#  >  > Living And Legal Affairs In Thailand >  >  > Learn Thai Language >  >  Thai Vocabulary Lists

## Digby Fantona

This is an excellent list and I have found it helpful.

http://womenlearnthai.com/downloads/...yThaiVocA4.pdf

If one does a search for "Thai vocabulary lists" it names one that was once available on ThaiVisa but the link no longer works. The title was "List Of 3000 Most Common Thai Words" and was provided by a guy called Rikker.

Does anybody have a working link for this list, please ? Are there any other lists members would recommend, please ?

Thanks

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## Neverna

I bought myself a huge vocabulary list. The author printed it for me and even bound it up nicely. I think the shop I bought it in called it a dictionary.

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## taxexile

these might be of use.


http://thai-lexicon.com/forums/t/lin...cabulary/t6414


thai-language.com - Common Thai Words

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## somtamslap

Learn to read via the medium of Manee and friends. You won't look back...

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## Digby Fantona

^^ Thanks. I had found these but had not realised that the second site had a page on which it had "starred" words. I had always looked at the home page and the list of words there was intimidating. I need to explore a site more carefully in future  :Smile:

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## taxexile

its a very good site.

rikker, who runs or ran the thai visa thai language forum sometimes posts there. he may also have a hand in running that site.

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## Digby Fantona

> Learn to read via the medium of Manee and friends. You won't look back...


I tried to find these books when I was in Isaan a month ago but failed. The online versions are very blurred and although I would love to use them they are too hard to see.

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## Digby Fantona

> I bought myself a huge vocabulary list. The author printed it for me and even bound it up nicely. I think the shop I bought it in called it a dictionary.


You have to be one of the biggest idiots on here. You only seek to cause disruption and never post anything constructive. You should not be here.

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## Neverna

> Originally Posted by Neverna
> 
> 
> I bought myself a huge vocabulary list. The author printed it for me and even bound it up nicely. I think the shop I bought it in called it a dictionary.
> 
> 
> You have to be one of the biggest idiots on here. You only seek to cause disruption and never post anything constructive. You should not be here.


What are you talking about, Can123?

Get yourself a dictionary. More words than you can shake a stick at, and you get the meanings too. Or get yourself an internet search engine if you must copy stuff from the internet. Are you incapable of that too? 

Anyway, back to your ignore list. Or do you need someone to find that for you, too?

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## Digby Fantona

^
I will continue to post as Digby Fantona until I am told that I am allowed to post as Can123. I have requested that my posts be merged under one name but as yet have had no reply. 

I used two names to prove that it was easy to multinick and that people could inflate their reputation status by using many profile names. In the last few days other members have also complained about disruptive members who multinick and I regard my experiment as having been successful.

I have many dictionaries including "Thai English Student's Dictionary" by Mary R Haas. I am making genuine efforts to learn Thai and lists are helpful.

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## Neverna

> I used two names to prove that it was easy to multinick and that people could inflate their reputation status by using many profile names. 
> 
> .. and I regard my experiment as having been successful.


You're a bit slow, aren't you? (rhetorical question) Everyone on teakdoor knows it's easy to multinick. Smeg has proved that many times. 




> I have many dictionaries including "Thai English Student's Dictionary" by Mary R Haas. I am making genuine efforts to learn Thai and lists are helpful.


A serious question, how do you find long lists of random words compiled by total strangers useful to you? 

And what do you do with them?



.

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## Digby Fantona

> Originally Posted by Digby Fantona
> 
> 
> I used two names to prove that it was easy to multinick and that people could inflate their reputation status by using many profile names. 
> 
> .. and I regard my experiment as having been successful.
> 
> 
> You're a bit slow, aren't you? (rhetorical question) Everyone on teakdoor knows it's easy to multinick. Smeg has proved that many times. 
> ...


The lists are not random words. They are compiled by having regard to the frequency of use of each word. They are useful because the most commonly used words are pulled out of the dictionary. The intention is to learn these words first. It's what I did when I learned French.

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## Neverna

So, you want to memorise, for example, the 1000 words on the link below, all their various meanings (some words have more than one meaning), with absolutely no context, no information about the usage of each word and no information about any collocations? Do you really think that is a good way to learn a language, or learn vocabulary? 

thai-language.com - Common Thai Words

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## Digby Fantona

> So, you want to memorise, for example, the 1000 words on the link below, all their various meanings (some words have more than one meaning), with absolutely no context, no information about the usage of each word and no information about any collocations? Do you really think that is a good way to learn a language, or learn vocabulary? 
> 
> thai-language.com - Common Thai Words


Yes, it is how I learned French. A core vocabulary has to be learned first. My wife helps me with context.

