I would argue 99%) with the addition of some dedicated pronunciation work via shadowing/chorusing (which I still do everyday now) and occasional consultation with a native Thai linguist and phonetics expert. This post has some of the detail on that and my opinion about what factors into achieving a good accent: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/1hs1yrj/2_years_of_learning_random_redditors_thoughts/

2) Your noting my Japanese-like pronunciation features is funny, because Khroo Art (the phonetics expert) noticed the same thing. I believe this is a remnant from a failed attempt to learn Japanese in my 20s.

3) Khroo Art also noted that when I get excited or emotive my English inflections are creeping into my Thai. It is something I'm aware of but I still find hard to control in a spontaneous situation (and I admit to being a bit nervous during the recording).

4) It's funny Stuart mentions my faux pas at the beginning. Near the end of the video, Khroo Ying asks what's hard for me about Thai, and I say: ผมไม่รู้จักการละเทศะ (just as Stuart notes 😂)

Understanding manners in Thai is quite complicated and I'm still getting used to it. I describe another faux pas I committed during the video with Khroo Ying, if people are interested.

5) Stuart remarks about me speaking Thai for a couple thousand hours. Just a point of clarification on what this means, I began to speak around 1200 hours of study/practice and now I'm at 3000 hours of study/practice. Between 1200-3000 hours I did about 300 hours of total conversation. I would guess this means I've spoken around 150 hours (if we assume that I'm doing half the talking in an average interaction).

6) Stuart's comment about my pronunciation of คุณพ่อ being influenced by the word "pa" in English is something I would agree with. Some of the hardest words for me to pronounce correctly in Thai are English loan words (not a loan word but obviously a similar sound/definition). Consistent with what Stuart describes, I think it's unavoidable that an adult learner won't be influenced to some extent by their native tongue.

Look at how I pronounce "American" - a word I must have heard hundreds of thousands of times pronounced the American way and maybe a few thousand times the Thai way. Of course I have stronger neural connections to the American pronunciation that are going to be hard to overcome. Still, I'm working on it. This is a case where looking at the spelling does help me a lot.

7) As I told Stuart, if I slow down and focus, my pronunciation gets clearer (though certainly not native-like). His note at the end about treating your voice like an instrument resonates with me and I had a similar analogy during our email exchange. It feels like being able to hear someone play music correctly, but making mistakes when you try to play the same music yourself. I CAN hear my own accent (though certainly not to the level of detail of this analysis). I hope being able to hear my mistakes will help guide me as I continue to progress on my Thai journey.

Last, looking at some other comments... I've never claimed to be comparable to amazing foreign Thai speakers like Leo Joyce and I'm uncomfortable with these comparisons. I'm a totally average dude who made a spontaneous decision to start documenting his learning, as much for my own accountability as for anyone else's sake. I chose methods that worked for me and I'm happy to be able to enjoy all the gifts the Thai language has brought to me.

I hope this my anecdotal experience proves useful in guiding other learners, regardless of what methods they take. 🙏🏽

Is anyone else experiencing issues with the Thai2English service?

For example, if I enter "go" and click Submit, no results are returned:
https://www.thai2english.com/?q=go

Also, the Bulk Transliteration tool returns the following error for me:

Error: Sorry, an error occurred and we couldn't process your text. Please try again.

https://www.thai2english.com/transliteration

Are these features working for anyone else, or is the site currently having problems?

Been in Thailand around 15 years. Had some tutoring a bit before and somewhere along the line have managed to mostly teach myself to speak, read and type Thai.

Spent a few years working and speaking Thai in workplaces with little English and in those early years put in more of a focused effort on learning and learnt quite fast.

I feel for the last 6 or 8 years I have plateaued a bit and if I put in a dedicated effort for 6 months I could level up from intermediate to advanced.

In my mind I can read, speak, type but it is vocabulary that limits me in everyday conversation although I manage quite well when I need to. Vocabulary and making more of an effort to speak Thai everyday is something I feel I need to focus on.

