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learning thai script


belfastish

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is this as hard as it looks?ive tried to learn a bit of thai on my own and its quite hard.

ive been emailing a thai guy who is in brisbane and will teach me some thai for english.

i was hoping it was a girl when i emailed but not of course :shifty: ,would anyone here go to the hassle of meeting up with a thai guy who you havent seen and may be homosexual for all i know!! :sad:

thais who cant speak english do they only know thai script or the english written thai aswell? :content: stupid question but im not sure!! :question:

 

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I had an (abortive) attempt at learning thai script; basically decided not to rush it and learn one letter a day... That turned into one a week, and then I lost interest. It does work though - I can remember, write and read the ones I did learn and that was a year ago.

 

I may start again actually.. there's no good reason why not!

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not so difficult if you invest a bit time regularly every day...and practise. i tried to read everything i could catch from the road sign, newspaper, TV ads, products in the shelf so i advanced pretty fast...

with "english written thai" you mean transliteration of thai with english script?

many thais have big difficulties to handle that and can not even guess what is meant in thai!

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"...would anyone here go to the hassle of meeting up with a thai guy who you havent seen and may be homosexual for all i know!! ..."

 

 

WHo says you can't learn a language from a gay guy? I say use any and all resources available to you to learn, if this is what you want.

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I find myself doing it habitually.. Started with the letters on the Nana Plaza entrance.

 

Once I realised how weirdly their vowels worked, it became much easier. Oh how I'd love the job of rationalising their writing system...

 

Their modern typefaces are confusing, eg ro rua (the r sound) looking exactly like an s.

 

Still, not matter how hard it is, it's easier than Chinese. And an awful lot of people can read that.

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when i say the english version i mean like the way we write.

example mai pen rai/sawadee etc in an english form

 

Yes, that's the transliteration spoken of above. Most Thais I know who stumble through English have no idea what Thai transliterated into English means.

 

I did it by learning 1 or 2 letters per day, just memorizing and writing them over and over again. I also bought some flashcards that have the letters on one side and the picture of what the letter is on the other side (gor gai = chicken, etc.), along with a couple of words using that letter.

 

I'm at the point where I can recognize most of the letters in most fonts, although, for the really avant garde Thai fonts, I'm hopeless (think of some of the bizarre English fonts and then try to imagine that in Thai!!).

 

Practice sounding out simple words on simple signs. The first word I read was a Thai transliteration of English: mee-nee-mar-t. I can usually get the first few letters or maybe the first word in movie subtitles, so I guess I read at pre-kindergarten level. I am still amazed that low educated Thai girls can look at 2 lines of Thai chicken scratch subtitles at the bottom of an English language film and read it before the dialog changes.

 

1-2 letters/day and you've got it in a bit under 2 months.

 

Good luck.

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Most Thais I know who stumble through English have no idea what Thai transliterated into English means.

that's exactly my experience as well!

chinese people however who can read english, can usually read and understand pinyin (english transliteration of chinese) pretty well; probably because there is a proper system in place in opposite to thai transliteration into english!

 

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