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## Neverna

> Originally Posted by Neverna
> 
> 
> So, you want to memorise, for example, the 1000 words on the link below, all their various meanings (some words have more than one meaning), with absolutely no context, no information about the usage of each word and no information about any collocations? Do you really think that is a good way to learn a language, or learn vocabulary? 
> 
> thai-language.com - Common Thai Words
> 
> 
> Yes, it is how I learned French. A core vocabulary has to be learned first. My wife helps me with context.


So when you need to use Thai, you just look up the words you need from your lists, one at a time, from English to Thai, string them together then hope it works?

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## Neverna

It rained cats and dogs on Wednesday
_man fontok mew le maa bon wan put_


 :Confused:

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## Digby Fantona

> Originally Posted by Digby Fantona
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  Originally Posted by Neverna
> ...


God no ! I learn as many words as my old brain allows and the use them in proper speech. I have to learn may words parrot fashion before I can say anything.

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## Digby Fantona

Cancelled.

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## toddaniels

Sorry to piss in your iced beer Digby but unfortunately those "top xxxx number of thai word lists" are not the best methodology to go about learning thai. 

The frequency of those words is "data mined" mostly from legal, religious, and college paper type stuff so it skews the word list. Words that are rarely spoken or used come up way higher than they should. There was a website called "thai-notes" that had a word frequency list in which most of the low frequency words were culled from it.

Rikker Dockum was an admin on the Thai Visa Thai Language Sub-forum a LONG LONG time ago. He had nothing to do with that website just that specific sub-forum.  

Neverna, you ain't gonna speak thai fer shit reading an english thai dictionary or even a thai english one for that matter. That's not how you learn the language. 

somtamslap - those manee-manaa readers are so ancient, mostly filled with brain-washing & cultural indoctrination teaching kids how to be good little auto-bots not questioning anything. They're worthless as tits on a tomcat as far as learning thai for non-native adult speakers.

Digby, just because you learned one of the "romance" languages by memorizing words doesn't mean you can do that with a language that's got NO anchor culturally or historically with english like thai. I'd say you're gonna be pushing that rope for a long while. 

Start out with Benjawan Poomsan Becker's "Learn Thai" beginner, intermediate and advanced. Get Bingo Lingo "Read Thai in 10 Days", buy & download Benjawan's 3 way dictionary application, and you'll figure it out. 

Face it 70+ million people in this country speak/understand thai, I'm pretty confident they're ALL not smarter than you are. This means if they can do it, you can to IF you want to. It's way more motivation than methodology.

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## Digby Fantona

We are different and we all learn in different ways. I will do it my way, thanks, and I will succeed eventually.

It is important to learn the most commonly used words and frequency lists do not differ much from language to language. What I was looking for was a list of words that I, personally, am likely to use. I start with other people's lists and amend them.

I have all the Becker books. I have almost every Mary R Haas publication including her dictionary. I would love to get the Manee books so that I could actually see them to be able to read them. The online copies are small and blurred.

I have extracted web pages created by others and placed them on my own website. Now I do not need to go all over the Internet, all my Thai resources are on the same site.

Learning Thai would have been easy when I was a schoolboy. Now, with advancing age, it has harder to remember new material.

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## Neverna

> Neverna, you ain't gonna speak thai fer shit reading an english thai dictionary or even a thai english one for that matter. That's not how you learn the language.


I didn't state, suggest or imply that, so I have no idea why you made that comment to me.

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## toddaniels

The company Suksapanpanit has reprinted the Manee Manaa boos (or at least some of them).

I've got the PDF'z of 6 of the Manee boox, and I have an original set too. The images in the PDF files look like this (pretty much just like the books;

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## toddaniels

Oh and BTW; don't forget my stuff on Catherine Wentworth's Women Learning Thai (and some men too) site
It's just the trials and tribulations I went thru learning this "one trick pony" language:
 Tod Daniels

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## Digby Fantona

I tried my best to get them when I was in Pattaya, Bangkok and Khon Kaen about six weeks ago. The young people looked at me as though I was from some distant planet when I asked about them. I would love to have hard original prints of these books. They are all available online as PDF files but they are blurred and I find it difficult to see the individual letters.

Literacy standards in the UK have fallen during my ilfetime due to changes in teaching methods and the abandonment of teaching using phonics. However dated the Manee book are in terms of content it has to be acknowledged that they helped in getting Thai people to be able to read and write. They were structured and successive books were designed to be be at higher levels than their predecessors. They worked.

I spoke to a Thai school teacher in Khon Kaen province on my last visit and explained "phonics". Despite being experienced, actually on the verge of retirement, he had never heard of it and was genuinely impressed when I showed him how easy it was to read English words by having regard to phonics. Too late for him now.