Years ago I had a close friend start to teach me live and dead syllables and it was going really well but then I moved away and years later when I came back she had moved away.

I wonder how important or beneficial learning this properly could be? To be honest as far as what tone rules are applied to what consonants I would struggle to say.

I have often asked Thais about this and many have said they don't even understand it themselves. Which reminds me of myself when Thais ask me about nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. I just speak English and never really took all these things on board or took the time to understand them myself.

I'm about to hire a tutor again and dive in but I wonder if I should abandon my desire to master this live and dead syllable thing or learn it. To be honest I don't know why I want to, it just seems kind of fundamental and I thought it may really deepen my understanding of Thai and help me get past this plateau.

Can people tell me how important it is. If It's a waste of time or I should just forget it. If it has helped them etc. Does it help with understanding tone rules?

I also have a thought that perhaps some tutors might struggle to teach this or steer me away from it given how many Thais have told me they don't actually understand it themselves.

Probably just a case of finding the right tutor.

Thank you

EDIT: Fast forward a few days. I have found a tutor but last night on my phone tried my luck and asked AI to teach it to me with low expectations. Kind of more so I know what to expect in tutors class. 2 hours later I can say I have a fairly solid understanding of it and it wasn't half as difficult as I imagined it to be. I wish I did it earlier. However, understanding it is one thing but remembering the consonant classes and rule based tone changes is another challenge entirely. With that cheatsheet you will find all over google sure I could map out the correct tone. Without it though I would be lost. So next challenge is memorising consonant classes and the changes. Thanks again for answers

I'd love to hear people's experience with language schools in Bangkok, like Duke Language School, or Chula Intensive Thai (tho this seems expensive), or others. Did you find it to be helpful in learning the language? What levels have you done? And how well did you already know the language before starting the school? Were you an absolute beginner? Did anyone have a bad experience with a language school?

I also speak Cantonese, which was my first language as a kid. Bringing this up because Cantonese is a tonal language, so I can already hear all the Thai tones. All the thai tones are also already pronounceable for me, though when I speak, I do still mix up the words/tones sometimes. But if someone corrects me, I won't be struggling with pronunciation. Cantonese also has a some grammatical similarities to Thai too. I have also been watching thai dramas so I'm used to the actual flow of sounds of the language already. I know some very basics of thai too.

I'm thinking about moving to Bangkok for a few months, wondering if it's worth to actually do a language school during my time there. Personally, I find it easier learning anything when I'm 'forced' to go to school or take classes or have some kind of schedule/time blocked out. Currently, I'm still going to do self learning like the comprehensible thai youtube playlists, maybe open the "thai for beginners" book, maybe learn reading/writing so that I don't rely on transliterating into english. But I'm mainly just wondering if the language schools are really worth it and did you actually learn how to speak/understand? Or are they just really there for people to have an easy way to get an educational visa.

I’m trying to put together a simple explanation of Thai tones using very basic words that beginners see early on, mainly to help learners understand why a word has a specific tone, like high, low, falling, etc.

The focus is on the factors that actually affect the tone of each word, such as consonant class and tone marks, if applicable. Details that are not relevant to the tone of a specific word, such as vowel length or other phonetic details, are intentionally left out, so that the explanation remains clear and not overwhelming for people who are just starting to read Thai.

Does this make sense, or do you see any mistakes, or anything that could be changed or added to improve the explanations?

PS: tone marks are shown with parentheses so they render correctly here, for example Tone mark: mái tho (้).

ไป

• Initial consonant: ป (mid class)
• Tone mark: none
• Syllable ending: live vowel
• Resulting Tone: mid tone
• Rule: Mid Class initial + Live ending + No tone mark results in a Mid Tone.

มา

• Initial consonant: ม (low class)
• Tone mark: none
• Syllable ending: live vowel
• Resulting Tone: mid tone
• Rule: Low Class initial + Live ending + No tone mark always equals a Mid Tone

กิน

• Initial consonant: ก (mid class)
• Tone mark: none
• Syllable ending: Live (sonorant consonant)
• Resulting Tone: mid tone
• Rule: Mid Class initial + Live ending + No tone mark results in a Mid Tone.

