Learning Thai – Resources for beginners (Like me!)

Posted by on Jul 18, 2011 in Language | 6 comments

Learning Thai – Resources for beginners (Like me!)

So it’s 36 days and 36 nights today till I fly out to Thailand and arrive in Bangkok!  I’m thinking now is a good time to start learning some Thai. I work a lot of night shifts in the hospital and often the patients are fast asleep. Generally I just talk shite with my colleagues, but from now on I shall annoy them nightly with my self-taught Thai, 3am on a psychiatric ward is the perfect time!

I have never learnt another language, at school I started in French but was the buffoon in class, I was then transferred to Spanish where I was too loco, then German where I was a complete Scheiße to the teacher. So as last resort they stuck me in the basement class learning Latin with the crack heads and douche bags! The perfect place for me…

So I need a plan and some resources that’ll help me learn some basic Thai before I arrive in Thailand:

Thai for Beginners

As luck would have it, there is a new iPhone/Pad/Touch app that has come out called “Thai for Beginners” that is promoting itself through competitions on various Thai blogs. I was lucky enough to win one off Talen form Thailandlandofsmiles.com.  Have a search around the Thai Blogs there maybe similar competitions.

I’ve been using this app for a few days now and I’m finding it easy to use and have learnt alot more than I expected.  With this app. I’m finding I can understand more than I can speak so.  You can also buy it on iTunes for $25.

Womenlearnthai.com

The best resource out there that I have found it also Cath’s website (womenlearnthai.com), she has been learning Thai for years now and has compiled a great resource list. It has videos, podcasts, eBooks, free and paid courses available to browse to suit any student of Thai language.

The list is huge and must have taken years to compile and should most likely be the first stop for anybody interested in
learning any Thai. I’m digging through it now to find what suits me.

Bangkokpodcasts.com

My last and final resource would be the hilarious bangkokpodcasts.com. These podcasts have been hosted By Greg and Tony for over a year now. They don’t focus on Language but they do have guests who come and teach a little Thai. They have the Thai language Jedi Rikker in the early episodes and ‘Learn Thai form a White guy’ in the later episodes.

I don’t necessarily learn much from these podcasts but I do find them educational, encouraging and entertaining. I’ve downloaded each episode from iTunes and loving each episode only problem is I just can’t get the damm theme tune out of my head!

My Thai language resources

So this is my little list of leaning material, I have no idea how well I’ll do at learning Thai and how I learn languages best, so it’ll all be trial and error.

Any more recommendations or questions please leave a comment below

Krap Kun Kap

(Thank you, I Think???)

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the RSS feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader.
468 ad
  • http://www.thaisabai.org Martyn

    Colin I congratulate you on your smashing competition prize and I hope you get a lot of satisfaction out of it. I’m sure you will.

    Catherine’s ‘Women Learning Thai….and some men too’ Thai language blog is as you say a great resource for learning Thai and the depth of Catherine’s site means you can tailor the many resources to suit your particular language needs and which method of learning suits you. Catherine also writes some lovely posts when she leaves her virtual classroom and heads out into Bangkok or wherever.

    Nice post and may those 36 days go quick.

  • http://www.faranginthailand.com Colin Steele

    Thanks Martyn, The app is great. I feel i’m starting to pick up the language. Guess the real test is when i get there.

  • http://www.strayandsnap.blogspot.com Snap

    Colin, WLT has more learning resources in one place that you could ever need. However, you’ll probably whittle it down to a few favourites like I have. I’ve just finished updating the learning resources page on Chiang Mai Thai…and I’m going to leave it at that for a while, because it’ll take me ages to get through them all. Wishful thinking!

    You must be getting excited chai mai?…please don’t say krap kun kap ;)

  • http://www.faranginthailand.com Colin Steele

    So true, with WLT you don’t really need any other resource…

    Hmmm, please tell then, what is it? Kop Kun Krap I’ll go look it up now!

  • http://www.strayandsnap.blogspot.com Snap

    What a relief ;) for a minute there I thought you calling me a bra cup! Kidding aside, good luck with your studies.

  • Gary

    I also moved to Chiang Mai (from Bangkok, and previously from London) – and I also think it’s a nicer place to live than Bangkok or Phuket or Pattaya. But obviously everybody has their own preferred lifestyle: I like the fact that Chiang Mai is a quiet countryside disctrict, but with a thriving, sophisticated little city.

    As for Thai, I’d like to plug my ‘Rapid Method’. It’s a minimalist approach, focusing on reading as the foundation. The Rapid Read Thai course takes 12-16 hours of ‘study’, using quirky, zany (and obscene) picture associations to imprint the Thai letters into your mind virtually instantly. I give 2-day workshops, afterwhich participants are able to sound out any Thai word accurately with the correct tone – but not necessarily understand (yet) what they are reading. Or you can follow the course online at your own pace, in which case it may take up to two months if you do one page (10 minutes) per day.

    If you’re in a hurry, the ‘quickest’ (i.e. most effective, long-lasting) way is to work through the course in two separate half days, then come back after a week and review it from start to finish over another two half days. You will then be able to read comfortably, albeit slowly at first.

    The next phase is to start reading conversational-type material. I strongly recommend Everyday Thai for Beginners – it’s all in Thai – to get you conversational within four months (only doing one lesson per week). Again, following the ‘Rapid’ minimalist approach, follow just one lesson – but master it as follows:

    Read through the lesson on your own. Then use Anki (a spaced-repetition flash card system) to memorise the vocabulary for that lesson. I’ve prepared an Anki file that contains all 1,200 words found in Everyday Thai. Say the words out loud over and over again in an exaggerated way. This is very important, because speaking is more of a MUSCLE SKILL than a linguistic ability.

    Then spend an hour with a Thai teacher to understand the lesson fully and TO PRACTICE speaking together. You’ll already have the vocabulary, so you just need to practice saying phrases and sentences in a meaningful way.

    If you still want to take it even further after completing the Everyday course then I hope that you will revisit the ‘Rapid’ approach and sign up for my fluency course. This is a one year (one lesson per week) course, based on a fun, colloquial book called Sydney Remember (about a Thai girl who goes to live with her cousin in Sydney, deals with visa issues, finds work, makes friends, etc. – our story in reverse, and in Thai).

    After a year, you will be able to communicate fluently [but not at an academic level] – i.e. be able to carry on a satisfying conversation with a friend or colleague without having to think about it (my definition of ‘fluency’).

    Please try it out for yourself: visit http://www.learnthaionline.com and sign up for the free Starter Course (15 daily lessons sent by email) or follow the trial version of the Rapid Read Thai online course.

    And then please visit http://www.facebook.com/rapidlanguagelearning to post your comments about your Thai (Thailand) journey.

Web Analytics