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## Passing Through

Why the fuck would anyone bother with Manee? (Though มานีมีเเชร์ was good). Reading Thai is a piece of piss anyway. There's really no need to arse about with this stuff. Get a writing practice book, make some flashcards and you can have it cracked in a week or two. Then just start reading some children's literature.

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## Digby Fantona

> Why the fuck would anyone bother with Manee? (Though มานีมีเเชร์ was good). Reading Thai is a piece of piss anyway. There's really no need to arse about with this stuff. Get a writing practice book, make some flashcards and you can have it cracked in a week or two. Then just start reading some children's literature.


I am obviously not as clever as you.

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## Passing Through

You're obviously not as clever as a great many people but there's still no reason to worry about finding a copy of Manee.

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## Digby Fantona

กางเกงใน

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## Neverna

> Literacy standards in the UK have fallen during my ilfetime due to changes in teaching methods and the abandonment of teaching using phonics.


Why do you insist on posting false information? Phonics is taught in UK primary schools.

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## Digby Fantona

> Originally Posted by Digby Fantona
> 
> 
> Literacy standards in the UK have fallen during my ilfetime due to changes in teaching methods and the abandonment of teaching using phonics.
> 
> 
> Why do you insist on posting false information? Phonics is taught in UK primary schools.


I was taught by the use of phonics. In the Sixties the country lost its way and part of the Labour Party lunacy was to get rid of phonics. There was a gap of nearly forty years before they realised the mistake and reverted to using it. It is used today, thanks be to God.

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## toddaniels

> Why the fuck would anyone bother with Manee? (Though มานีมีเเชร์ was good). Reading Thai is a piece of piss anyway. There's really no need to arse about with this stuff. Get a writing practice book, make some flashcards and you can have it cracked in a week or two. Then just start reading some children's literature.


You could be taking some creative license with your actual ability to read thai (as in comprehend what you're reading) versus just sounding out the characters one by one.

Learning to read thai is NOTHING more than memorizing many, many MANY thai words so when you see them there is a meaning thai'd err tied to it. It takes time and more time to be able to read with a high degree of comprehension.

I disliked the Manee Manaa books because of the high degree of brain-washing and cultural indoctrination found in them. That and the vocab is almost worthless in today's day and age.

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## Passing Through

> You could be taking some creative license with your actual ability to read thai (as in comprehend what you're reading) versus just sounding out the characters one by one.


  Because you're the only person who has ever learned Thai, right Todz? I work as a translator for one of the main Thai banks. My reading in Thai is just fine.

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## Neverna

^ Yep, next danielz will be here to tell you he's not not talking down to you, he's just trying to talk to you on your level, or some other oft repeated condescending boring shite.

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## cyrille

> when you see them there is a meaning thai'd err tied to it.


I note his sparkling wit goes over the heads of you two buffoons too.  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):

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## toddaniels

[quote=Passing Through;3583467]


> I work as a translator for one of the main Thai banks. My reading in Thai is just fine.


No wonder you're such a pr*ck. That job must suck the will to live right outta you.

Like I said 70+ million people speak, read and understand Central thai (60% of them as their second language), this leads me to believe that ANY foreigner who wants to can as well.

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## taxexile

> I work as a translator for one of the main Thai banks.


strange, even bangkok banks head office in bangkok have no foreign employees, so are your duties in an official capacity, or do you just help the old falang next to you in the queue fill out the withdrawal form?

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## Passing Through

> That job must suck the will to live right outta you.


It's all research on the Thai economy so not exactly my area but since I live here, it's still mid-level interesting.




> No wonder you're such a pr*ck.


Cheers!

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## Crestofawave

> Why the fuck would anyone bother with Manee? (Though มานีมีเเชร์ was good). Reading Thai is a piece of piss anyway. There's really no need to arse about with this stuff. Get a writing practice book, make some flashcards and you can have it cracked in a week or two. Then just start reading some children's literature.


I agree. If you're motivated it doesn't take long to remember which consonants belong to which group, learn the vowels and you're away!
As mentioned, start reading kids' books, I'd recommend you then write down all the new vocab you come across in empty notebooks- one book each for nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and one for idioms! 4 in all. 
Then when you come across a word you've already written down but didn't remember, write that word on a card approx one inch by one inch. There's a good chance it's a common word On one side write the word in English, on the other write the Thai word. Keep the cards together with an elastic band, put them in your top pocket, then when you have some moments spare, pull them out and look only at the word in English and try to remember the Thai. When you're sure you've remembered it, put the card away for safe-keeping, you've cracked that word!

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