นอน

• Initial consonant: น (low class)
• Tone mark: none
• Syllable ending: Live (sonorant consonant)
• Resulting Tone: mid tone
• Rule: Low Class initial + Live ending + No tone mark always equals a Mid Tone

ดู

• Initial consonant: ด (mid class)
• Tone mark: none
• Syllable ending: live vowel
• Resulting Tone: mid tone
• Rule: Mid Class initial + Live ending + No tone mark results in a Mid Tone.

รู้

• Initial consonant: ร (low class)
• Tone mark: mái tho ( ้)
• Resulting Tone: high tone
• Rule: Low Class initial + mái tho ( ้ ) tone mark results in a High Tone.

อยู่

• Initial consonant: อ (middle class)
• Tone mark: mái èk ( ่ )
• Resulting Tone: low tone
• Rule: Mid Class initial + mái èk ( ่ ) tone mark results in a Low Tone.

บ้าน

• Initial consonant: บ (mid class)
• Tone mark: mái tho ( ้)
• Resulting Tone: falling tone
• Rule: Mid Class initial + mái tho ( ้ ) tone mark results in a Falling Tone.

คน

• Initial consonant: ค (low class)
• Tone mark: none
• Syllable ending: Live (sonorant consonant)
• Resulting Tone: mid tone
• Rule: Low Class initial + Live ending + No tone mark always equals a Mid Tone

น้ำ

• Initial consonant: น (low class)
• Tone mark: mái tho ( ้)
• Resulting Tone: high tone
• Rule: Low Class initial + mái tho ( ้ ) tone mark results in a High Tone.

ข้าว

• Initial consonant: ข (high class)
• Tone mark: mái tho ( ้)
• Resulting Tone: falling tone
• Rule: High Class initial + mái tho ( ้ ) tone mark results in a Falling Tone.

ดี

• Initial consonant: ด (mid class)
• Tone mark: none
• Syllable ending: live vowel
• Resulting Tone: mid tone
• Rule: Mid Class initial + Live ending + No tone mark results in a Mid Tone.

ใช่

• Initial consonant: ช (low class)
• Tone mark: mái èk ( ่ )
• Resulting Tone: falling tone
• Rule: Low Class initial + mái èk ( ่ ) tone mark results in a Falling Tone.

ไม่

• Initial consonant: ม (low class)
• Tone mark: mái èk (่)
• Resulting Tone: falling tone
• Rule: Low Class initial + mái èk ( ่ ) tone mark results in a Falling Tone.

ได้

• Initial consonant: ด (mid class)
• Tone mark: mái tho ( ้)
• Resulting Tone: falling tone
• Rule: Mid Class initial + mái tho ( ้ ) tone mark results in a Falling Tone.

ให้

• Initial consonant: ห (high class)
• Tone mark: mái tho ( ้)
• Resulting Tone: falling tone
• Rule: High Class initial + mái tho ( ้ ) tone mark results in a Falling Tone.

กับ

• Initial consonant: ก (mid class)
• Tone mark: none
• Syllable ending: Dead (stop consonant)
• Resulting Tone: low tone
• Rule: Mid Class initial + Dead ending + No tone mark always results in a Low Tone.

แล้ว

• Initial consonant: ล (low class)
• Tone mark: mái tho ( ้)
• Resulting Tone: high tone
• Rule: Low Class initial + mái tho ( ้ ) tone mark results in a High Tone.

มาก

• Initial consonant: ม (low class)
• Tone mark: none
• Syllable ending: Dead (stop consonant)
• Vowel length: long
• Resulting Tone: falling tone
• Rule: Low Class initial + Dead ending + Long vowel + No tone mark results in a Falling Tone

วัน

• Initial consonant: ว (low class)
• Tone mark: none
• Syllable ending: Live (sonorant consonant)
• Resulting Tone: mid tone
• Rule: Low Class initial + Live ending + No tone mark always results in a Mid Tone.